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?

Born in the sixties. Cornflakes for breakfast. Walked to school. Walked home at lunchtime for lunch. (Primary school) Walked or cycled everywhere. No crisps or chocolate. Had to buy those from pocket money. Mum baked every Saturday. The baked goods had to last a few days. Milk consumption rationed despite dad being a milkman.
All of us healthy and no weight problems. Very rare to see an obese child at school.

Very rare to see an obese child at school.

Indeed. There were one or two kids/teens that I remember as being bigger than others at school, but when I look back at old photos even the bigger kids were fairly slim by today's standards.

My dad talks about eating enormous portions when he was a (basketball & other sport obsessed) teenager in the 1950s. He also laughs at how skinny they were.

My mother talked about her father being given inadequate food as a (tennis-obsessed) teenager in about 1912. There's a story about first meal my grandmother made for her new husband, 1922. She put a huge bowl of mashed potatoes on table: he ate it all. She couldn't understand how he could eat so much & he was used to not being given enough ever. Thus he always ate whatever he was given. Grandfather was never overweight.

I also eat huge amounts and did in 1980s when I was a teen (not sporty, just active).

Don't think it's anything new for active young people to eat a lot.

MIL, bless her, says all sorts of delusional stuff about food she has now or her sons ate in 1990s. She would insist to you that her boys only had 3 meals a day, no snacks. That she always ate the same way. She overlooks her daily biscuits at 11. I met DH when he was young. He'd polish off a mountain of biscuits which was after pudding which was after tea each evening. Plus biscuits with elevenses. Yeah sure, no snacking, whatever.

My DH has a brother, and my MIL says that people always said to her when they were growing up "two boys! They must eat you out of house and home!". So I don't think teen boys eating a lot is a new thing.

(I'm not saying they did by the way - DH isn't actually a big eater. But those comments must have been based on normal expectations.)

I remember my mum and our neighbours laughing about her son who had eaten a whole box of cereal AGAIN. I don't think anything is different, we still all went to the corner shop and loaded up with penny chews and crisps. What was different was we were out all the time not sitting in front of screens.

Seven slices of toast for supper (we were only allowed bread as a snack)

hung around for ‘seconds’ with school dinners

skinny as a rake 😁

Toast and Marmite for breakfast. Lunch bread and cheese pickle and maybe a doughnut. That's after running home to lunch 20 mins at home then run back to school. After school munchies set in so pop to shop for a Mars bar and a packet of crisps to tide me down till dinner at 6.30. Then off out till 9 ish and sometimes a visit to the chippy for a bag of chips for supper. Skinny as a rake running all day. Jeez miss those days now only have to look at a chip and gain a kilo. Bah !

I'd disagree with the majority there. I've never had a huge appetite, but both my brother (who ended up over 6 foot) and my sister (who is over a foot smaller than him) did.
My brother on more than one occasion ate an entire cake mum had made (we're talking 8" double layer so not small) or a whole loaf of bread and butter in an evening, and my sister's pack lunch for many years was 4 good size rolls of bread (on the other side, I couldn't eat out of the house and used to eat 1 digestive biscuit), and she'd still be hungry coming out of school enough to eat two or three sandwiches before dinner.

None of us was overweight.

80s child here and we ate vast quantities as teenagers, particularly the boys. My parents loved having my friends round and doing a huge Sunday lunch and persuading a bunch of teens to have thirds. And when we went to stay with DGM there was always 11ses and then cornflakes in milk saturated with sugar for an evening snack before bed (after a full hot supper).

I survived on a diet of Ribena, Rolos, the occasional bag of frazzles and B&H fags as a 90s teenager.

I was skinny and didn’t care much about food, although I do remember being hungry when I got home from school and eating rounds of toast or bowls of cereal while dinner was on. Also remember hunting to see what ‘treats’ my Mum had got with the weekly shop (usually amounted to Ski yoghurts and Nice biscuits).

We definitely didn’t eat as much - less snacking, fewer treats, smaller portions, only very occasional fast food or eating out, never ever got takeaways.

I was born in the 90s and my lunch when I was a teenager was a sandwich and an apple and I didn't eat breakfast or snacks. I went to a sports specialist school so did sport most days and competed in one at a regional level. I didn't experience this endless hunger at all. But I am not tall by any means, so maybe if I had eaten the MN teen diet I would have been taller!

My brother is an early 80’s baby, a tall guy and sporty teenager and he used to eat us out of house n home! He’d eat a couple of pieces of fruit and a round of sandwiches for his supper after a home cooked evening meal. My mum’s food shopping bill halved when he went to uni even though 3 adults still lived there!

I was a teenager in the 90’s. My mum tried her best but my diet was terrible! My favourite breakfast was a sausage roll and chocolate milk. There was a cafe / chippy around the corner from my school that I often went to with my friends.

Luckily I did need to walk and cycle everywhere and I was skinny. Too skinny if anything. Thought it was brilliant that I could eat whatever I wanted and not put on weight. Shame that didn’t last …

I was a teenager in the 80s. I used to always have a snack when I got home from school, and sometimes at secondary I bought a bag of crisps at break or a small packet of sweets on the way home but not every day. Snack after school was cheese and crackers or a yoghurt or cheese/sardines/grilled tomatoes/mushrooms on toast (one slice of bread) or fruit. Maybe a toasted sandwich occasionally.

I ate sausages and grilled tomatoes with a slice of toast for breakfast, sometimes a fried egg on toast, sometimes a soft-boiled egg and toast, sometimes porridge. I can't ever remember more than one slice of toast per person being on offer and it wasn't a money problem. We didn't have cereal much once we were older than primary age but before that we ate coco pops, sugar puffs or ricicles. Nobody liked Weetabix and we could only be persuaded to eat it with vast quantities of sugar on top.

Our portions for meals were quite a bit smaller than what seems to be normal today. I never thought about my weight. I was pretty skinny. But I don't remember feeling especially hungry except when I got home from school and really needed a snack. The snack was pretty moderate in size though!

My packed lunch at primary school was a cheese sandwich made with one slice of bread and an apple or a tomato, sometimes both. We occasionally got a mini roll, penguin, club biscuit or a bag of crisps.

I have 2 teenage sons and the younger is permanently ravenous-but then he's heading for 6'2" so I guess that growth has got to come from somewhere. Dh was also the same in the 70s according to his mum.

I don't think comparing bw girls and boys is particularly useful tbh, esp short girls. My dsis always does the "oh I never ate so much" schtick and I always think "yeah but you are 5 foot tall in high heels".

i would have starved given what some of you were given. 1 slice of toast! It needs a friend in my mind! I ate loads of bready type items. Massive wholemeal peanut butter sandwich when I got in from school. My best mate had 2 rounds of sandwiches in her box every day. My parents did potatoes with everything…I remember being served just pie and veg at someone’s house…like…where are the carbs?! Me, my mate and my sibling were and still are similar in stature- the low end of normal weight. My eldest teen is permanently hungry and is a similar carb head. He is very skinny.

We often didn’t get enough to eat in the 80s as teenagers. It wasn’t because of finances. I’m still not sure I can explain it. It was some strange policing of our food intake. I think there were more parents who let their diet obsession carry over into monitoring what their children could eat back then. It wasn’t healthy.

When I moved into student halls at university, random people used to bring me food. My now husband has admitted to me that there were multiple conversations about what to do about the skinny girl. I really was frighteningly thin and unhealthy. I bulked up quickly with access to normal teen portions and it ceased to be a problem.

I used to eat a lot. I had a third of a packet of biscuits when I got home from school plus a jam sandwich then I'd have supper later. We always had a hearty dessert too.
I'd eat full size pasty's and I'd drink non diet fizzy drink. Luckily I love veg and fruit too.

I think I got away with it because I was very active and did lots of physical activity. I was skinny with great muscles.

I didn't ever have much schoolwork to do out of school so I had time and energy left to be active.

My kids used to have a considerable amount of homework at some of their schools. Even when they were little. I'd have rather they didn't and they had spent the time outside playing.

Friends with brothers said they ate a lot of potatoes (grew up in Ireland 😁). I had hungry teenage boys but if they were hungry they had milk/ sandwiches/ toast/bananas/noodles not crisps and crap.

I remember there wqs no top up shops and if things run out they run out. I remember my packed lunch on a Friday was always bread and butter and had make crisp sandwiches as we had run-out of fillings. Mom would go shopping on a Friday.

The only snack I once remember eating was when my friend called around when my parents were out food shopping was custard.

We never had multi packs of crisps or biscuits, except Penguins which I hated, and other snack items available. My breakfast consisted of half a weetabix and warm milk and a slice of toast which was toasted only on one side. There was no shop on the route to school to buy anything either.