Why was a glass of orange juice a starter?

[NutellaEllaElla]

I learned this recently. Is it true? What don't I know that might help me understand this?

Thinner times

Not really. I was a young adult in the 1980s (born in the very early 1960s) and I knew about rationing, but had never experienced it, except when there were shortages in the 1970s because of strikes. From memory, I think there were brief periods of rationing to stop panic buying of bread, petrol, toilet rolls and possibly other things. There was a paper shortage at one point and at school we had our exercise books inspected to ensure every single page had been used before we were issued with a new one!

Rationing did affect me, though, because my parents both had a sweet tooth and had been deprived (in their view) of sugar and sweets during rationing, and made up for it afterwards by eating plenty of sweets, biscuits, cake and so on in adult life. When I was growing up, we had fruit in the house, but it was considered expensive and my brother and I were often given an apple or an orange between us. (Fortunately, vegetables were cheaper and we could have as much as we liked - and I like vegetables.) When I started to get pocket money, I sometimes used it to buy myself a big orange I could eat all by myself. That was a treat in a way that sweets weren't, as every time we went out my Mum would delve into her handbag and offer us a boiled sweet or a Polo mint to pass the time on the bus. After every evening meal sweets or chocolate would be passed round while we were watching TV. And so on. Maybe it was reverse psychology!

What are you talking about? There was no rationing affecting us in the 70's 80's. 70's were the era of frozen pancakes, Vesta meals, Angel Delight and other treats. 😂

This.

I recently saw orange juice as a starter on a Christmas menu at a pub on the Isle of Wight! I was so excited I took a photo. Sadly no longer have the photo!

When my parents did dinner parties in the 70s the usual starter was tinned asparagus soup (which I still love) or grapefruit glazed with brown sugar under the grill with a maraschino cherry.

Restrictions on how many loaves could be brought and stuff like that didn't last for long and weren't really rationing. You could still buy a reasonable quantity, it was to stop stock-piling.

I was there. This is bollocks!

I seem to remember 'no pips no peel no pith no powder.... just juice'

Yes fish and chips only when on holiday and only once in that holiday! Ice cream the same. Also I only had chocolate once a year at Easter and I remember trying to make it last.
No wonder we were all thinner then - all these things are considered everyday foods now.

I grew up in the 50s. My mum sometimes bought tinned ‘fresh’ orange juice, we had a small glass at breakfast. We also had fresh or tinned grapefruit. We rarely ate out, but went to a hotel every year on holiday. Fruit juice was always the alternative to soup. We still thought bananas were exotic!

I make devilled eggs every single week. A 12 carton then put them in the fridge for snacking on. Have for years!

Actual fresh orange juice was a rarity - I’m talking 1950s/60s here. Ditto grapefruit. What you could get was largely tinned - who else remembers Trout Hall tinned grapefruit juice?

A small glass of one or the other was often offered as a starter. I remember having one myself at 9 or 10 (though eating out was a rarity). The juice was a rare treat so it was sipped and savoured.

IIRC it was in the 60s that Bird’s Eye started selling frozen orange juice, but freezers were only just starting to be a general Thing, though many people by then would have had a small freezer compartment in their fridge.

Hehehe! I went on a coach holiday to York a couple of years ago. We were asked our menu choices on the way so the hotel could be prepared. The choices of starters were grapefruit juice, orange juice or soup!

When I was a wee one we stayed for a night in a place that offered either orange juice or tomato soup for a starter. I got confused and asked for 'orange soup'!

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER - Trout Hall! I couldn’t remember the brand, thats the one we had.

the local Berni Inn was the place to be seen on the Friday night after payday in 1980.
The fruit juice starter was 33p
I can't get a decent screenshot for you but the menu is a hoot.

What are you talking about? There was no rationing affecting us in the 70's 80's. 70's were the era of frozen pancakes, Vesta meals, Angel Delight and other treats.

there could be a knock-on effect which affected some of us, my dm was a teen/20s in WWII and during rationing, it showed in her culinary repertoire.
Obviously some families were more adventurous than others, my parents never made (or afaik ever ate) curries or Chinese type food.

We once had a long drive to get to the static caravan or chalet in some remote spot in the Highlands which my parents had booked for our summer holiday - by letter, after poring over a brochure back in January. Always an anxious time, while we waited to see if it would be OK or not - no TripAdvisor back then! Anyway, we stopped at a roadhouse-type restaurant on the way for lunch. Big treat. We had three courses. I remember opting for tomato juice, the first time I'd ever had it. Loved it!

This thread has made me think of bottled water. Rarely seen until the 90s, I think, after which you could barely move for people believing they would 'dehydrate' unless they were more or less permanently attached to a bottle of Evian or whatever. All those generations before who had to cling on to life without being able to buy it, how did we manage? Excellent marketing. Billions made from selling us something that falls out of the sky, free.

I posted a screenshot further up the thread. It's a bit fuzzy but just about legible.

We weren't allowed sugary drinks, as my Dad was born in 1947, so grew up post rationing when sugar got put in everything. Consequently he had terrible trouble with his teeth.
So my brother and I were only allowed water to drink until we were in our teens and then tea was allowed.
I had my first can of Coke on a school trip to France when I was 15...

I remember my first pub job when basket meals were all the rage/new thing.

Re water - agreed. The environmental effects must be horrendous. Plastic bottles, diesel used to transport all those pallets of water, wrapped in more plastic, effect on the roads. We are lucky to have clean safe tap water in the UK.

IIRC it was in the 60s that Bird’s Eye started selling frozen orange juice, but freezers were only just starting to be a general Thing, though many people by then would have had a small freezer compartment in their fridge.

We didn't even have a fridge till somewhere around 1970. Doorstep milk, local shop, tins and packets.

It is thought that rationing had long term effects on the British palate and dining which lasted into the 1970s, particularly of the children who grew up on rationing. It's one reason British cuisine of the 1960s and 1970s gained such a poor international reputation. It took time for British cooking to recover. Things went from rationing to convenience products remarkably quickly, though of course Britain was not alone in the latter.

There may not have been rationing, but we certainly didn't import the number of different fruits/vegetables as we do now. Things like avocados really didn't become popular until the late 70s/early 80s. If you wanted lettuce, it would most likely have been something like round lettuce, possibly Cos. We certainly wouldn't have had all the different varieties and bags of salad that you can buy now. Peppers and aubergines and courgettes (unless you grew those) were considered exotic - and mangetout were a definite 80s arrival/favourite.

I used to work in advertising, in the early 80s, and one of our clients was Buitoni - back in the day when dried spaghetti used to come in long, blue paper packets. Meals like spaghetti bolognese were just becoming popular, although for some families it was a real uphill struggle getting their men folk to accept a meal that wasn't meat and 2 veg. I remember one woman telling me that she made her spaghetti bolognese with a tin of Heinz spaghetti topped with fried mince!

Fresh pasta didn't really come along till the mid/late 80s, and if you wanted Parmesan cheese, you had to buy it dried, in the little drums, that were stocked on the ambient shelves. And it smelt disgusting - amazed that we ever decided that Parmesan was worth buying.

There's a really interesting programme running now on Channel 5 called The 1970s supermarket which looks at a lot of products we were eating then. Some of them were truly awful!