Teenage appetites in the 70s/80s

[DuesToTheDirt]

So this is inspired by comments on a recent thread, but there have been similar threads quite frequently. Many posters seem to think that teenagers are permanently hungry and it is to be expected that they will consume vast amounts of food.

When I was a teenager (70s/80s) I really don't remember this being a thing. I had three meals a day, didn't load up with protein in the mornings (just a bowl of cereal), and would sometimes buy a morning snack at school or have a small bag of crisps in the evening. That was it. I didn't go through loaves of bread at a time making toast, or raid the fridge randomly and demolish meal ingredients. OK I'm female and girls need fewer calories than boys, but my brother was the same.

Were we unusual?

Oh, and I have 2 daughters, now grown up, who've been similar to me in eating habits. Is it just boys that do this?

Growing up, we knew all the ingredients in the fridge / cupboards would be accounted for towards the weekly meals. There wasn’t a lot of money, so we just knew we couldn’t go in and raid the kitchen for endless toast / cereals. There was just enough milk delivered for us all to have a daily cereal, same with bread for our school sandwiches.
plus I think there was just the discipline of three meals a day that my parents had grown up with, both from large families, and the end of rationing hanging over them too.

The pattern of eating is different now, and for many families there’s more food around, plus treat stuff that doesn’t necessarily need to form part of a meal. We can pop to the supermarket for a ‘top up shop’ whenever we want, and children today know this. Mum went once a week on the bus to kwiks in the town 6 miles away, so top ups just didn’t happen.

If there was a six pack of crisps in, we knew we got two bags each, and negotiated with each other which flavours we wanted. Same with a multi pack of Kitkat / penguins etc. mum bought a multi pack of crisps and chocolate biscuits each week, and we got to take one into school each day (the 70s/80s equivalent of the fruit snack I guess, it was our break time snack, similar to our friends). It would never have crossed our mind to have more than one, or heaven forbid, eat one at home, because then we knew there would be nothing else for break time snack.

We didn't have the money and we weren't allowed to raid cupboards or eat half a loaf of toast in one sitting, and I can't remember being "always hungry" I have grown up dds and there wasn't the snacking for toddlers like there seems to be maybe that contributes to teenagers constantly eating ?

My dh and his brother were well over 6ft and weighed 11/12 stone in their teens. They did eat a lot but their choices if they were hungry after school would have been a sandwich and glass of milk. Not chicken and chips from KFC on the way home from school or endless crisps and biscuits.

Same. And my teens are the same now. They do eat a lot, but not more than I did as a teen.
Mind you, I didn't always have multiple snacks in my bag when they were toddlers either which most of my friends who have toddlers now seem to do.

Maybe we/my teens just haven't learned to always have snacks on hand.

And don't get me wrong, they love crisps, cakes, biscuits etc. And I'm obese (although partly down to medical issues), so our diet/ way of eating isn't perfect.

I think more people often were sometimes a bit hungry - but mild hunger wasn’t seen as a dreadful terror or something which must be satiated every minute of the day. Being hungry for a little bit before your dinner was just normal.

I remember toast for breakfast, school lunch, and then a substantial tea at home.

In addition, I might have had a KitKat from the school vending machine at breaktime and a bottle of milk, though not necessarily every day.

I then had 'supper' just before bed, of a pancake or digestive biscuit.

I remember being starving when I got home from school at 5pm, and could have a glass of milk or some cake, but it wasn't long until our evening meal.

I think the difference between now and then was that we were not picky. We ate what we were given.

Siblings and I had food plated for us, and we would eat it all. No snacks between meals although we could help ourselves to the fruit bowl

We did not help ourselves to crisps, biscuits, cake, sweets etc. Didn't get enough pocket money to buy snacks/sweets

I was discussing this with my dad recently in relation to the rising cost of food. I was a teenager in the 90's and my dad said that he doesn't remember me going through enormous amounts of food at all, more that I started to eat as an adult. So I might want and extra sausage with mash or want my own main meal if we had a take away rather than pinching a bit of theirs, so my portion size increased but I didn't toast whole loaves of bread or anything like that. We didn't have snacks like Kit Kats or crisps in the house really. He did say that I drank absolutely loads of milk though!

I was born in the late eighties and so grew up much later but definitely didn’t remember any of my friends (boys or girls) eating like this. I remember my friend going bonkers as her older brother had eaten an entire packet of biscuits and she didn’t get one. We were all shocked that he managed to eat them all and that he had the cheek to do it.

I think food budgets are generally better and less families have to budget so hard with one shop a week and no snacks at all. Also the phrase ‘you’ll ruin your appetite’
has disappeared.

The trope of teens being bottomless pits has been around a long time. Even in Enid Blyton books - I remember reading a Malory Towers and Sally (about 15 years old) says to the other girls ‘that’s how I know I’m not really grown up - I’m so HUNGRY. Grown ups never seem to get so hungry like we do!’ Also chock full of midnight feats and ‘munching’ packets of biscuits.

People on mumsnet like to cry ‘we didn’t snack back then! People weren’t greedy back then and didn’t eat a lot.’ In reality teens have always been hungry and eaten a lot when they can/had the food available. And people have literally always snacked - they just called it ‘elevenses’ or ‘tea.’

Obviously that’s not withstanding toasting whole loaves of bread/eating all the food and leaving none for other peoples’ share. That’s nothing to do with hunger and everything to do with selfishness.

Certainly not allowed to raid the fridge and no access to fast food but my mother baked almost every day so we'd have pancakes (scotch) or a scone and a cup of tea after longsh walk home from school, tea at 6.30/7 then supper of toast or more baking or a biscuit with a cup of tea at 9ish. My Mother never had soft drinks in the house unless it was a party!

My children are also not allowed to raid the fridge either, although i do have a snack basket they can help themselves from within reason (they are held to account by siblings if they eat more than their share of the treats!)

Same here.

My brother and I got our 3 meals a day, very few snacks between meals (you won't eat your dinner) if we wanted a snack we had to ask and if the answer was no we had to accept it.

We got pocket money we could either spend it on sweets and snacks or we could save to buy something like a book or cassette etc we wanted.

No way would we be allowed to eat a whole loaf of bread to ourselves and such like.

It seems times have really changed.

We always had home made cakes and biscuits and plenty of bread for making toast with butter, jam and cheese to put on it, and none of these were rationed. I was a fussy eater as a child and my mother and grandmother were delighted when I suddenly developed hollow legs at the start of puberty. My son and stepsons were in a different league from my sisters, my daughters and me where growth spurt insatiability was concerned. It was like having a plague of locusts in the house.

Similar to what others have said really. I was often hungry but there was nothing spare in the cupboard to snack on and treats were only once a week - no daily biscuits & crisps.

I was chatting to a friend about this,when we were growing up as teens in the same village.
Three meals a day and in the school holidays when we had been out cycling or hanging out in a field etc we would be ravenous and just go home for our evening meal at around 7. Sometimes wouldn't have eaten since lunchtime but it just didn't cross our minds,it was normal.
It's so different now with the endless snacking.

Yes, no sweets at home, if we wanted we could spend our pocket money- but we liked to save it to buy something that was not food most of the time.

I am an 80s baby so slightly out of your demographic. 3 meals a day, 2 biscuits after school and sometimes we'd butter a few rich teas for a snack after tea with a glass of milk. Not allowed to help myself to anything at my mums. Always had a pudding.

I lived with my grandparents as a teen. I had free range to a fat fryer and a chest freezer full of sausages and chips and crap food. My grandad cooked proper food every night but if I didn't fancy it I could make my own dinner from the freezer, I was also allowed to feed all my friends that would come round. Didn't have snacks as such but was treated to a custard slice or similar from the weekly food shop. Didn't have endless packets of crisps, sometimes my nan shared a chocolate bar with me but most of the treat food was food we ate out. My nan has always loved going out for coffee so if we went I'd have a milkshake and usually cinnamon toast instead of a cake!

Was never overweight as a child or teenager. I think sugar is the problem. Sugar is really addictive so eating while loaves of white bread is only making teens nowadays want to eat more.

Early 80s teen here. Dparents shopped once a week, milk was from the milkman, the corner shop had sweets and single packs of crisps but we only had our pocket money to buy those with, they weren’t bought in bulk from the supermarket. The supermarket stayed open till 8 on Thurs/Fri but otherwise shut at 5.30, there was no popping into the shops after work for top-ups, no online deliveries, no petrol station shops stuffed with crisps and sweets (you paid at the pump). No shops at all open after 5.30 most nights. So it was three meals a day, and not necessarily super healthy, I had cornflakes for breakfast for years and years. Don’t remember anyone ever eating at breaktimes at school, any crisps and biscuits we took in were eaten with packed lunch. We certainly never got given snacks at the school gate in primary school. Just a biscuit or two when you got home. I do think the ready availability of a vast range of cheap, snack type food has made things a lot worse.

As a teenager in the 80s, I was never in. Nowadays, parents don't like children going out/limit their time out/kids sit in front of TV or games so it's easier to eat. I'm the same as an adult - if I'm busy all day, I can forget lunch. If I'm WFH or bored on a weekend, I can have my head in the fridge all day.

I was a 90s teen and definitely remember teenagers, especially boys, being permanently hungry.

In fact my MIL (in her 80s) tells us that when she was in her teens her DM used to have to bake 2 loaves of bread a day, one for the family and one for MIL's two younger brothers who would happily demolish a loaf to themselves when they got in from school. They were teens in the late 1950s.

You’re not wrong OP and that’s why we’ve got an obesity crisis now, together with all the ultra-processed food.

I don’t remember kids being greeted at the school gate by parents with snacks. You waited until you got home. No snacking on stuff as you followed your parent around the supermarket either. I remember being hungry for my meals, often extremely hungry by the time it was served, but I don’t remember food consuming my thoughts the way it does now (as in, ‘can I justify eating this?!’).

I was hungry as a child and teenager. We weren’t badly off, as such, but my mother had a fixed idea about how much food was acceptable and it was never enough.

I used to bunk on the train home and use the train fare to buy sweets and crisps. I also started smoking when I was about 14.

I’m a law abiding non-smoker these days but I do have a terrible grazing habit and I’m still addicted to sugar.