If you eat healthily as an adult what were the food rules when you were growing up?

[MustardScreams]

Just interested to see if it plays a part in adult eating habits.

Well my mum was extremely good at portion control. She made relatively modest amounts of food go far. However we were expected to clear our plates (starving children etc..)
I remember being amazed and slightly disgusted at what DHs family ate,quantity, lack of veg and ever present dessert.
So I channel my mum these days - moderation in all but veg.

We didn’t have many. There were always sweets in the cupboard. Generally meals were not served out and we got to take what we wanted. The only real rule was finish what you take. I don’t remember being forced to eat veg. DS isn’t forced to eat veg either but will often ask for veg when eating out or even eating elsewhere.

No rules I don’t think other than wait for Dad to get home to eat dinner. If you were hungry before you could have a piece of bread and butter (not many takers). Friday night treat which was chocolate.

Went to boarding school and was always hungry there though until old enough to do the serving of food at head of table.

Always had a dinner of potatoes and veg in the evening. But aside from that my mother ate vv badly. Loads of sweets, crisps and chocolates and fizzy drinks.

As an adult I am very fussy about what I eat and ensure it’s quality food. I would say my upbringing influenced my eating habits from about the age of 14 when I could see how awful it was.

My kids eat fairly healthy unless my mother calls in with 5 bags of sweets.

No rules. I think back in the 1960’s for the working classes food was seen as fuel really. Of course there were occasional treats, but I can’t remember people being wowed or gorging on food.

I was slim most of my life, eating whatever I wanted really. Got a bit of middle aged spread now due to lack of movement really.

Three meals a day, no snacks, no sweets apart from Christmas

We had no real 'rules'

Dinners were always home cooked with plenty of veg, very little processed food. My mum is an amazing cook, almost everything was homemade

We were allowed cakes and biscuits. We had pudding everyday but it would normally be homemade. We were allowed crisps and chocolate biscuits but always small portions, multipack crisps/KitKats type stuff. Nothing was a presented as a treat.

We ate out at proper restaurants, and would have mcdonalds on long car journeys but we would never have fast food or takeaways or anything casually. I would never have even considered getting mcdonalds for lunch because it was for car journeys.

I think tbh because my mum is such a good cook what I always crave is my mum's home cooking. So that's what I try to recreate. Bought cakes/processed food etc, feel like a pale imitation of my mum's food so I don't really ever want them

Very few rules. More sugar than I would think would be ok these days (sugary cereal for breakfast) but other than that, mostly your standard 1970s brown rice/brown pasta/Cranks kind of home-cooked meals, not delicious but perfectly edible. Pudding only once in a blue moon. Allowed to snack at will within reason, but buying sweets was v strongly discouraged! Encouraged to try new foods but no big deal made if I didn't like something (mum would do something like leave the sauce off my bit of meat for eg). I am a keen cook and mercifully pretty free of food and body shape issues, so I'd say it worked as a system!

We had a straightforward 3 meals a day. Snacks/treats between meals were very rare but we did have a proper pudding after mail meal every day.

Food was simple home cooked food. No fast food. No takeaways.

You were encouraged to finish every meal.

No snacks, eat at the table and probably not ok with current thinking but being fat was seen as incredibly undesirable. My Mother was a size 8 all her life even after six dc. Also takeaways were incredibly rare but this was the seventies and early eighties.

No 'rules' as such.

My dad was the cook, we always had a 'from scratch' evening meal served at the table, all sitting together. Help yourself from the serving dishes. Wide variety of cuisines, at least 2 types of vegetable choices with each meal.

No one was big on breakfast - my mum did try, but generally no one ate much in the mornings. Has persisted into adulthood, definitely.

Tea and biscuits/cake if available - big tea drinkers in my family. Otherwise no 'snacks' in the modern sense. Fruit available but I don't remember 'snacking' even on fruit.

My mum did watch her weight at various points BUT you wouldn't really be aware of it. She'd just serve herself less food, eat more veg and less potatoes etc.

As teens we could raid the fridge/cupboards and weren't judged (too) harshly for eating crappy supernoodles etc. but we knew to leave any main meal ingredients well alone.

Generally - fresh, unprocessed mostly (but with a healthy regard for a fry-up or cheese on toast etc), wide variety and a love of food and cooking.

I do my best but we probably eat more convenience food than I grew up with!

vegetables were put on the plate and must be tried, but If they weren't eaten it was fine but you couldn't then snack on other stuff afterwards (we didn't really keep snacks in the house though, so basically you just weren't allowed to have bread and butter or fruit).

We weren't allowed fizzy drinks or sweets other than at parties.

Out of the three of us one eats a wide range of food, and loves most vegetables (including sprouts), and eats fruit as a snack regularly.

One eats lots of fruit but hardly any veg, veg is only really tolerated in e.g blended sauces.

One eats no fruit at all. Ever. But will eat peas and some vegetables as sides, especially if it is covered in cheese.

All three of us are addicted to fizzy drinks and sweets as adults.

The one that eats the most fruit and veg is slightly overweight and a functioning borderline alcoholic. The fruit/ veg refusers are both slim but don't always look that healthy.

I think the best eaters are adults who as children who were exposed to a wide variety of eating experiences and textures from an early age and not just the same repertoire of meals from the same parents cooked the same way all the time.

mum made everything from scratch

Lots of veg with every meal

Mum experimented with lots of different cuisines and recipes so we were encouraged to be adventurous and try different things

Portions were modest. When I went to friends houses I was always overwhelmed by the portions other families served up and would be embarrassed because I could only ever manage half

We could eat as much as we wanted, but also if we weren’t hungry we weren’t made to eat / finish our plates

We could help ourselves to food in the cupboards whenever we wanted but there was never snack food or convenience food in the house, so eating between meals meant something like an apple or toast

No day-to-day crisps, soft drink, juice, junk food, but these things weren’t banned either and showed up as semi regular treats

Pudding on the weekends only, and made from scratch

A small sweetie each when we went to the supermarket with mum

Brought up by dad, he was an amazing cook but there were quite a lot of sausages and chips style meals when we were younger. He had a heart attack when I was 14 and became really clued up about nutrition and I now am too. Both me and my sister are really good at eating healthily. I actually prefer healthy to unhealthy food.

A fairly balanced diet. But made to eat it all (clean the plate).
Hungry? Fill up on bread and butter.

Sweets on rare occasion, but accompanied with an anxious ladle of concern about how bad they are for you. Guilt associated with sweets.

Frequent remarks about getting fat and what that would mean (ugliness, no boyfriend, no job, no fun).

By 15 yrs I was a 5'10" size 14. Disappointingly fat!

Adult eating habits healthy vegetarian diet with added loads of chocolate and crisps
I'm now a size 18-20. Type 2 diabetes. Have been much heavier. Weight loss commenced when my parents moved out of the UK 😂.

No snacks between meals. A packet of crisps each at the weekend. Sweets at Easter it Xmas. Not really rules, extra food wasn’t on offer, except fruit, apples and oranges. I agree with the poster who mentioned in the 70’s food was fuel, not a hobby as it is now.

I was brought up in quite a poor family, it was a case of 'eat what you're given or go hungry'. I was hungry quite a lot. I didn't like a lot of the meals my Mum made.me
We had very plain simple food, it was a matter of eating to not be hungry rather than eating for fun. To be fair, my Mum did make lovely cakes and things like trifles, but they always had to go round 7 people.
We never ever had fizzy drinks or takeaways, and I never got into them as an adult. We also didn't have many sweets, I do like chocolate now, but usually have no problem limiting myself to one bar.
Having said all this, I did put weight on after I packed in smoking and spent about 10 years being obese. Have lost weight again and got myself back to eating similar to how I did when I was growing up.

Never really considered them 'rules' but we ate 3 meals a day and it wasn't expected that you snacked or grazed all day as people tend to these days. You never saw people walking down the High Street eating, as people seem to do non stop nowadays. It was considered quite 'uncouth' tbh.
As children / teens, we probably ate out as a family once a year, and a takeaway (which, in truth there was only ever the fish and chip shop at that point) was somewhere you went when you were decorating, or if you were on holiday.
We were expected to clear our plates (and think if the starving children in famines hotspots) but "portion control" - as some people would call it" meant that we weren't served ridiculous amounts of food so that anyone wouldn't finish their food.
Obviously if you didn't eat it, you went without - none of this faffing around replacing food if you decided you didn't like anything.
We weren't allowed to have sweets of biscuits before dinner (ie the meal in the middle of the day) and if you had a biscuit after school, it was that a biscuit.
We only had pudding after Sunday dinner.
Didn't have fizzy drinks.

TBH, apart from the fact we eat out a lot more and have takeaways, my rules have been pretty much the same.

I remember food being very unhealthy, limited supply of sweets, never having salad, not that much veg, being encouraged to eat fruit but it never being 'normal' and always refusing.
My parents have a completely different version.
We did have potatoes so often that I went completely off them for many years.
Results as an adult - I don't eat healthily, don't cook, don't always manage to resit temptation, but out of 4 children only one of us have been overweight yet, though we're all under 45, so I think they probably did something right.

No rules, but not much that was interesting in the cupboards, so if we were hungry we made a jam sandwich until tea was ready.
Meals were never limited-huge amounts avaliable, big catering size pot of something usually, plus rice and vegetables. We were a large family, everyone ate fast!
We didn't eat loads of meat as it was expensive, so lots of tagine/curry/stew type things. I still cook like that.

Always, always had home cooked meals from scratch, lots of vegetables, very balanced diet. Never been very fussy eaters, although we all went through a “mushrooms feels like slugs they make me sick” phase as children. Love them now.

As a result, I cannot stand and never buy anything ready made to Chuck in the oven, such as frozen chips, pizza, onion rings, chicken nuggets, fish ect. My DP was quite the opposite and that’s all he ate when I met him, but he prefers it when I cook now.

I was taught to cook spaghetti bolognese when I was about 7/8, had a love of cooking ever since and now at 23 and have moved out with DP I only ever cook our meals from scratch.

In relation to sweets, I had veg laid back parents, we was allowed sweets and chocolate when we wanted it, it was given in moderation but we were never told no unless it was before dinner and would ruin our appetite. We were excited about obesity and overall health, and warned about our teeth if we had too much sugar. Not a single filling in mine or my sisters mouth, my brother has about 2 I think.

I think the problem with policing sweets is if you cut it out completely, and refuse it, children will rebel and have it anyway as soon as they can get their hands on it, which then causes a ‘want what you can’t have’ dilemma.

I’m 34 weeks pregnant now and absolutely praying I don’t have a “I hate broccoli” type of child. I’m hoping with decent home cooked meals and the right attitude towards a balanced diet, without forcing it on her she will grow up to view food much like I do. Everything in moderation, try everything at least twice in your life, not once as you never know if you’re just having an off day.

Educated* about obesity... not excited for it

Nobody ever mentioned weight when I was a child. We were all skinny -the point seemed to be to get calories into us for as long as we would sit at the table!

Grown women mentioned weight when I was a child in the 80s. It was called 'slimming'. There were some chubby kids around too, although not like now.