Younger gen X and millennials didn't stand much of a chance with healthy eating growing up did we!

[CandleInTheStorm]

I've been doing a lot of research for work (and no, I'm not a journal, nor am I trying to find research here for my work) and it's got me thinking about my own experience of food growing up.

I was born in the mid 80s, and my school experience food wise in the 90s was pizza/chips/doughnuts and those turkey twizzlers (which weren't a personal choice.) We had vending machines full of chocolate/crisps/fizzy drinks around school too. From my research, I learned that compulsory school meals were abolished in 1980 along with nutrition standards for schools, and many private catering contracts could bid for tender from then on, who put cost and profit above health.

Alongside this, there was the rise of takeaways/fast food outlets and 'the ready meal', all full of salt, sugar, and fat.

Younger gen X and millennials didn't stand much chance did they because kids/young people will mostly always choose 'junk' foods over 'healthy' foods especially after the 'traditional ' meals of years gone by, and parents back then mostly chose cheaper food that their kids would actually eat! There's always exceptions, of course, where kids would choose the healthy option or parents gave no choice but to eat the traditional 'healthy' foods, and I'm not saying that 'junk' was their "whole" diet. But between school/fast food outlets and major advertising aimed at kids, my goodness it wasn't made easy for us to choose/want healthy!

The 'junk' foods high in fat, sugar and salt were banned from being sold in schools, including vending machines, in 2006 with the help of Jamie Olivers campaign and the School Food Standards were bought in to action in 2015, so kids at least stand a small chance of getting healthier choices. Plus, people are more health conscious these days with the rise in plant based/vegan diets, etc.

But us in previous couple of generations had unhealthy foods and their advertising thrown at us all ways!

Oh yes, I remember a healthy packed lunch consisting of a lunchable, bag of crisps, club chocolate bar and one of those yoghurts that looked like monsters feet.

Same. Tuna fish on wholemeal bread sandwiches for packed lunch. I was jealous of my friends having cheesy chips and a can of Irn Bru followed by a Mars bar haha but thankful now

Early 30s here. We always ate quite healthily at home, home cooked meals etc and always packed lunches for school. However, I remember saving change from bus money and queuing for chocolate from the vending machine from yr7, starting a snack habit that would follow me through life lol Reallt surprising to look back at the access we had to chocolate and crisps.

And of course, I'm sure some foods were much more processed than they are now!

I wish they'd bring the old style school meals back to be honest. I give mine a packed lunch if I've been to the shop and have stuff in but they do eat a lot of school dinners cause it's free for all kids (in Scotland anyway?)

They eat a baked tattie every day cause the stuff is always rotten. "Vegan fish goujons". I feel bad for the kids who actually NEED school meals because they don't get much at home.

Now our council have signed up to some thing that means schools, hospitals, care homes etc might go 100% vegan which is just ridiculous imo. Plenty of research showing that key nutrients vital for brain function don't exist at all in vegan diets.

My mum works in a council run nursery and says she wouldn't eat the food if they paid her it's so disgusting.

Bring back turkey drummers, beans and smileys followed by school cake and custard I say. We had 2 kids in our class of 30 who were "bigger" (late 90s early 00s) now it's half their class, but imho it's not the school meals it's more the fact we used to go home, dump our bags, and then not come back til the streetlights went on or we needed money for the chippy van!

Early 70s here.

My mum got her first freezer and stocked up on crispy pancakes, cheap burgers etc from the cash and carry.

She used to monitor the fruit bowl as if the golden delicious were made of real gold (and my brother & I used to nick ScotBloc cooking "chocolate" instead).

At high school we'd go to the chippy for lunch, or have chips and cheese from the canteen.

Happy days, dripping with transfats

We also had a Tuck Shop, vampire teeth, white mice, wham bars, space dust. All helped to get us through double science

School meals were not great in terms of health but we didn't snack at home, just that morning break for tuck.

Healthy at home cos we couldn't afford the exciting stuff. Always a pudding, even if that was 3 biscuits. Mum used to bake a lot too. Used to get everything from kwik save. Packed lunches in school. No one ever drank water.

High school was the era of fizzy pop and sweets, with cakes from sayers on the walk home. I have always had a major sweet tooth. Probably ate most shit during my late teens, but healthy from 20s. Never been overweight.

You can live off Guinness and Pringles until yo are 25, roll out of bed for work and look amazing.

The body is an amazing machine.

It only needs healthier oiling when you are older!

@IPokeBadgers

I sort of agree. I also think that we grew up in the low fat high sugar era before it was recognised just how bad sugar was for us....so much worse than the fat it replaced in many foods

The food industry knew all along, it just took the media and government a couple of decades to properly inform the public. By which time we were all already hooked. Even now you still see the “healthy” Low Fat!! yoghurts in the supermarket which are about 30% sugar content - but Low Fat!!!

School in the early 2000s and on a standard school day I would have:

Breakfast (at home) of cereal or toast

Breakfast before school from the canteen - 4 hashbrowns for £1

Break: peice of fruit and chocolate milkshake

Lunch: sausage roll and chips, or pasta king pot
Both always with a cake and can of fizzy drink or sugary fruit juice all from the canteen

After school: fizzy and a large chocolate bar from vending machine before after-school clubs

Dinner: microwave ready meal or beige freezer food like hamwiches/microwave pizza and potato smiles/super noodles (mum worked late so I sorted my own dinners but she couldn't cook very well anyway. The only thing she cooked was tuna pasta bake or again burning oven frozen meals)

Evening snack: sandwiches or toast or sometimes noodles or pasta with ketchup on.

I agree a lot of vegan food is horrible (just my personal taste) but a lot of vegetarian meals and healthier meals containing meat are delicious and alot of kids don't even realise they are eating a "healthy" meal when it's cooked/presentated in a nice way.

Remember the toys they put in cereal! As in the actual cereal packet!

We used to have an ice cream van park in the playground during lunch hour at Secondary.

For the first couple of years I used to buy a can of coke, a packet of crisps and some sweets.

Then they banned him after a few years.

I'm probably 10 years older than you OP (70s baby) and actually I think my kids are less fit and have more fast food than I ever did.

I didn't have takeaway until I was 17 and we hardly ever had fast food, it was a real treat when we went shopping in town (as that was the only outlet). Mum cooked from scratch and we ate home grown (or neighbour grown) organic vegetables. I walked to/from school and played outside or in the garden for hours and hours. It's just not safe to play out, my daughter goes to a school across town (walking distance school isn't great) and it's a battle to get her off devices and away from on-demand TV. We just had four (then five) channels and no VCR so mum decided what we were watching and that was that

My children were such a PITA at breakfast time that I used it as an incentive to eat before school . I found the teenage years really hard to get healthy food into them …too much crap from school and takeaways . They are all perfectly healthy adults now .

The difference probably was that your dm was from an older generation where that type of upbringing and attitude to food was normal, and she carried that on with you as a child.
The key thing here is that you had your first takeaway around 17, so 1990s, and were no doubt surrounded by the influences of advertising and the cheap cost/convenience of unhealthy foods hence why your own dc have far more 'junk' food than you did as a child.

These attitudes of 'junk' foods and convenience/availability was sold to us in the 80s/90s and 2000s and our attitudes to them as parents has filtered down to the kids of today.

Kids are being offered healthier meals at school for example but parents of the fast food generations are deeming them "disgusting," whereas the generation before us aka boomers and beyond saw these healthy meals as normal (I don't mean vegan, I just mean healthy school meals)

We also had an ice-cream van (just) outside the school - rumour was that you could ask for some specific thing that was a code word for drugs (seemed to be generic "drugs" as never any clarification as to exactly what flavour of "drugs" you would get).

Realistically, ice-cream van mam was probably making a considerably better turnover selling sugar to teenagers than punting the odd bag of weed/pills.

I was a 60s child and definitely ate more healthily than my children. Home cooked food,school lunch every day and coach back to our local town where I was picked up by my Mum .
No opportunities to eat crap and walked everywhere to see local friends .
Absolutely no fizzy drinks and sweets on a Saturday morning.
Crisps occasionally if I could chat my Dad up to bring me a packet home from the pub ..not often though.

I often wonder what effect my childhood diet has had long term. I would honestly say I ate nothing but junk food until I was about 16/17 and started to cook for myself and even then I didn't have much chance. Baked beans were our vegetable of choice except Sunday when we had overcooked broccoli that fell apart when you tried to put the fork in. Completely devoid of any nutritional value it once had. Lunch was cheese sandwich, crisps and a penguin.
I actually used to drink tea and coffee as a small child directly before bed!
I have inattentive adhd and I honestly question if my brain development actually just got destroyed/ a dormant gene got triggered from just sheer lack of vitamins / omega 3's etc.

I had parents who were teens during WW2.
Yes there might have been more home cooking. Some of it technically healthier, definitely smaller portion size, but the constant need to never waste any food at all, was shite. And boring, food is much more exciting now. Garlic, chillies avocados. No minging cheap mad cow burgers
Always eating the old mouldy fruit first, rarely ever got a nice non black banana.
Add in a control freak parent, who really meant it when they said there would be nothing else to eat, even until my plate was cleared. I'd often go more than 24 hours not eating.

I don't think we will fully see/understand some of the health issues from the children of the 80s/90s/2000s will face until they hit their 50s or so. All that sugar, unhealthy trans fats and general crap food in general will come back to haunt us.

Add in the mix the massive binge drinking and smoking culture back then too!

This thread has really made me fancy turkey drummers, potato smileys and beans for my dinner!

I was born in 60s...
Consequential Assumptions this thread is tending to make about how I ate as a young person, who cooked (or didn't), what my body size or diet must therefore be like now: is wrong.

I'm 37 and remember school being exactly as you described. I went to a rough state school in a deprived area.

I've been a strict vegan for almost 18 years now. I do still eat junk food though - sugary stuff like doughnuts, but not daily.

None of my siblings became overweight on 90s junk either. The difference is children were allowed to play outside then so burnt it off.

I bought a plate of chips for 32p every day for lunch in the early 90s, then spent the rest on books. Lived off white bread and beans as a student.

Fat now.