What did you eat as an 80s and 90s child?

[Foodfan]

If you were a child in the 80s and 90s, what was your diet like?

im wondering if mine was typical for children in the 80s and 90s or my parents were just not very adventurous!

salad wise we tended to only have lettuce, tomato and cucumber. That was always what salad was.
I think the other vegetables I was given were peas and carrots (plus sprouts at Christmas!)

Meals wise I remember having sandwiches, toast, porridge, toasties, shepherds pie, sausages, chicken nuggets and chips, pizza etc.

I remember that my mum was always slim but always on a diet and seemed to live in grapefruit and ryvitas!

We also had things like baked beans, spaghetti hoops etc too but I didn’t even know there were foods in the world such as salmon or curry etc until my teens!

Was this a typical 1990s diet? If not, what sorts of things did you eat and were the norm in your house growing up?

What have you done differently to your parents with your own children?

My dad loved cooking so we often had nice dishes like home made curries or nice Italian dishes. However, me and my siblings were fussy eaters so we did usually eat separately to my parents - stuff like fishfingers, chips and beans and Spaghetti hoops on toast. I also remember sautéed potatoes and omelettes. I remember eating roast dinners a lot too. We didn't always have desserts but when we did it was neopolitan ice cream (the block with 3 flavours/colours) and angel delight. Sometimes fruit salad.

When I went to uni, I basically lived off super noodles and Smash. I’ve not tried either since.

We had a family allotment so lots of fruit and veg, and cooked from scratch most of the time. Typically meat-heavy, lots of roasts, stews. Some attempts at Chinese and Indian dishes from cookbooks. Definitely basic salads!

Born in 1981 and grew up with separated parents, both of whom were (mostly) vegetarian...

At my mum's house:

Home made rye bread
"Hedgehog" crisps
Lots of flapjacks/cereal bars
Cheese and salad sandwiches with weird leaves she grew in the garden
Dhal
Beans in many different forms
Brown rice
So much pasta
So many lentils
Baked potatoes with cheese and beans
Vegetable soup
Lots of foraged/picked stuff like blackberries and local apples
Fish and chips one Friday a month (only time we had anything non vegetarian)
Carob instead of chocolate (a crime against both chocolate and children if you ask me)
Plain home made yoghurt sweetened with home made jam
Muesli
Fruit crumbles
A quarter of pic n mix from the market on a Saturday morning, to be eaten whilst reading my new library books in the afternoon

And at my dad's house...

Pitta bread with anything and everything inside it
Bagels
Lots of middle eastern style food as that's where his new wife was from, so things like falafel, houmous, halloumi, avocados, taramasalata
Treats from the local Indian food shops like gulab jamun
Mangoes
Dates
Pesto on everything
Home made ice cream (they had an ice cream maker)
A Chinese takeaway as an occasional treat

Oh and how could I forget good old sosmix at my mum's house. A lot of sosmix.

UPF galore in my home growing up too, I fancy a couple of crispy pancakes with spaghetti hoops and potato waffles after reading this thread but suspect that’s a meal best left in the past!

Despite still eating mainly UPFs my dad will only use Himalayan salt and white vinegar as the alternatives are apparently ‘full of crap’. The irony of what the health-conscious condiments are being added to goes right over his head apparently

Yes very similar to you OP.

We would have things like fish fingers, waffles, beans, chicken nuggets, turkey drummers.

Roast on a Sunday. Then maybe something like a cottage pie or meat pie with new potatoes during the week.

We never had anything with pasta or rice. I never tried pasta till I left home at 19!

Never had anything with any spice of flavour really.
Quite bland freezer dinners most of the time.

Very similar OP.

Mum ate ryvita with cottage cheese, grapefruit or was on the cabbage soup diet!

We had a lot of repetition of the same meals and meat was almost always mince. Things like cottage pie or hotpot. Spaghetti bolognese would be a load of plain boiled spaghetti with a ladleful of mince and chopped tomatoes on top. I thought I hated pasta until I was well into my 20s but turns out it's actually great as long as it's not just plain! 🤣

Roast dinner on a Sunday, without exception and would always be either chicken or roast pork.

Mum almost always cooked for us but if dad ever cooked we'd absolutely love it as he'd make us findus crispy pancakes or chicken nuggets with chips and angel delight for pudding. Sometimes he'd make us egg and chips as well and it just seemed like the best meal ever.

I was born in 78
Meals where meat and two veg (home grown by my dad)
My dad and 3 brothers all ended up vegetarian so a lot of quorn and beanfeast had chips once a week
I lived with my grandad most of the time and I remember ski yogurts,scotch and beef broth,crumpets,fish and chips,stewed steak and gravy,bread and dripping,onion soaked in vinegar and a shit ton of sweets
I was 19 when I tried my first findus pancake,spaghetti and salad
22 when I tried my first curry from the takeaway and brown bread
25 when I had my first cream cake

Drinks where pop from the pop man,basic coke from kwik save or cans of happy shopper fizzy drinks
Water was used as a punishment and we rarely drank milk

Always roast dinner on a Sunday, with watery boiled cabbage and tinned marrow fat peas.

Always a "fry up" for dinner on a Saturday

I don't think I ever had pasta, rice or noodles! Carbs was always potatoes 😂

Sometimes if it was a lazy dinner we would have tinned corned beef with beans and mashed potato (always lumpy)

-Mum’s hotpot was legendary, although her cottage pie was always my favourite
-Chops with mash, gravy and veg
-Braising steak done in a gravy with carrots and onions with mash
-Steak and chips, fried tomatoes and mushrooms
-Roast chicken/ some kind of meat joint on Sunday with mash again, maybe roast potatoes too, gravy and probably carrots and peas
-Cold leftover meat on Monday usually with homemade chips, or in sandwiches with crisps on the side
-Gammon joint always served with parsley sauce, mash and peas
-Cheese and onion pie
-Corned beef hash
-Jacket potato with grated cheese, tomato on the side
-A ‘party tea’ - sandwiches, crisps and maybe a pork pie or sausage roll, biscuit or bit of cake, you were allowed to eat it in front of the tv
-A really gorgeous homemade chicken soup
-Fish pie
-I remember my parents having prawn cocktail sometimes but I wouldn’t eat prawns back then

All the endless mash would be replaced by new potatoes in the spring/ summer. I do remember asparagus sometimes too, though I think only the adults ate it. Otherwise veg was very much peas/ carrots/ runner beans/ cauliflower. We did have corn on the cob often enough to have special little holders for it though!

We would have things like apple pie or crumble for pudding, or jelly or tinned fruit and carnation. Oh and angel delight.

My idea of a real treat was going to the cafe
for scrambled egg on toast!

Pasta - not so much, I think my mum did a lasagne occasionally but it was more seen as for the adults for some reason, I’d have probably had something else those nights.

Curry - never homemade but we would have the odd Indian or Chinese takeaway (I think I used to just have rice and chips!)

Later on into the 90s uncle bens sauces began to feature a bit - chilli con carne or sweet and sour. Both with rice.

Fresh herbs didn’t feature at all really, maybe cress! Salad was lettuce, tomato and cucumber like you said, with spring onion too.

It’s weird to think how different eating is now.

Born late 80s.

Breakfast was cereal, like Shreddies or Coco Pops or Ricicles or Sugar Puffs or whatever other sugary crap had the best toy in it that week.

Lunch: packed lunches for school were peanut butter or liver sausage or corned beef or ham sandwiches on brown bread (I was an unusual child), crisps, a chocolate bar (usually a Tesco own kit-kat knockoff), a yoghurt or a pot of Angel Delightor a pot of rice pudding or a pot of custard, and a drink of squash from home. Weekend lunches were chips done by Dad in the chip pan, usually with turkey burgers. Lush. My mum liked peanut butter on ryvita or cream crackers, which I also used to have.

Dinner: lots of tinned veg - carrots and peas and sweetcorn. Usually veg (or tinned spaghetti, for some reason) plus meat plus carbs, but could be veg plus pizza plus carbs. An average meal might be broccoli with beef burgers and potato waffles, or spaghetti with pizza and oven chips, or cauliflower with bacon and boiled potatoes. Weekend dinners were sometimes either Mummy bolognese (more authentic but with apple) or Daddy bolognese (a jar of Dolmio with a ton of baked beans and a tin of stewing steak added - I love my Dad, but it was fucking dreadful). We didn't go in for puddings once we were older than about five or so, but I remember these delicious Tom and Jerry chocolate and caramel flavour ones that I adored.

Once we got older, there was usually a roast chicken on Saturday nights, which was amazing, and if there was enough left over there'd be Chicken Thing on Sunday, which was an indescribably delicious concoction of my mum's. There were also gammon steaks, and, once I was old enough to cook, cottage pie.

Mum did go through a slow cooking phase, which was unfortunate, as she chopped meat into bits the size of fag filters which became chewy bullets with five or so hours of cooking.

She was also an excellent baker, so we often had delicious home made cakes in our packed lunches. They were so good that I used to have to take extra for my friends, too.

By the time I was 13 or so, though, we all ate separately every night. It must have cost them a bomb in pizzas and oven chips for me and my brother!

My mum loved to cook, and we had a sizeable vegetable garden, so I ate a lot of fresh in season vegetables, homemade bread (which I hated at the time and longed for sliced white bread 😂), meals were always a roast on Sunday, but then things like chicken pieces or pork chops in a sauce, curries, stir fries, pasta dishes, pies. Fairly similar to my current diet tbh 😂
My favourite thing used to be breaded chicken wings from Iceland (the shop!) called, I think, 'chicken nibbles' - those with some pasta (with butter..) and peas was my favourite dinner. Followed closely by slices of gammon and (fresh from the garden) new potatoes and broad beans.
Oh, and corn on the con from the garden - with lashings of melted butter.

Born in 1963, Monday cold roast meat and salad (Summer) or roast meat curry (winter) Tuesday liver and bacon, Wednesday sausages and mash, Thursday shepherds pie, Friday egg and chips, Saturday stew or possibly a meat pie, Sunday Roast Dinner usually beef. Very very occasionally we'd have fish and chips from the chippy on a friday. Lunches were soup and bread at weekends, or egg or beans on toast, school dinners on weekdays as I got them free. Veg was cabbage, carrots, swede, parsnips, frozen peas now and again. It was plain and sometimes portions were a bit on the small side. Everyone I knew ate like this.

Early 80s child.

Liver and bacon, boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce, roast dinner, stew, cheese and potato pie, curry.

Mum was a very good cook in the main but vegetables were boiled to death and mash was always lumpy.

A pp has just reminded me of paste sandwiches. Fish paste with iceberg lettuce. On the subject of fish ... tinned sardines on toast.

All breakfast cereals drenched in sugar.

Heinz macaroni
Rice pudding
Crispy pancakes
Fries to go/micro chips
Toasties
Sugary cereal

This was my diet till I was about 15 😂

My mum used to make pretty much everything herself to the extent I used to trade home made biscuits for custard creams and bourbons!

My mum had a rotating menu so you knew what day of the week it was by what was being served.

sunday was always a roast dinner
monday was some sort of left overs from previous day which often involved bubble and squeak.
tues I think was mashed potato and Birds Eye burgers (gristle) with boiled carrots.
Weds was findus crispy pancake and chips.
thursday has been blanked from my mind so must have been bad.
fri was pizza
saturday also wiped from my mind

lunches at weekends were always ham sandwiches. With cucumber and pepper on the side.

my mum could not cook to save her life, never used any spices or pepper or salt. Didn’t even add butter to the mashed potatoes.

We ate well. My mum was a good cook and baker - she rarely bought biscuits but was constantly making cakes 💪

Roasts every Sunday
Fry up every Saturday lunchtime
spaghetti bolognaise
Chops . Potatoes and veg
Coq au Vin
Lemon chicken
Home made Macaroni Cheese and salad
Beef stroganoff
Sides of salmon
Moussaka
Steak n kidney pies
Mince n Tatties

Basically 70s classics!

of course we all preferred going to our friends for tea who had Findus crispy pancakes and other delights like Battenburgs. We never really appreciated the fab food we got until we were older!

my mum could not cook to save her life, never used any spices or pepper or salt. Didn’t even add butter to the mashed potatoes.

My mum can cook well but she and my father strongly believe mashed potato should be roughly mashed with no butter, seasoning or other shenanigans. They can't bear fluffy mash with butter, salt, pepper and no unmasked bits.

I don’t recall food being vastly different then. My mum didn’t do stir fry, but I was bought a lovely Meyer wok in 1989 for my first home and I still use it.

We were never a family for processed food. Our motto might have been ‘Fish don’t have fingers’. We did occasionally eat Findus fishcakes but when we tried the crispy pancakes I was ill. I’m pretty sure flavour enhancer was an allergen.

But, honestly, it’s the 70s that were all about food that’s different from food we eat now

Very similar to you OP. We ate mainly home cooked meals, everything seemed to be served with potatoes, Shepard’s pie, stews (meat was tough), pork chops, pizza and always a roast dinner on a Sunday.

My mum was always on a diet too and was always pretty slim until she hit her 50’s.

We had a nice big garden so in the summer we had a lot of BBQ’s with friends.

Salads were lettuce, tomato, cucumber and spring onions, never peppers, celery or anything fancy.

My mum used to like making cakes, we always had a cake in the cake tin, often sticky ginger cake or a Victoria sandwich but we also had angel delight and jelly occasionally.

Tinned fruit (usually fruit cocktail or peaches) with tip top!

😂 brilliant last line

The DC were born in 1994 and 1998. Regular meals were:

Spag bol
Pasta with salmon, lemon, dill, cream
Pasta with pesto with salmon fillets and veg
Pasta bake (with cheese brocoli and chicken)
Cottage pie
Shepherds pie with sliced potatoes and good lamb gravy
Casseroles (chicken, beef, pork)
Chilli con carne - mild
Roasts- all varieties
Fish pie
Fish cakes and chips
Gammon, egg and chips
Soup and toasties
Chops with a variety of things
Chicken or beef stir fries
Gammon and suet pudding with parsley sauce and green veg
Curried chicken
Kedgeree
High teas
Omelette
Cheesy cod bake with spinach
Chicken and ham pie
Steak pie
Plaice fillets
Rice
Pizza
All manner of veg and salad
Fruit
Ice cream
Juice
Eggs
Various puddings
Yoghurt
Baked beans on toast
cheese on toast
macaroni cheese
pasta with peas, cut up fish fingers and butter
Chicken goujons or kievs with chips and peas.

They were good eaters and I like cooking

My own child hood meals were very similar - ahead of our time but more things like liver, braised hearts, kidneys, pork pies and fruit pies, and blancmange, rice puddings, bread pudding, etc.