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

I can remember going to a friend’s each Wednesday after tennis. They had food I’d never heard of. Sandwich Spread, which was basically coleslaw in a jar, pepperami, pop tarts and the thing I really envied - a soda stream!

How times have changed. I used to covet processed junk because I never had it. My kids’ friends used to ask to come to ours because they loved that my husband made them ‘proper’ food.

I was born mid 70s. Whatever I was fed by the parents, I had no control over. End of!

I definitely had a lot of minced beef, pork sausages, fish fingers, pies, roast chicken on Sunday. All of these served with potatoes and veg or baked beans. My parents weren't well off, my mum wasn't an adventurous cook.

However, I lived 12 miles from the nearest McDonald's. No KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Dominos. Only the local chippy which was a treat. Never had a Chinese takeaway ever until I was about 23 and left home.

I walked to school, later to work, I walked to the shops, swimming pool, library, cinema when I lived with the parents.

7.5 stones at age 21! I'm 5ft 3" though.

Life was very different to how it is now, especially as I live in a different area and work 8 miles from home. Nowhere in walking distance. But every fast food place about 4 miles from home and takeaways all around. No wonder I've gained weight as I'm less active and probably have tried all the junk food known to man by now 😂

Sounds great to me

The real disappointment is eating some of them now. They taste vile. I use to love cheese Findus pancakes. Not now.

The only thing that has held up is butterscotch angel delight. Even DD likes it.

You would’ve been the sort of friend I envied madly, OP.

Crisps were simply never bought in our house, nor fizzy drinks, sugary cereals or processed food. We were never, ever bought sweets. This was purely because my mum would have considered such things a monumental waste of money rather than any health concerns.

Having said that, I managed to get my children to secondary school before they had any drinks other than milk or water.

I grew up in the 80s and my diet was healthier than this - all homecooked meals, plenty of fruit and veg. However, I ate a lot of sweets and drank full sugar squash, so over the course of my childhood, that made me overweight with tons of fillings.

I would say my dc have a better diet but it's still a struggle to get them to eat well - much more convenience and UPF around to tempt them, and me as a parent.

The lunchbox you mention would be fine in a lot of schools - plenty of kids eat like this at my kids' school; they don't enforce lunchbox rules. I imagine lunchbox police is in wealthier demographics where they know parents will comply.

Grey area I would say! A home cooked meal would be better. But a bowl of cheerios would be worse…

So the Mumsnet branded meals are not as described in the press release as being a healthy and convenient way for busy parents to feed their toddlers one of their five a day and donating 5p to Alder Hey?

Have a read of “Ultraprocessed People”
by Chris Van Tulleken. The brief version is that microwave meals are still ultraprocessed because, even if they don’t contain anything that you wouldn’t find in your kitchen, they’ve still been made in an industrial factory. There’s also the concept of “the food matrix” which is the concept wherein the individual molecules of the food are “packaged” in a way that enables them to be delivered at the right point in your digestive system. So that’s why drinking a glass of orange juice has a completely different impact on your blood sugar levels in comparison to eating four actual oranges. The sugar is packaged within the cell walls in the orange and its absorption in the gut is delayed. Back to the microwave meal, it’s likely that the food matrices have been destroyed in the process of making said meal because it’s been industrially processed. And it’s thought that this negatively impacts health.
So in summary, microwave meals probably are ultra processed food that we should aim to eat minimal amounts of, but they’re probably better than eating a tube of Pringles for dinner.

I’m not overly fussed about sugar in my kids diet in moderation, it’s the frustose and glucose syrups and the gums etc that I think are so bad for you. So a homemade cake or biscuits or fruit crumble for pudding each day isn’t an issue for me. Plain yoghurt with organic honey is okay for me. But all of the chocolate bars, cheap shop cakes, haribos, lurid ice pops and slushies and sugary cereals etc that I ate do worry me.

Like others have mentioned, I’m slim also and active and have really cleaned up my diet since getting into my thirties. But me and one of my sisters still have stomach issues. I might always have had them but I know when I eat badly they really flare up

people dont have to be obese to be unhealthy, to get bowel cancer, high cholesterol, etc,

I loved crispy pancakes They were a treat as a kid. Tried them as an adult and tasteless lol.

We were fed lots of rice and veg with a small amount of meat or fish , as a well as various stews and my fave chicken chassuer.

It seems that many people are more obese these days. Not just the 80s generation. Take a look at current teenagers and even younger kids. Must fatter than they were when I was at school in the 80s. We had " the fat kid" in a class. Now a 3rd of kids are overweight

Breakfast club at my son's school only offers porridge (the type of porridge varies from day to day - oat, rye, barley, wheat, rice, 4 grain) with some fruit sauce, bread with some cheese or ham and lettuce or tomato or cucumber. No breakfast cereals ever. Milk or water to drink. Very healthy.

My diet was similar to that (minus the nightly pudding). I often had microwave chips for dinner.

However, I (and my friends who are the same type of food) were slim growing up, and still are mainly, and have turned out to be perfectly healthy, so it doesn’t seem to have had long lasting negative results. We know more about nutrition now (I think) yet there are overweight and obsese children everywhere, so I’m not sure if there has been a huge improvement overall.

Cereal is the ultimate example of a very processed food being marketed as essential, perhaps with the exception of a couple of the basic wheat cereals.

I do sometimes scratch my head at the evangelical talk of school breakfast clubs as giving children ‘a healthy breakfast to kickstart their learning’. Whenever I have been near a breakfast club it has seemed to be processed cereal, toast (often white) and jam or spread. Perhaps a bit of fruit on offer.

Of course, for some children they would get nothing at home and it is far better that they have a meal than don’t have a meal, but I think there are questions about the nutrition of what is provided.

It is not an easy issue to resolve.

I was born mid 80s.

I think my mum was slightly unusual in that we rarely had sugary cereals. I don’t think my parents could afford them.

Most days for breakfast my mum cooked me an egg, or chees/ beans on toast, pilchards on toast, marmite on toast, weetabix, bacon or sausage.

Lunch at school was a sandwich, probably chicken or processed meat or meat paste, and a penguin or wagon wheel. I never ate my lunch anyway. School gave us biscuits and squash at break.

Pretty much grew up on potatoes. My mum cooked a roast 2-3 times a week, then homemade chips the rest of the time. Chilli con carni on a Saturday night.

I was allowed unrestricted access to sweets/biscuits/chocolate. Hardly ate any fruit apart from bananas. Didn’t drink any water, only cheap fizzy pop.

My 7yr old (admittedly he's a neurospicy one) has toasted fruit bread everyday for breakfast and cheese or jam sandwiches,cheese on a cracker and a packet of crisps for lunch every day. He will also eat a couple of biscuits every day, eats beans on toast about 3-4 times a week for his tea and barely touches a vegetable. But does eat some fruit, apples and occasionally grapes or strawberries. He is slim and healthy .
Sugar has been over demonised lately, but the crap they put in food now to replace it is a 100times worse! Your body uses it as a fuel as long as you are active, it's certainly not using the chemicals that are replacing it.

I had a sugar heavy diet for the whole of my 20's and 30's and was skinny and never ill. It's only in my 40's that my exercise schedule and metabolism aren't enough for it and I have to watch what I eat.
If kids are fed and healthy,it's hardly a tradegy.

It was a common snack in NZ too.

mum would only buy coco pops in the variety packs and only for holidays in the caravan and we’d fight over them.

I ate a lot of frozen mini pizzas, weight watchers lasagne, and find us crispy pancakes for lunches in the holidays. And toast toppers. We ate a lot of mince based items too. Thinking about it my widowed mum was probably up to here for cooking for 4 kids.

lunch at school was a cheese sandwich on brown bread, an orange juice, a penguin (I don’t like penguins) and maybe a satsuma. It was the 80s ….quinoa hadn’t been invented yet.

Bowel-cancer rates rising among younger people - BBC News

bowel checking doesnt start until people are 50 or so

Born late 70s at school 80s to early 90s. I remember cereal for breakfast was the norm, with sugar on anything that was not sweet. Cup of sweetened tea to drink. Pack up was ham or paste sandwich, crisps, penguin and the brand new novelty that was ready to drink ribena. Later, um bongo. Dinners were often fishfingers or sausages. Chips or mash. Roast dinners at weekend. Spaghetti bolognese. But we did have vegetables and they were good, not overcooked or anything. Always jelly and cake for Sunday tea at my grandparents. But we very very seldom had takeaway. I got a Chinese for my 18th birthday, that's how novel it was. Fish and chips was a rare treat for holidays and very very occasionally if we were really busy at home. No fizzy, limited sweets. So a mixed bag really. When my mum met my non British step dad we were introduced to a whole new world of food, possibly before many people in our small and culturally void town.

Was anyone at secondary school in the early 2000s when the Jamie Oliver school dinners thing took off? Coming to school one day and all the vending machines were gone and they were only serving chips on Friday :(

A letter home? You clearly aren't very worldly.