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?

i could make a mars bar last all day, they were huge and sickly.

List of Wimpy's

wimpy.uk.com/

Lots of people in the 70's and 80's smoked which kept their appetites down, including plenty of teenagers.
Dont be under the illusion all the thinness was down to healthy choices.

Pretty sure some in bands like The Cure also took a few drugs, too, and im sure there was some heavy drinking too.

But i think alongside it, it was much easier for kids and teens to be more active. Kids played out loads because there were fewer cars on the roads so it was safer. Id love to let my kids play out more but cars just go at crazy speeds now, it just isnt safe.

My mum was a brilliant cook, she made all her meat pies, Yorkshire puddings. We had one of those old fashioned mincers so she would buy meat from the butcher and make her own mincemeat. We had homemade puddings most nights, rice pudding, jam roll poly, lemon meringue pie, bread pudding plus all the cakes, jam tarts etc she made.

We were quite poor really and I was one of 6 children, but my mum always made sure that we had plenty of food.

We were all slim but I think that's because we walked everywhere and were always out playing.

in the 70's I was a teen. walked to and from school (couple of miles each way)
didn't snack (or drink loads of water!) even when I was working often walked to work (about 3 miles) only got a lift occasionally when guy up the road saw me)
my mum was a good cook so we had decent food. I was very slim.

Another fan of the Golden Egg. As a teenage vegetarian I could get a lovely cheese omelette. There wasn't much choice apart from that except fried egg and chips at a Wimpey.

I remember leaving my sandwiches from my packed lunch too, would have been the early 80's by then and mum gave me cheese spread most days which I disliked, I wanted tuna (a huge treat) or shrimp paste which I still like. We did veg for trios and umbongo juice remember them - that's tiswas's fault as they had adverts - we got pure fruit juice and a custard cream if we were lucky!

I grew up in 80s rather than 70s, and we were all very thin. My grandma cooked most of our meals and she was an amazing cook - but it involved lots of fat, meat and carbs! On Sundays alone we’d have a full English breakfast, then a Sunday roast with two or three kinds of potatoes and Yorkshire puddings. There’d be a home-made pudding afterwards, made with and served with double cream - sherry trifle, or crème caramel. Then for tea there’d be homemade scones, a cheese board, and cream cakes for afterwards.

Alright, we didn’t eat like that every day, but evening meals were similar large portions of heavy, carby, high-fat food, followed by pudding. It can’t just be that she cooked from scratch and used less processed food, because I do the same, and would be twice the size if I ate like I did then. Can’t just be age, because there were 5 generations living in our house and we were all thin. The adults smoked, but the kids didn’t.

All I think is that the adults didn’t snack (kids were allowed a couple of biscuits or a small slice of cake after school, but that was all); only ate sweets once a week (Saturday treat), abd takeaways were unheard of - maybe once a year we might get fish and chips, on a bank holiday.

Still though. We were very slim, considering what we ate.

Oh, and no one drank much alcohol or soft drinks. We drank tea or milk. That probably helped.

I walked to school, 3 miles round trip every day, come rain or shine. We never had takeaways and in town there was a Wimpy, a fish and chip shop and a Chinese restaurant and that was it.

Mum made things like baked hash, shepherds pie, curry, roast dinner on a Sunday. Squash to drink. My gran had a Sodastream, which I thought was v posh! We didn't have a car so got bus everywhere.

At my comprehensive school there were v few fat kids, we had home economics classes where I remember cooking things like sausage rolls and soused herring ( yuk, gave it to the cat! ). My junior school had a swimming pool ( it's not there any more ). Wasn't a posh school, but now realise how unusual it was.

Think kids were just more active, weren't ferried around everywhere, we had sweets and pop but they were a treat. Agree with others that there was much less choice and food was more seasonable. Also there were much less ready meals, more things like Findus crispy pancakes.

Women didn't drink so much but boy hec the men certainly did - down the pub, even at lunchtimes

It doesn't need to be hugely different to make a huge impact - 100 calories a day is a stone a year

Grandma didn’t allow Grandad to go the pub! 😆

I'd love to have met your grandma - sounds like a sensible and strong woman !

Thank you, she was a marvel. I miss her everyday.

I totally agree. I think UPF is a huge contributor to so many issues and it's in everything.
I've cut out a lot and cook and bake nearly everything from scratch now and have lost weight and my cycle has regulated without really trying. And feel so different when I do have UPF occasionally now.

Child of the late 70s/80s.
Breakfast was cereal - tiny amount - followed by toast with butter sbd jam ir marmalade, again a scraping
School dinners.
Dinner was homemade. Spaghetti bol, chilli, sweet and sour chicken, pies, meat and veg type stuff. Stew, roasts. But small portions. As a child I had 1 sausage. Dad had 3, manual job.
Fry up at the weekends, cooked in lard!

One of the things I'm always conscious of is not just the size by the lusciousness of the cakes in places like Costa. My gran used to take us to the local cafe after school once a week in the early 80s. I remember the choices were a toasted tea cake, a scone, Victoria sponge, coffee & walnut cake, fruit cake or an iced finger. This wasn't her restricting what we chose. It was simply all that was on offer. There just weren't things which oozed icing or were covered in toppings. We always had a hot chocolate in winter but that was just a hot chocolate. There was no option of cream or marshmallows. She would have a coffee but that would be instant with a dash of milk and in a cup. No massive drinks with gallons of milk and the choice of a sugary syrup.
I also remember the introduction of Magnums when previously Big Feasts or Cornettos had been the most luxurious ice creams. And Pringles and then Kettle Chips and the whole idea of share bags of crisps, but which were far too easy to eat most of them by yourself.

A finger of fudge was just enough to give your kids a treat, and Milky Way was the sweet you COULD eat between meals without ruining your appetite.

I have an original advert somewhere for Mars Bars, but I think that was from the 1960s. 2d apiece and intended for slicing up and sharing between the whole family. I do remember my uncle taking a Mars Bar off my oldest cousin, who was waving it in front of everyone else's noses and saying he was going to eat it all himself, and dividing it into five so that everyone could have a piece.

This is important to remember - so many people smoked, and it’s definitely one way to control hunger.

A Mars a day, helps you work rest and play!

We used to parody it at school as 'A Mars a day, helps your teeth rot away.'

We ate a lot of offal, because it was cheap, we filled up on veg.
Toast was a snack.
Never had a dessert except on Sundays, Angel Delight because it was cheap, tinned fruit at the bottom if we were lucky.
Didn't have sweets or fizzy pop except on a weekend because our parents couldn't afford it.
We rode bikes, sometimes three kids on a bike, one sat on the handlebar, one on the seat, one stood up peddling or we walked everywhere, not many parents had cars, if they did, there was no such thing as "mum's taxi"
In the holidays we were kicked out the house with 'be back before the street lights come on"
I was so skinny I was fed this stuff called Malt, big black jar of gooey stuff, dig a tablespoon in and eat a spoonful, it was to fatten me up 😀
Ahhh the good old days 😉

There was a bread ad 'six slices a day is the well-balanced way'. I remember my mother being appalled (she was a science graduate and had John Yudkin as head of department one place she worked) - that was before the food industry started pushing carbs. Also before fruit juice. I am sure that mass consumption of liquid fructose has harmed a lot of us.

From what I remember of it;

White bread.
Cheese spread.
Margarine.
Marmite.
Peanut Butter.
Tinned pineapple.
Tinned fruit salad.
Tinned evaporated milk or sterilised cream.
Findus Crispy Pancakes.
French Bread Pizzas.
Overboiled cabbage.
Lumpy mash.
Tinned peas and carrots.
Tinned pies.
Tinned steak and kidney puddings.
Tinned potatoes.
Mince (with extra lard added to the gravy at school to bring the calories up)
A bit of chicken wing on a Sunday or if things were fancy, a bit of chicken wing that had been cooked in a Homepride red or white wine sauce tin.
Rice pudding with jam or a similar pudding every day at school to bring the calories up.
If you liked that amount of sugar, sugar puffs, ricicles, frosties. If not, Readybrek, weetabix, cornflakes or coco pops.
Lettuce, tomato and cucumber with a rolled up piece of reformed ham and a celery stick filled with cheese spread in summer.
Pickled cockles and boiled winkles with pepper if you were lucky and the stall outside the pub smelled fresh when somebody went past it.
Penny sweets that were 4 for a penny.
Blackjacks/Rhubarb & Custards/Flying Saucers/Cola Cubes.
Refreshers/Spangles/Polos.
Pickled Onion Monster Munch (when we entered the 80s)
Wagon Wheels.
Pickled Onion Space Raiders.
Salt 'n' Vinegar Chipsticks.
Smiths Square Crisps (Salt 'n' Vinegar flavour) in the correct colour for the flavour - blue, obviously.
Penguins.
Kit-Kats.
Clubs.
R Whites Lemonade, Cream Soda or Cherryade.
Bass Shandy.

Most things were tinned because there were too many power cuts to risk losing things in the ice box and life was too short to buy and peel carrots or potatoes once the 55lb sack that lived under the stairs after being delivered by the milkman had gone for the year.

It was good getting to the 80s when I found out that food didn't have to taste like crap or make me ill, as I was old enough to go to friends who had decent vegetables with texture and flavour, new ones to me like okra, beans that weren't in a tin, seasonings, colour, taste. Also good for a coeliac and lactose intolerant kid to not have to eat wheat and dairy at every meal, tbh.

There was just no snacks at home! We lived rurally, no chance to wander off and buy anything on your own and there was plenty of food at mealtimes, just no snacks. I remember coming home from school and being ravenous and there just wasn't any food available until supper (local meat, garden veg, potatoes - my mother was an excellent cook). Bread was bought once a week from the bakery - two white one brown, all unsliced - and there was none left that was edible by Monday. The only thing in the fridge that was edible without cooking was cheese, and that was always intended for a meal so was off limits.

I remember eating Winalot kibble. Or apples. But fruit wasn't nice in the 70s, grapes were all seeded and only for when you were ill. Apples were great in season, as were citrus fruit. But generally little choice and sad remnants in the fruit bowl.

I was a teenager in the late 60’s early 70’s. what today would be seen as very thin but normal for that era. Like most people I only ate at meal times, no snacking - it wasn’t an issue it was just that no-one did. I don’t ever recall being hungry. I was very active. There were coffee bars but they were just that, no food, just frothy coffee.

I’m about a stone heavier now at around 8 stone 3. I wonder if it’s down to never really got into today’s constant snacking/drinking and convenience food.