I don't very often have it at all. Not because I don't allow myself, I just prefer savoury stuff - and anyway can't be arsed to make 2 courses!
I do know when I was little my mom always did a pudding every day of some sort - but there again I can hardly say there were huge amounts of especially meat - a matter of what was available to buy and of course, money. We really did only have meat portions the size of a fag packet - nobody was in manual work either. I think we might have gone a bit hungry had we not had one.
It's only cos us 'baby boomers' have had more money, and much more being available in the shops, that we've pushed portion sizes up ourselves - erroneously thinking that more of the nice stuff (meaning basically, protein) is better for us. Dinner plates are huge now too - a normal dinner plate was 9" or 10" dia - now it's 12" - so, we still fill it with a correspondingly greater amount of all we eat.
I'm generalising here of course - but one of the best slimming tips I ever saw, was to reduce the size of your plates. Coincidentally I just went and measured the 'odd' plates in our kitchen cupboard knowing there were different sizes. One dinner plate out of the sets they used to sell in Boots and places, where you got 4 place-settings, and is still big enough for me, is 9". Immediately underneath was a plate I came by from No 1 daughter which I'll be honest - she gave us a year or two ago to take something she'd cooked home on - I asked if she wanted it back and she laughed - No - that came from work and doesn't match anything I have! - so it was one of the dinner plates they used in the restaurant at a chain pub - 12.5" In between the 2 was a salad plate - part of a dinner set for 9 settings of a million pieces bought separately over a year or two in the 80s. 9" exactly - same as the smaller dinner plate. It's sposed to still be altogether in another cupboard but it's a bit like a jig saw in there and I couldn't be bothered to get a dinner plate out - right at the back, underneath lots of other plates. (I have tea, small salad, larger salad (the 9" ones) and dinner plates and even egg cups and the ruddy cruet ...... plus all sorts of other everything - all bought as seconds from Pratleys in the Shambles in Worcester ....)