Late 60s - mid 70s 'diet foods'

[SunshineAvenue]

Just had cottage cheese on Melba toast with grapes for lunch which always reminds me of my mum who was (I now realise) often on a diet.

It's a real early 70s 'diet' lunch in my eyes as is grapefruit and black coffee for breakfast.

What foods/meals do you associate with diets from this era? Do you/did you like them.

This isn't a diets are bad/no food is 'diet' thread but more of a nostalgic look back.

Yoghurt was widely peddled as a health food in the 70s.

Crackerbread
Cottage cheese - low fat
Uht skimmed milk
Dutch crispbakes
St Ives Gold
Ski low fat yoghurts
All bran (thanks to the F-plan diet)
You name it, mum ate it, I’ve got highly disordered eating as a result!

The grapefruit and hard boiled egg diet.

Drinking PLJ before meals.

Omg massive nostalgia hit!

I love cottage cheese but haven’t bought any for ages - mn costs me a bloody fortune on adding to my grocery lists with threads like these!

Also love Melba toasts and ryvita.

I’ve been having ritz crackers with cheese a lot lately (they’ve been on offer at some point last few weeks)

Celery I love but reminds me my mum hates it but used to eat when she was trying to lose weight - the faces she made! - but the hilarious thing really is even when “on a diet” she’d still be having copious cups of tea - made with 1/3 cup full fat milk and 3 sugars!

“Special K was marketed as a slimmers' food, wasn't it” yes! Subject of much discussion at my ww group only a few years back. Iirc it’s actually no less calorific than most other cereals and more calorific than certain ones but their “recommended portion size” was even smaller! And we all know the recommended portion sizes are crap anyway!

Oh if you ate special k you were definitely going to lose weight and get your man.

Cottage cheese came with added pineapple or chives too 🤢.

Special K was also different back then and is far tastier now with bigger flakes and a malty flavour.

PLJ? can't remember what it stood for but it was a drink.

Cottage cheese still comes with chives or pineapple if you want it!

PLJ ....my mum would put it in hot water and drink

I thought it was a special diet drink.... it's Pure Lemon Juice!

I love Special K though haven't had it for years. More of an 80s 'diet' food though I think

Finn crisp, Marvel skimmed milk powder, Ayds (I can see why they disappeared!), grapefruit, PLJ. My mum was always on diets and I started dieting as a teen in the mid 80s even though I really didn't need to.

My 80s dieting memories are Slimming Magazine Clubs which were the biggest rival to Weight Watchers and was based on low fat and calorie counting. I remember being on a mighty 1000 cals a day. Dinner was a Lean Cuisine (or Mean Cuisine as we nicknamed it).

Was the "can you pinch more than an inch" advert Special K?
I used to think that people in the 70's were slimmer in general dude to lack of variety of foods. Now I'm beginning to think it was because of fags and uppers

Yes it was Special K it was basicaly saying oiy fatty you need to eat this

I remember my mum saying if you couldn't pinch any skin how were you supposed to bend

Oh wow, my Mum had so many of these things in the 70s! I remember longing to try PLJ because it looked so grown up - was bitterly disappointed (literally)

And St Ivel Gold. For years I thought I didn't like toast, turns out it was the low fat spread I couldn't stand.

My DM mocked the craze for the high protein no carb Atkins diet when it was at its peak. I pointed out to her that it was identical to the so-called “Mayo Clinic diet” which she’d do for a week every now and then in the early eighties. She said that “that was different”; but I’m not really sure why, apart from the fact that Atkins didn’t go heavy on grapefruit.

my mum had them all; Alison diet bread nasty sort of crispy stuff; Ayds and Limmits all rubbish.
then came the stock piling of yoghurt Ski a new food in those days
grapefruit until she was sick of it
PLJ in hot water bleeuk

Just realised why PLJ was so called...I mean it literally never occurred to me . My memories are just Ryvita and cottage cheese - I do like both actually.

St Ivel Gold spread Mum used to buy that-it was like engine grease.
One-Cal products, with Victoria Wood playing the piano on a raft!

Urgh lord, Gold was disgusting!
We had flora instead, as it was 'healthy' but tasted better.

Ski yoghurts we're lovely though.

Oh I bloody love cracker breads. With laughing cow and marmite on. Yum!

I just love a tub of cottage cheese for my breakie!

Me too but it has become so expensive

M & S used to do lovely thin crispbreads, delicious with butter! Yes, my mum was a big PLJ fan too.

I did love Crackerbread, although it is basically ceiling tile for dolls' houses.