The 70s and diet - what were we eating?

[Alicay]

Watched a programme about The Cure last night. There was footage of the group from '81 (I think) and they were all like pipe cleaners - that really slight, skinny look. Not an inch on them. Growing up I can remember the majority (of young people at least) having that kind of physique. Also, recently saw Gregory's Girl and was struck by the school scenes - kids all like whippets. Now im fat and in my fifties I'm trying to remember what I/people ate. think for me it was cornflakes with sugar for breakfast, orange juice then modest packed lunch (I never got crisps, but some kids got a packet of walkers) or a disgusting school dinner of meat pie and veg that I barely touched) dinner was always vegetable soup then say pasta (fancy, but Italian roots) then stewed fruit. I'd be raging hungry on that diet now. Thinking about it maybe food was just less appealing/quantities smaller? Is it all just down to the extra snacks we have now?
Any 70's/earlier people remember better than me?

Yes to all of this.

portions much smaller, no snacking, no eating out, except on holiday.

I think the snacking thing is a massive part of it. Nobody wants to feel even mildly peckish now, not even for 10 seconds.

I'm an 80s/90s kid and this is how it was done in our house:
Cereal for breakfast. Often a bacon butty at the weekend.
Packed lunch + crisps + chocolate bar
Meat+ potato (chips or boiled) + veg boiled to within an inch of its life.
Pudding.
Chocolate bars- proper ones- at weekend. Fizzy pop was macaw shite and we drank lots of it.

Always cakes to hand, as mum used to bake. Bread and butter or an apple if we said we were hungry. I ate so much bread growing up. Barely touch it now.

Didn't walk to primary school. Didn't do any sporting activities outside school. Walked to high school. I spent a lot of my early teens indoors, reading.

We weren't overweight. Most overweight I ever was was in uni, when I lived on pasta, cheese, pizza and beer. All vanished when I finished uni.

I would say I've followed a similar pattern with my own kids, except they always drank water and our food is much nicer. I think we probably have more processed food though. And I don't bake. My kids also did extra curricular stuff and played out in the street.

In our case then, I'm not sure whether there are any major differences.

I'm on Slimming World at the moment, and it really take you back to basics cooking your own food from scratch, plenty of fruit and veg. This is really the way it should be rather than high sugar/fat UPF. I've lost weight, but much more importantly my blood pressure has gone down from the super high range to well within normal within a few weeks. Diet has much more of an impact on our overall health than just weight.

Also we never ate out or got takeaways. Didn't even go to cafes - it just wasn't a big thing like it is now.

I started secondary school in 1970 and immediately started smoking - as did all of my friends. Any money I had went on cigarettes, even my lunch money, so I didn't really eat during the day. There was a paper shop near the school that sold single cigarettes, so even if I only had a few pence I could still get a cig. I generally had cereal for breakfast, and meat and two veg for dinner. And, of course, lots of dancing at the local/school disco!

My mum actually thought it was ‘vulgar’ to eat on the go in public.

What an interesting thread!

Brings back a lot of memories.

I was born in the North in the late 60s.
We weren't poor but money was tight.

Meals were small. I remember being hungry was a normal thing.

Stew was a regular thing - I hated it but you had what was on offer or you had nothing.

Sunday lunch was a single chicken for 6 of us, portioned out roast potatoes, tinned peas. Always wanted more than there was.

If we had a pudding. It was a yogurt or a super mousse,

We moved in the 80s. Convenience food became more advertised on TV, and became more available and more plentiful.

We started to have things like Rise and Shine powdered orange juice, and more Club biscuits and Toast Toppers.

My mum got into baking. Weight gain followed.

I ate sandwiches for lunch made with brown bread, often tuna or tuna and egg or egg.
Sometimes cauliflower or macaroni cheese. Also mackerel on toast.

Dinners

Sunday - a roast, 3 different ones that rotated.
A homemade cake, again there were three or four different ones.

Monday - a curry made with the meat from Sunday and rice.

Other weekday dinners,
Tropical chicken which was a chicken recipe with tinned pineapple and rice.

Homemade burgers and homemade chips.

Meatloaf.

Spag Bol with wholemeal spaghetti

Saturday meals, homemade minestrone soup and crusty bread, homemade pizzas.

Mine, too! Plus the teachers told us that as well.
It was common to eat in the streets.

As the previous posters said, we were a lot more active in the 1970s (and 1980s and 1990s.) As children we were out probably 8 to 10 hours a day in the school holidays running about, playing games and sports, and cycling. And even at school we did a lot of PE - and running about in the playground, and a lot cross-country, rounders, netball, and badminton etc. And I am not even sporty! These things were mandatory then. I NEVER see/hear of all the children doing this on a regular basis now.

We even had a few hours of playing outside on a school day (after school) some of the year, and I used to go swimming with my dad a lot. AND I used to spend half my waking hours on my bicycle.

In addition to this, when I was a young adult in the late 1980s and 1990s I used to cycle 3 miles to work every day, (and back,) and when I worked a mile and a half away I used to walk to work (and back) every day. I think very few people do this now. People drive or take the bus or train. Many people don't even work close enough to walk or cycle. Also, every young mum I know in my village drives everywhere. I don't see them going for walks. Same with most people.

But I do notice that even when you watch old episodes of FRIENDS from 30 years ago - 1994. the girls (Monica in particular) are whippet-thin. And yet at the time - when we watched it , they just looked - well - normal if you like.

Also, the 'fat' bloke out of the Full Monty (Mark Addy) was the chubster of the group (late 1990s,) and now when you see The Full Monty, he just looks like he's got a dad-bod. He doesn't even look 'fat.' Many people were so thin then that anyone even just 2 stone overweight was classed as a fat person, and called names.

My daughters are 5 foot 5 and 5 foot 7, and quite slim and athletic. They're a size 8 to 10, with a 27 to 28 inch waist, and wider hips than girls had 30 years ago, and they have fuller breasts... They're classed as slim/athletic girls..

I had 22-23 inch waist when I was their age. (I'm 5 ft 4,) and a 28 inch waist would have been cast as chubby then. It's so odd. We've changed and we've evolved - but certainly yes, 30 to 40 years ago, people were smaller and women had thinner waists and thinner arms/smaller bums/smaller breasts. I don't think people eat any worse though. Some people eat a bit unhealthily now, but then they did in the 1970s/1980s/1990s too.

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We never ate out or got takeaways either. Mind you, we don't now cos I object to paying 100quid for a family of 4 to have a meal.

I do remember snacking, because I was always hungry. That only really dropped off when I got my 20s and realised that I didn't feel hungry all the time.

How many eggs did she put in it?

I also remember constipation being very common - no real fibre or much water in our diets.,.

As a teenager, I ate very little…a yogurt for breakfast, sometimes things like a punnet of strawberries for lunch if they were in season, otherwise ryvita, cheese and an apple, and then egg on toast or similar for supper, or maybe spaghetti Bol or similar if mum was cooking. Sometimes chops with peas and Smash if I was cooking.
In my 20s when I had a flat, I’d have a big tuna or salmon roll at about 11, and a can of slimmers soup and a slice of cheese on toast for supper. But I smoked, drank, and had diet pills to keep my weight down. Sometimes I’d have a MaccyD milkshake for lunch, depending where I was working.
I eat way more now, and am much fatter. Getting married and DH having biscuits in the house, a cooked dinner every night and most recently giving up smoking have seen me put on about 5 stone since those days!

Toast and tea for breakfast. School lunch as a primary school kid, but in secondary usually skipped lunch to save the money. Dinner would be something like mince with green beans and mashed potatoes, but the portion would be about a third of what you see today. Seasonal fruit. Maybe a biscuit.

Only fizzy drinks at Christmas no takeways. Playing outside all the time riding bikes, going to park all without parents. Nowadays children always seem to be entertained by their parents. Taken every where in a car or on a phone.

I'd say there was less choice; I remember school dinners being horrible, with only one choice- fish fingers, beans, and mashed potatoes, I had a thing about food texture and only ate the mash. Even that was horrible. I don't remember chips being on the menu. There wasn't the choice of processed snacks there are now, and we walked to school and back every day, from age 11, a mile away. We just did it without thinking. I think food is nicer now, but so much is sugary/fatty/processed, and food adverts on tv mean kids see it and want it. We are predisposed to like sugary foods so once you start on that road it's addictive. I'm glad there is more choice of nice fruit & veg, but it's expensive compared to processed crap.

Food is constantly available now, you can pretty much eat what you want, when you want. We've got used to that level of consumption.

There was quite a big difference between the early and late 1970s.

I remember breakfast (cereal, toast and marmalade, non-negotiable, you're not leaving the house without it), a packet of crisps mid-morning on school days, cooked lunch, main course and proper pudding at teatime, toast or biscuits and cocoa at bedtime. Fizzy drinks all had sugar in them. A cup of tea always came with a biscuit.

Cheese was coloured cheddar, rice was a pudding and pasta was macaroni cheese or spaghetti hoops.

By the end of the decade we had much more convenience food at home.

My mum was always trying to stick to a 1000 calorie diet, which meant a lot of "salads", stewed rhubarb and cottage cheese.

Born early 70s. 3rd of 5 chikdren.

I genuinely have no recollection of ever going to cafe without out with my parents expect once. In John Lewis, after buying school shoes. I always high that the family I. "The Tiger Who Came to Tea" were so extravagant for going to a cafe for a meal after the tiger ate all their food.

We never had a take away.
Fish n chips once a year on August BH.

At secondary school we had a tick shop that sold jam sandwhich fritters sprinkled with sugar, the problem in those days was getting enough calories into kids.

Also at secondary school we learnt to meal plan, cost up a week of shopping, plan in what to do with left overs, how to bulk out meat, cook everything from scratch..., actual home economics, not the stand alone "set pieces" of chocolate muffins and Thai green curry that my DC have done in FFT.

no lurpak!
no snacks
playing outdoors
we walked to school and back

Food nowadays is just so delicious, affordable and everywhere! Even on social media, videos of food bloggers trying the most delicious things. It's so tempting. You can go down your high street and buy everything from sushi to burritos.

I have a lot of vintage cookbooks...the food looks incredibly unappetising

no fast food
although i did have sugar
but no eating between meals

Aside from keeping our weight in check, one of the biggest benefits of having a smaller, plainer diet in the 70s was that when you got treats, they were so much more appreciated. There was real excitement in the house when, for example, the tin of Quality Street was brought out on Christmas Day, or we saw that Father Christmas had put the chocolate decorations on the tree.

And when your pocket money permitted, ordering a bottle of fizzy drink from the milkman. That was a red letter day indeed.

I wouldn’t say I ate particularly healthily but there was definitely less access to food and I wasn’t preoccupied with food like my teenagers are. For tea you ate what you were given and I was satisfied with that. I was really small and slim and I don’t remember ever being hungry.