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?

I feel like Jamie Oliver sparked a bit of a revolution in the mid 90s and I remember clearly when we started eating pasta with pesto for tea.

Before that my mum would sometimes make a veggie pasta with stuff like broccoli and sweetcorn in a tomato sauce. 😁🤌

Also remember stuff like pizza and chips, and there was this Lloyd Grossman pasta sauce that was a staple.

When I was a bit younger, late 80s / early 90s, one of my favourites was a lasagne ready meal. As a treat we sometimes got a Chinese with battered king prawn and sweet and sour sauce.

I’m honestly struggling apart from that to remember what we ate.

No idea. According to my mum I used to eat macaroni and cheese, tatties and mince and roast dinners as far as home made food would go. Would have happily eaten McDonald's nuggets and cheeseburgers everyday but only got them about once every two months as a treat.

My mum loved a Chinese though, and I would eat a variety of Chinese foods like duck, pancakes & hoisin sauce, sweet & sour chicken HK style, crispy chilli beef, ribs, seaweed, special fried rice etc. This was seen as a treat so I think it made a difference and made me more willing to try different foods.

I remember being super fussy though, which I'm not at all now. I was never made to clear my plate and never had to eat something I didn't want. I could make myself toast from a young age and was always allowed to do that if I didn't like dinner. Butter and jam were always available but no Nutella or peanut butter and I didn't know they existed until I was about 11!

I knew which book the best pancake recipe was I and would regularly make myself own cakes too as we always had the ingredients. My favourite topping was lemon and sugar but if there were no lemons I would juice oranges instead. When I was a bit older there were always bananas and I would mash them and add them to the mix and walk to the shop for Nutella so I could have Nutella banana pancakes.

Haha my mum was exactly the same. Although I feel like ready meals were a bit of a thing back then!

Plenty of home-cooked meals such as mince and tatties, corned beef hash, sausage casserole, soup but also super noodles (for lunch) and crispy pancakes. Pizza’s weren’t really a thing in my house until the mid 90s probably and then they were frozen, basic mini things bought in a bag. Chippy tea maybe once a month and that was the only time we ever had a fizzy drink.

Yeah also 90s and it was the same stuff BUT one of my DPs is an immigrant so we also ate meals from that culture (Middle East). Which were more interesting and flavoursome. Occasionally that DP would also buy us 'exotic' fruits too.

I was born in 1983, my oldest sibling in 1978. We weren’t well off so my mum cooked from scratch which I think she believes was a negative as now she buys a lot of convenience food. We had:

steak and kidney pie, veg and potatoes
liver and veg and potatoes
minemeat and carrots with potatoes
‘Ragu’ from a jar with rice
spaghetti bolognaise
roast chicken as a roast dinner and trimmings
goulash with rice
gammon, pineapple and tinned sweetcorn
Chicken wrapped in bacon and veg/potatoes
chicken ‘fricasee’ and rice made from campbells chicken soup, sweetcorn and peas
lasagne but chicken variety
sausage and mash
burgers
corned beef hash
summer salad with everything from the fridge it seemed: grated carrot, pork pie, cucumber, tomatoes, cold baked beans, gherkins and so on!

Vegetables were things like carrots, tinned peas, tinned green beans, fresh runner beans in summer, cabbage

We had lots of puddings:
rice pudding with jam
crumbles
pies
bananas and custard
baked apples
bread and butter pudding
fruit from a can

Lunch was usually:
sandwiches (sometimes meat paste or Heinz sandwich spread) but ham, cheese, corned beef (with tomato ketchup??)
baked beans
home made chicken noodle soup
heinz tomato soup
cheese on toast (with tomato ketchup??)

Breakfast was:
cereal with extra sugar
ready brek
bacon sandwiches were a treat

My mum’s parents were Polish and my dads mum German so it meant that we often had additions like gherkins, sauerkraut and continental meats with meals.

My mum also made a lot of cakes: marble cake, ginger cake, flap jacks etc which I often traded at school!

Snacks were fruit (apple, orange, banana), a biscuit or a mini chocolate bar like a penguin, wagon wheel, Kit Kat etc, crisps rarely

Drinks we’re squash, Sunny D at one point or water

I remember we never had:
grapes as they were expensive
fish
homemade spicy foods like curry or chilli
fresh tropical fruits like pineapple
Ready meals as they were expensive
a roast on a Sunday, it was Monday
Fizzy pop unless it was Christmas

We did occasionally share a take away from the Chinese or chippy though

If we were still hungry after dinner we got a tomato sauce sandwich!

I also remember French bread pizzas! And omelette and baked beans. I think it really helped being of Nepalese heritage, we also ate a lot of Northern Indian curries (just so to family migration/people picking up recipes). Lots of Indian puddings/sweets topped up with English sweets. Takeaways were Pizza Hut or fish and chips, late teens occasional Ma Donald’s. We literally never ate out.

Yes that us funny to think of actually – I don’t remember ever going to restaurants! Occasionally for a pub lunch/meal or a happy eater on a journey.

Salad would be iceberg Lettuce, tomato, cucumber, beetroot, Coleslaw, cold meat (mostly chopped pork sliced or tinned ), boiled egg AND always home made chips. Never knew what salad dressing was until I left home.

Meals - lots of Casseroles - stew or sausage with lots of veg. Mince n Tatties. Macroni (just with grated cheese mixed through. Fish (whiting) in ruskoline and chips. Tinned meatballs. Spaghetti bolognese (literally mince made up with chunks of carrot and gravy as usual then garlic and tomato puree added). Rolled pork/lamb on a Sunday. Chicken usually boiled for huge pots of soup and had meat for dinner with gravy. Veg was fresh carrots, Turnip/swede, peas, cabbage, cauliflower, Sprouts. Never had broccoli at home.

Deserts - home made rice pudding, baking, custard with tinned fruit.

Weekend full Scottish breakfast fry ups were good.

Breakfast was cereal with milk, or nothing.

Lunch - school dinner, at the weekend my parents would have a lie in until about 11 so we would make toast holding bread on a fork to the gas cooker.

Evening meal - lots of potatoes, plain boiled. New potatoes in the summer. Toad in the hole, stew or cold cooked meat with chips.

At weekends there would often be a roast on Sunday.

Saturday we might have a tea of limp lettuce, slice of cucumber, quarter of a tomato and a pork pie.

Fruit consisted of apples and oranges, occasionally cherries and at Xmas satsumas.

Fish fingers were an occasional treat because we did not have a freezer.

My mum was/still is NOT a natural cook. I mostly ate at my grandparents.

Breakfast was usually cereal or scrambled egg made in the microwave. Literally, only way my mum knows how to scramble an egg. Tough as the bottom of your boot.

Lunch was sandwiches at school and we did actually eat out a lot of fast food on the weekends.

Dinners at my grandparents, I can remember beef roasts, chicken stew, pork ribs, steak, seafood, all really delicious stuff. At home, we ate a lot of plain chicken breasts with boil in bag rice, tinned veg. I was a vegetarian from 12 and I remember a lot of boil in bag rice with kidney beans topped with dijon mustard!

Thankfully, we did actually eat out a lot (how we afforded that, I do not know) because my mum really truly could not cook. So we definitely had Chinese in the 80s, and then in the 90s, an Indian restaurant opened near us, so we had a lot of Indian and then Japanese too. Nothing so adventurous at home.

Not very adventurous as my dad was stuck in the 1950s with his food tastes and neither parent can cook, so most things were heated up convenience food. I also ate loads of sweets and drank cola, squash, coffee and tea at home. I didn't drink tap water until I was about 23. My mum likes most foods but as my dad was so fussy, couldn't be bothered.

I started to make stuff for myself though from the age of 14 onwards and was usually allowed to go and buy other things so I started making stir fries (after buying the frozen ones and working out what was in them) and getting Sainsbury's recipe cards when I could get my mitts on them*. We also did eat out and get takeaways sometimes - I was always desperate to try new things and also enjoyed eating at friends' houses when food was actually cooked from scratch. By the time I went to university I could make curries and chilli as well and could definitely feed myself pretty well on a more interesting and healthier variety of foods than I had at home. I didn't have a Chinese takeaway until sixth form college and Indian food not until I was mid teens.

*I made this first. Really good but seems awfully sweet now. I loved CZJ in Darling Buds of May at the time.

Grew up vegetarian and had:

Cheese omlette with peas and corn
oven pizza (Margherita or the Heinz bean one)
cheese beano
sosmix sausages with chips and peas/ corn
baked potato with cheese, salad of lettuce and tomato
soya mince, potatoes, carrots, corn and peas
Creamy vegetable pies or soya mince and gravy pies
quorn burgers etc with chips and peas and corn or beans
tomato based pasta
macaroni cheese
Quorn roast with roast potatoes, carrots and corn
findus crispy cheese pancakes

We were fussy children though!

Bland and unadventurous

I didn't have pasta until i was about 12/13

Fish finger, nuggets, smiley face combos with spaghetti hoops. Mash, turkey dinosaurs and beans (never to be served as lava or played with…) DM got more adventurous In the late 90’s and started cooking this vile creamy jar sauce over potatoes with cheese (I’ll try to find it … literally tasted like vomit) and bought a microwave omelette maker and put beans in the middle of it. Still can’t cook now to save her life and enjoys a happy existence on the M&S easy cook range 😁

My children sadly have yet to experience such delights. I don’t think I really started to cook properly myself till my mid twenties.

My mum has never been a good cook. Always boiled the crap out of veg so they had no colour

I remember being amazed by how nice steamed carrots were. Wow! These carrots taste like carrots!

I’ve just remembered we once had pasta 😁 it was a slimming world recipe with crumbled up salt and vinegar Space Raiders on top. DF was not impressed.

OMG! Thank you so much for posting this! This thread made me think about that Sainsburys recipe. It became one of my Mum's staple desserts, I remember loving it. It seemed to fresh and sophisticated at the time, not sure I'd tried Creme Fraiche before this. I might have to make it again!

Born in the 60s. Mum cooked from scratch but choice was limited when I was a child. Treat pudding was tinned peaches and custard. Mum was a gardener and we had lots of beans and cabbage and marrows, i do remember that. Spaghetti bolognaise- no other pasta and sometimes chili con carne with rice. I think she used the swartz packets. Salads were basic but did include radishes and chard.

No problem. It was very sophisticated to someone more used to tinned fruit and evaporated milk, I can tell you 😆Didn't even have a Sainsbury's nearby but luckily my local deli had ratafia biscuits in stock.

We had a mix of excellent home cooking and quicker meals:

Quick meals:
chicken and ham pies, crispy pancakes, fish fingers, sausages. Linda Macartney products.

Home cooked childhood meals:
Beef stew, fish curry, pork vindaloo, egg curry, beef and aubergine curry, chapattis, rice basically loads of home cooked proper Indian food as that's where DMs family is from.

Findus crispy pancakes
campbells meatballs
egg, homemade chips and tomatoes
corned beef hash
roast dinner every Sunday
a lot of pasta
those tins of spaghetti with sausages
jacket potatoes
sausages with potato smileys, waffles or alphabites
turkey dinosaurs

veg wise it was always green beans or those bags of frozen peas and carrots, sometimes with sweet corn

Breakfast was:
cereal with extra sugar
ready brek
bacon sandwiches were a treat

@Saltisford this was my breakfasts too - especially the cereal with extra sugar. I still can’t have cornflakes without a good sprinkle on top! (Never got into that habit with my own DC).

Puddings were Neapolitan ice-cream, Arctic Roll or ice-cream and tinned peaches. Maybe a Vienetta if we were feeling fancy.

Our diet was so boring as kids! Born in 1985, breakfasts were corn flakes, or Quaker Oats, toast with Bovril or jam. At the weekends we'd sometimes have boiled eggs or a bacon sandwich.

Lunch would be a sandwich, apple/banana and crisps, maybe a penguin bar. Sometimes cheese on toast or beans on toast. Super noodles occasionally too.

Dinners: Saturday would always be either spaghetti bolognaise or a bean and cheese toastie - and always in front of Saturday night TV. Sunday would be a roast, every single time, usually beef or chicken. I don't recall ever having lamb or pork as a child. Other dinners through the week would be chili, beef stew (meat always chewy) with boiled potatoes (not even new potatoes, just peeled and boiled potatoes, no butter 🤮). Sometimes chicken Kiev, or a Vesta ready meal, steak and kidney pudding. Fish fingers, or that boil in a bag fish in butter sauce, with carrots, broccoli or peas.
Dessert: only ever a weekend thing. Apple and blackberry crumble (we had a blackberry bush in the garden so alway had a glut of them!) with birds custard or a choc ice. If very very lucky and my parents had cash on them, a 99 cone from the ice cream van with strawberry sauce.

I don't think there was ever anything remotely exotic - I don't think I even had a pizza or curry until I was well into my teens - and it was pretty standard British fare most of the time.

Oh we ate pasta, it came out of a tin and was put on toast, you could spell words out with it.

The last time I went to my dad's I ordered a supermarket delivery and I did all the cooking.

I know my dad is a fairly 'meat and 2 veg' eater so I didn't put any 'fancy' food on the order, or so I thought.

He'd never had a tray bake, and he had never had salmon, or asparagus.

He kept saying everything was 'delightful'.

My dad knows how to cook, he's always been able to feed himself and when my mum was terminal the hospice she was in ran a cookery course for men of a certain age who might not have done much cooking.