To be slightly horrified now by what I ate as a kid in the 80s?

The only 'curry' I'd ever had prior to university was school dinner curry. I thought I didn't like curry, trying actual curry was a revelation!

Sounds more or less what we ate. We never had water to drink, only squash. On Sunday a fizzy drink. We weren't allowed out without a parent so never had any exercise. I'd never eaten a pizza or pasta or before secondary school. I've never seen garlic in my parents kitchen, it too exotic for them! Our main meal was always meat + two veg + potatoes or occasionally rice. Other meal was jam sandwich and cake.

My family still eat like this and constantly bombard my DC with the message that they're unnatural eaters because they eat salads, fruit and vaguely healthy food.

We were not well off but I was one of those kids who showed up with health food.

My mum and her friends set up a whole foods cooperative between themselves, so everything was from there. Belive me, in the 80s wholemeal pasta had a long way to go and tasted like cardboard!

Heinz, Kellogs, Mars, Walkers, coca cola, Cadbury - all of these were massive treats only for Christmas Day (or nanna's house!)

People did snigger and I felt left out without 5p for the tuck shop.

But i am really grateful now mum did all this on her small budget and now I see she was ahead of her time. I hate how health food has become new and is remarketed at us in supermarkets with ridiculous prices, when it's such simple ingredients and cheap to them.

We had very little money and so we ate very cheap food. Homemade chips at least twice a week, often more. Nothing with them , just chips. We never had dessert except cake on birthdays.

Snacks were chocolate and biscuits because they were cheap. I remember asking my mum if we could have some fruit once and was told no it was too expensive. We did get a little fruit at Christmas or occasionally as a treat in the school holidays.
Vegetables were tinned peas. That was it. These days I try very hard to get my five a day but we didn't even come close to five a week then.

it was tough. But it was what I knew and my parents tried their best with what they had. At the time, I didn't realise how badly we ate. These days I eat a world away from how I ate then, and I'm probably healthier for it, and can really appreciate food now.

We did have fruit and veg but it was very seasonal. There's no way we'd have strawberries if it wasn't June for example. Clementines were only for Christmas. Apples and bananas I think were the only fruit we had year round.

My DM occasionally sent me to school with KFC chicken that she’d bought the day before. There was no cool pack in it either!

I was born in the late eighties and don’t recognise any of the food you describe as part of a normal diet. For me, it was more like:

Breakfast - weetabix or shredded wheat with skimmed milk, porridge or wholemeal toast with jam. Plus fruit.

Lunch - wholemeal sandwich with cheese and tomato or similar (no processed meat), an apple or a satsuma, box of raisins and maybe carrot sticks or a little fruit cereal bar thing.

No snacks after school unless it was summer and the ice cream van was around.

Dinner was always fresh and homemade. Thins like Shepherds Pie, fish pie etc. with veggies. Puddings were a once a week treat.

Yes my diet was similar in the 80s and no I wasn't out being active in the fields, I was home watching TV or playing my zx spectrum!

Spent my 20s and 30s overweight but on it now.

Lol at the hummus debate - flippin' OLIVE OIL was only available in pharmacies back then (for clearing earwax) never mind hummus.
Might depend if you lived in an area with any immigration... I hadn't had a curry till i left home for uni

Why are you horrified. It's just how things were then. Everyone was the same

Not for me. I grew up in the 80’s and was always outside playing, extremely active. My diet wasn’t bad either. Lots of fruit, veg and home cooked main meals but also yeah, some processed stuff as well. Everything in moderation though.

I grew up in the 80s, we did have cereal but it was weetabix, porridge or cornflakes. It was all cooked from scratch, proper food at home and I remember being envious of mates who got to have fizzy pop and Turkey Drummers 😂

I ate much the same as you @NotWantingToBeRude though I did have access to apples and bananas at least and would eat those after school. Were you also a latchkey kid? So many of us were in that era.

I know my parents did their best at the time but I do harbour a little resentment that I was not given a better start in life nutritionally and in my relationship with food. My mother still eats like crap, lots of ultra processed food, but has by some miracle not become ill or obese from it which is sheer luck.

OP, what’s your diet like now? Are you overweight and do you have all your own teeth?

I also grew up on the 80s/90s and was similar, maybe a little better. I always had an Apple for first break though and I felt like a leper, everyone else had crisps. We didn’t have dessert during the week and there was always veg/ salad with dinner, we always had bread and butter on a side plate with our meals and sometimes triple carbs - lasagne and salad with baked potatoe and bread anyone? I don’t think I had a glass of water until I was about 15 - always squash. Not allowed fizzy drinks though unless a special occasion.

Times change, awareness changes, science develops. The 80s was 40 years ago now.

One thing I was not allowed were fizzy drinks & I don't like them as an adult. I don't let my dc have them either, that's the only rule I really have.

i became a vegetarian at the age of 14, in 1980!
so i guess all those beans and lentils were pretty healthy , as well as Sosmix

It’s not great, but it was commonplace then. A lot of cooking and knowledge of nutrition went out of the window from the 1970s when frozen food became common place.

My DM always made sure we didn’t have slushie drinks or those freezer pop lolly things in plastic, but we had pepperami’s, Dairylea snack pots, Angel Delight and Coco Pops. I wouldn’t feed this stuff to my DS now (or at least not regularly) but knowledge of nutrition has improved again since then.

Proper pudding and custard cannot be beaten.

I remember eating pasta for the first time in the eighties and felt positively exotic 😂

Oh how we wish we were all lucky enough to be brought up by today's parents, who know everything about everything and are so confident theirs is The Right Way.

Yep, we used to go to Sainsbury’s which shared space with Children’s World and had a slide in the front entrance, and mum would pick up extras in Kwik Save for the items that she thought were good from the blue and white striped value range.

i discovered avocado in the 1980s, loved it

Very similar diet OP when we were young and set meals on certain days was a real thing. Beef burgers and chips on a Monday & salad and luncheon meat on a Thursday (we did eat other things but I can’t remember them). Except the cereal we didn’t eat anything else sugary and on the whole no crisps or
biscuits. Those were strictly a Christmas luxury in the food shop 😊.

it did change in later teens as me and all my siblings became vegetarian because none of us liked meat - but think that was more to do with the disgusting beef burgers and things we were eating.

I’d say that was fairly typical of that time. It sounds the same as I had, more or less.
Kids were more active then though, so childhood obesity wasn’t as much as a thing as now. I was a scrawny little thing.

@NotWantingToBeRude my mum was ahead of the curve and it was actually horrifying as a six year old to turn up to school with a glass Tupperware - plastic leaching fears- full of organic chicken and salad sandwiches on seeded bread, a piece of fruit and water 😂 I’m pretty similar with my kids ironically but at least it’s more socially acceptable, I’m amazed I wasn’t a pariah

I think it depends on the family. How much time the parents had and if they could cook? I was a child in the 80’s. My parents had no money but my mum cooked home made meals every day. As a kid I just wanted egg and chips like my friends but we’d have vegetables every day with some sort of home made suet pudding (leek or steak)/chicken breasts or something like that. She also baked all our treats (biscuits, fairy cakes, scones etc, I think this could be cheaper than having chocolate bars and unhealthy snacks). We also ate a lot of fruit which my mum got from the market. Packed lunch would have been similar to yours OP, I think they were just easier foods for a lunchbox.

I always tell my dc how lucky they are to have seedless grapes! I loved grapes as a dc but that initial deliciousness was ruined by the seeds.