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

You may be entitled to compensation.....

i still eat Vesta Chow Meins now! Those crispy noodles are divine!

I think it depends. I'm 45 and I had the following growing up:

• Breakfast: large bowl of yoghourt with fresh fruits and home made musli (almonds, oatmeal, dried fruit).
• Lunch made and served in school
• Snack : fruit
• Dinner: lentil or vegetable soup with home made sourdough bread (only had home made darker bread) and cheese, or home made lasagna or pizza. Whatever it was it was made from scratch by my mum who also worked ft. She made delicious cakes and cookies.

I definitely had a healthier diet as a child than my children do. But my mum was a super woman and I think we were easier to please whereas I'm happy that my children eat veg with all meals.

It certainly wasn’t an everyday food when I grow up in the 80s and 80s. We’d never heard of it.
i first tried it after leaving home in the 90s.
it wasn’t an everyday food for anyone I knew.

Yet here you are, alive and well and posting on mumsnet. I’m sure your parents were doing their best at the time

80s here too- no fruit or veg unless you count the odd fish finger chips and peas and Sunday roast with veg boiled into oblivion. We might’ve had mushrooms in spaghetti Bol occasionally. Small portions and no puddings.
We were the generation to first know microwaves and my parents made full use of ready meals
On a weekend there was routine and we’d eat sweets or crisps from the shop instead of lunch and have something like gammon or egg and chips for dinner.
i don’t miss those days tbh, i always felt slightly hungry and unwell.

Sounds like the average packed lunch at most schools even now tbh though the chocolate bar may need to be a plain one depending on school rules.

The typical breakfast for the children at my primary school is cereals and/or toast with jam, honey or marmite.

Also Many families still finish the day with a cooked meal followed by a desert. The desert may be a bit more varied these day.

60s child here. Even if we didn’t have sugary cereal we added spoons of the stuff on top of weetabix and cornflakes. I still don’t really like it without!
White sliced bread. Sugar sandwiches. Sugar in every hot drink given to me. Had to wean myself off it in my twenties.
I was a skinny child so they tried to fatten me up with cream cakes etc
So certainly not just the 80s

I haven’t read the whole thread but just wanted to say that Fanta fruit twist tastes like um bongo 😁 Also I miss toast toppers and fiendish feet.

You ought to have seen what we consumed in the late 60s/70s!! 😆

Vesta Curry and Rice anyone (dried, add water, weird raisins in it)? Chefs Square Shaped Soup, Findus Crispy Pancakes?

Such a wholesome era 🤣 But we live to tell the tales 👌🏻

Yes that’s my point, it’s getting progressively worse. Scientists have been mentioning cancer rates increasing in the under 50s for the last 5 years or so. That fits in with when convenience food came in - these people are hitting late 40s. Not the only reason obviously but something has led to the increase in specifically bowel cancer in younger people. This is continuing. I think convenience food and UPFs (which impact gut bacteria) is part of this.

I do believe our parents who are now in their 70s had a healthier diet growing up. There were less convenience foods, additives in foods etc.

I eat very healthily now to try and offset whatever damage my 80s childhood diet did.

But a lot of the age group growing up in the 70s and 80s are late 40s/over 50. To look at the generation truly before convenience food, e numbers and rubbish snacks, you are looking at those who were children pre: 1970.

And even then it's not like there wasn't crap in foods. An awful lot of the 'fake food' revolution happened post war when rationing was still a thing.

'Real' ice cream is a relatively recent thing, for example, in post war terms. The stuff I grew up with certainly wasn't Ben & Jerry's. I remember reading somewhere that the 'ice cream' we had, Wall's and the like, which was full of weird additives, was developed to give the taste but not use precious cream and eggs and the people liked it, so manufacturers just kept on making it.

There used to be paraffin in sweets like fruit pastilles and fruit gums and that had been the case since Rowntrees first made them. It was a cheap way to get that chewy texture that the masses could afford.

It's really mass production of cheap food mimicking what the wealthy had and you have to back a lot further than the 70s and 80s to trace that. Convenience food isn't a recent as you think. Store-bought bread is convenience food and that's been doctored to make it cheaper and last longer since the 1900s. You don't want to know what they put in it to make it whiter.

Margarine was invented as a cheap war substitute for butter. God knows what else was in powdered eggs, camp coffee and numerous other 'fake foods' my parents remember.

The thing is a lot of what was sold to
us then had healthy messages attached.
Ready Brek porridge kept you warm all day.
A Mars (bar) a day helps you work rest and play.
We trusted advertising a lot more, too.
My mum and dad were both children during rationing and loved being able to go into a supermarket. They didn’t have a lot to spend, but it was a whole new world to them, just as a colour TV was, and a second hand car.
I think things changed when more and more people went abroad in the 70’s and 80’s on cheap package holidays. I can remember having lasagne in Italy and thought I’d discovered heaven. I can remember when pasta was almost considered a diet/healthy food.
When I went to the U.S. for the first time in the 90’s I couldn’t get over the size of the meals, I’d never seen anything like it.

Did you have a happy childhood and food on the table? Yes. Everyone did the best with the knowledge they had at the time. I wish we could rewind the clock to be honest so mothers didn’t have the constant pressure on them to be perfect whilst juggling work.

Totally get what you are saying. I had a bowl of rice crispies for breakfast, a cheese sandwich for lunch and something like corned beef , potatoes and beans for dinner or a ready meal. Usually a yogurt for pudding. Always a roast on a Sunday . Only fruit i had rarely was an apple or orange. Hundreds of sweets at the weekend. Always been perfectly healthy physically...so far, but we were always outside playing. My child will have weetabix and banana for breakfast, homemade soups all the time, veg pasta bakes , salmon, loads of different fruit blueberries , strawberries etc and usually gets ill alot , tummy aches , tired, coughs , colds etc. But they don't play out like we did back then

At least you had some Cereal at home
Alot of kids eat crisps on the way to school.

Its not very much a minority though, that is the point. Its not just 5% of people. I agree every post being made then hit with inequality and poverty context is unnecessary though. This one may be didn't need it. Ones where they moan they only have 2 massive vanity cars and a 5 bed house but can't afford more than 1 massive abroad holiday a year do deserve it though. Re: the OP post - I wouldn't worry about those lunch boxes unless you are now really stunted or have no teeth or something.

How do you think it’s going to impact your health? How old are you now?

Yes, reading about it - the rates cannot be explained by increased screening. I’m talking about the under 50s. So the generations since convenience food was invented. Something is going on!

Most likely - diet, activity levels, environmental factors..

Nothing finer than a ‘mince’ findus crispy pancake and chips for tea! We seemed to have loads of angel delight too! My mum used to do a proper curry night in the 80s too, or cheese board with that massive garlic sausage that looked like a tube of that dog food you can still get! Lots of it was processed yes, but also, a lot of it wasn’t and for all the ‘shit’ we ate there was a lot that wasn’t and I actually don’t think we ate as bigger portions as what people do now! We played out all the time wandering for miles on foot or our bikes, we didn’t have magnums, instead we had ice poles - everything now is based on how ‘opulent’ it is. I think our childhoods were a lot healthier than they are now despite not being concerned about every minute nutrient we put in our bodies because we moved more. Kids weren't sedentary. Give me my 80s childhood, food included and very single time.

there are many factors that increase bowel cancer risks. Diet, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, pollutants, genetics, drinking and smoking.
Also there is improved screening.

We don't know why exactly rates of cancer in young people is rising dramatically though, do we? And what does 'young' mean there. The generation we're talking about is middle-aged now.
And could it be that it's easier to detect cancer now?

I think they grew up on the whole eating healthier foods. Rates of cancer in young people is rising dramatically. Not all of us but as a general trend.

Why do you think we're less healthy than our parents? I don't see that at all.

You'd probably hate my kids packed lunch then(she's 11) as all she will have is a sandwich a pack of crisps a small chocolate bar and a yoghurt aswell as her bottle of squash. She won't touch any fruit or vegetables at all. My 9 year old has all of the above along with a piece of fruit a cheese string and a pepperami