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?

My parents had frozen orange juice in cans which you mixed with water. I think it was quite nice.

I had a terrible sweet tooth growing up in the 70s - used to think fresh oranges were too sour unless dipped into sugar, and we used to add a teaspoonful of sugar to our Ski fruit yoghurts too.

Half a grapefruit for breakfast was also always drenched in sugar.

what ? my mum was born in 1951 had me in 1971 I didn't suffer from the effects of rationing and the 1980s well that's just ridiculous.

we certainly didn't import the number of different fruits/vegetables as we do now.

No, I remember my parents going out to a rare 'dinner party' when I was a teenager and commenting when they came home on the avocado starter - the first they'd tried, and quite possibly the last as they weren't impressed.
I distinctly remember the first time I encountered peppers - on a salad at the airport hotel we stayed in before a trip to visit relatives in Canada in 1975. When we got there, we were treated to fresh corn on the cob as a starter for dinner every day - so different from the cans of salted and sugared Jolly Green Giant.

Rationing ending in 1953 meant that adults in the 1970s would remember it. My parents do, and sweets and pop were occasional treats for us.

We grew up eating seasonal food that was home-cooked.
The diet has shifted to being more wheat-based, more sugar-based, more-UPF and with larger portions

I've always hated grapefruit. Can't imagine why anyone would like something that bitter. I remember seeing half a grapefruit at some point and it was covered in at least a tablespoon of sugar!

This. I was born in 1955 so definitely adult in the 80s - it was a time of comparative plenty. More women started to work outside the home in the 70s hence the growth of convenience foods. Also women who did have to contend with rationing in the War, like my mother, welcomed the ease and variety they brought.

We grew up eating seasonal food that was home-cooked.
The diet has shifted to being more wheat-based, more sugar-based, more-UPF and with larger portions

I'd have said we're less wheat and sugar based now than in my 60s/70s childhood. Lots of bread, cake and biscuits ... some of them home made but mostly UPFs. Toast with jam or marmalade, or sugary cereals for breakfast ... school lunch might be 'meat and two veg' but there would be a sweet carby pudding, evening meal for kids more 'high tea' than 'dinner'.

Young adults in the 70s wouldn't remember rationing but they would have heard of it. Their parents would have experienced it.

Still is in hospitals.

@CaptainMyCaptain , both my parents were born during WW2 and remember rationing. My parents were in their 20s in 1970, and a lot younger than most of my friends' parents.

We didn't eat much bread. Breakfast was usually porridge. Lunch was meat and two veg. Supper was something like a cottage pie.
If there was pudding it was usually apple pie.

Rationing ending in 1953 meant that adults in the 1970s would remember it. My parents do, and sweets and pop were occasional treats for us. We grew up eating seasonal food that was home-cooked.

Yes, but as I posted above, my parents reacted to growing up under rationing in a quite different way, and I don't think they were alone! When my Mum returned to full-time teaching she made extensive use of convenience foods so she could get our evening meal on the table quickly (we ate at about 6.30pm when my Dad got back from work). The vegetables would have been seasonal if fresh, but we also had lots of tinned and dried food and increasing amounts of frozen food once we had a fridge freezer rather than a small fridge with a tiny compartment at the top for a tray of ice cubes, a small packet of peas and a rectangular block of Wall's ice cream.

I was born in 1955 - 10 years after the end of the War and shortly after rationing ended. I was 20 in 1975. I think your parents would have been very young and only experienced rationing towards the end, after the end of the actual War, but they very likely absorbed the attitudes of their own parents.

My parents were much older than yours and experienced the whole War. My Dad was in the RAF. They left the war behind them and made the most of the abundance of food available although we weren't well off either and our diet wasn't much different to yours but with more bread. Experiences and reactions to them obviously differ. I don't think your parents' reactions were the most common.

Re ‘exotic’ fruit and veg, the junior school I attended in the 50s used to hold a big Harvest Festival assembly every year, and we were supposed to bring something for the display.

My DF worked in central London at the time, not far from markets where you could get all sorts that weren’t generally available. One thing he brought for me to take, was a green pepper (capsicum). I had never seen such a thing! And I still remember thinking how weird it smelt.

Dh was born in 1953 and he certainly recalls the affect rationing had on his upbringing. He never throws food away (will cut mould off all food- not just cheese) and hoards food very badly. He has a genuine fear of food scarcity. I was born 1973 and in a country that was unaffected by rationing and he thinks I'm desperately wasteful. I think he is destined to die from food poisoning.

Cheesecloth shirt with that?

I certainly don't waste food or anything else but it's nothing to do with recollections of rationing more about environmental issues - yes, there were some people aware of this even in the 70s and 80s.

Thanks I've downloaded the series 👍

The parsimonious habits ingrained during ww2 lasted forever with many. Waste of anything was unthinkable, especially food. I, born 1952, still feel guilty if I throw anything still edible away, my mother would have had a fit.

My family are Scottish. We moved to England when I was a child but continued the same pattern of meals.

Breakfast - cereal (Rice Krispies, sugar available if wanted, full-cream milk), white bread toasted and lavishly spread with salted butter (marmalade available too), instant coffee

Lunch - school dinner - often extremely stodgy. Pastry and chips often featured. There was always a pudding - e.g. rice pudding, semolina, chocolate sponge pudding, steamed jam roll, something involving pastry.

Evening meal - Scottish high tea. Main course might be a pie from the butchers, home-made chips, baked beans (or tinned pasta). On other days it would be a quiche from M&S with salad (but probably chips as well). We wouldn't often have had something like shepherd's pie on a weekday as Mum didn't have time to make it in term-time. On the table would also be bread, butter, jam and some sort of cake or biscuits. We'd wash all this down with tea.

To be honest, it's a miracle we're still here, and yet my Dad lived to 89 (died last year) and my Mum is still with us at 91, and not doing badly at all for her age. My brother and I are in reasonably good health. He is now a pescetarian/near vegan. None of us eat the way we did in the 1970s. I think the high tea went west when Mum retired from teaching and had more time to cook properly. The saving grace of our diet was that we always had lots of vegetables and fairly often had pulses and fish.

And Loons

Oh yes. Cheesecloth shirt or smock, denim skirt, denim waistcoat. Purdey haircut.

@CaptainMyCaptain , you are a fair bit younger than my parents.
They definitely remember rationing. It would be like suggesting I don't remember the petrol rationing of the 1970s or something.

Both my parents were young parents, but their parents were older parents.

I don't know if my parents had a different attitude to other parents. Most of my friends seemed to have similar childhoods. I grew up in a rural, agricultural area.

As a kid one of my favourite dinners was a vesta paella and a beef burger patty 🤣

TBH Gasp0de that is probably my ideal eating day.

Although- I have started bread and butter with every meal to bulk up for my older DS who has sensory related food issues and will not eat. I'd forgotten how lovely bread and butter at meals was.

Making the birds trifle was my job at home as a child. Good I miss the 80d