Has the typical diet really changed so much in the last 70 years or so?

[BarbaraVineFan]

My DD (6) enjoys listening to audiobooks of Enid Blyton and she often comments on the foods eaten (or not) in the books- for example:

no water seems ever to be drunk- only lemonade or ginger beer
bacon and eggs seems to be de rigueur for breakfast
there is so much bread and cake! Sandwiches, bread and butter or cake at every meal, sometimes all three
lots of fruit but barely any vegetables

Now I know that this doesn’t really count as data, but it has got me thinking. Are people’s diets really so different now as it would seem from MN, with lots of fruit and veg, 2l water every day and avoiding carbs at all costs? Or is our diet in the UK in fact still quite similar to the 1950s with most people basing their meals round a carb/meat and two veg?

Famous Five is an excellent data set for comparison 🤣
Most families probably eat vaguely the same but what’s changed is the amount of processed food I think .

I would say so, hugely. How many households were eating ready meals full of upf's in the 50's?🤔

Ok, I agree with the processed food thing of course as well!

Diets have changed hugely in the last 70 years, but also those were fictionalised diets designed to appeal to the readers (kids) - most people weren't drinking pop every day.

I was a child in the 60's with parents who'd experienced rationing in WW2.

Yes, I think people's diets have changed out of all recognition in the last few decades, particularly with the availability of seasonal produce. Nearly everything is available all year round now - take strawberries as an example.

The BBC have done some really good documentaries about this. Each season was a different decade.

You're kidding? 70 years ago most households had no fridge or freezer, let alone a microwave or air fryer etc, and people had access to a very limited range of food compared to how most of us eat now. You had to buy olive oil in tiny bottles in the chemist. The first UK supermarket only opened in 1948.

The BBC programme Back In Time For Dinner (and its various spin offs) did a great job of telling this story. It doesn't seem to be on iPlayer atm but there are some clips here BBC Two - Back in Time for Dinner https://share.google/KOnARwx614qL8Dh9W and it may be on YouTube, I haven't looked. Highly recommend it, it's fascinating!

I am in my 60's and we had pop once a week when we had a Chinese meal from the takeaway. Mum would be squash the rest of the week and we would have that with water.

There's a lovely book called Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer which explores this.

These books were written at the tail end of rationing and the food is basically a child's dream at the time, largely unavailable.

Also portions would have been much, much smaller.

Sorry that was meant to read Mum got us squash the rest of the week.!

My diet is completely different to that of my parents/my childhood diet, which was meat, potatoes, and boiled veg. I eat pulses most days, occasionally some fish, and a lot of Asian influenced food. I hated the meat and two veg diet then, and still hate it now. I hardly ever eat potatoes. We eat a lot of herbs and spices, I’m so glad food from other cultures is easily available in the UK!

My mother's cooking hasn't changed in 70 years. She's still stuck in the early 1900s.

Enid Blyton books aren't really that representstive of food that was eaten at the time. It is fantasy stuff for children and what child wouldn't like teas with lots of cake and lemonade

As far as I recall the average diet has changed tremendously

this was north east - I know the richer south progressed more quickly

no takeaways , no eating out. Fish and chips once or twice a year.

no UPF / all natural food apart from bacon. Yogurt from the early 80s? Similarly frozen pizza. About hand sized.

water with every meal

no “fancy” food - plain meat and potatoes and gravy . Or potatoes and plain fish. Not chilli’s , curry, bolognaise, pasta with sauce. pepper was the only spice. It wasn’t a vegetable. Veg was just boiled. Never cooked in any kind of recipe.

. Bread and jam. Bread and butter. Carbs based

seasonal British vegetables - only frozen peas. Carrots and cabbage in the winter, lettuce and tomatoes and cucumber in the summer. On repeat. Potatoes - jackets, boiled, mash, chip, roast , repeat. The diversity today is amazing.

portion sizes - we used a 4ox flour, 4oz sugar 4oz butter and 2 eggs recipe to make enough cake for the week . with my family it was 8,5,5,3 to make a cake for the week.

you might be always hungry but food was expensive.

treats - 4oz of sweets on a Friday. And a bag of crisps on the Saturday. Not daily .

So I am a sixties child. Breakfast was porridge, weetabix or cornflakes or toast. Lunch was a cooked meal but basic so scrambled eggs, cheese on toast etc.(I lived next door to school so no need for school dinner).
Dinner was set things on set days, stew,broth, pies, chops,stewing steak, always with potatoes and veg. Always a pudding, rice,applepie/crumble, custard tart, lemon meringue. Very small portions no snacks. Drank milk, water or tea. Sunday a roast and ham salad for afternoon tea with jelly and fruit.
No "pop" or crisps unless it was Christmas or a party. Sweets maybe once a week. I read lot of Enid Blyton when young and always longed for the cake and lemonade😂

Yes.
I was born in 1960 and pasta was very unusual, as were savoury rice dishes. Pizza wasn't in the supermarkets - I had my first when I was 15 in a restaurant. I had my first McDonalds in 1978?

There were more pastry dishes - fruit and meat pies, more offal, milk puddings and jellies/custards. Hardly anyone's mum made a curry or a stir fry. Largely meat and two veg meals and limited ready meals.

Food was also much more seasonal: soft fruits were only available in the summer. Salad was rare and very expensive in the winter.

Coffee shops were not on every high street - you might have got a cup of tea at the back of a bakers.

If we had water, it was corporation pop from the kitchen tap. There was generally more lemonade, cream soda and tizer.

Yoghurt was bitter and yukky. I couldn't eat it as a child. There were.also far fewer lower fat things.

My parents never ate rice or pasta, it was always meat and two vegetables.

I think one of the biggest changes is portion size. The plates my parents used are about 2/3 the size of the plates we use now.

We did massive amounts of exercise on those days.

Wow, I didn't have any Chinese food until I was 17, my first meal eating out was at uni in the early 80s. We did live rurally though.

We did massive amounts of exercise on those days.

My mum, who's 80 and still eats like she did in the 50s, wouldn't recognise most of the contents of my fridge and cupboards, and would struggle to assemble any kind of meal from my kitchen.

We are smaller portions - if we had lamb chops (something I've never cooked as an adult!) it was one small. Chop each with veg & potatoes. We had spaghetti bol but I think my mum has been to a Continental cooking class in the evenings do we had things like that & goulash & stroganoff, but I think we were unusual.
I also had revolting 70s processed stuff like crispy pancakes, frozen fish portions in sauce etc.
I think the main thing was that people walked a lot more & there was very little snacking or fast food.

The pushing of the low-fat, hi-carbdiet since the 1980s, at the behest of the American cornstarch lobby. With the resulting obesity epidemic.

There was something on tv a few years ago where they said the calories in a Sunday roast in the 1960s was a third of the calories in the average roast nowadays… fewer potatoes, no cauliflower cheese and generally smaller portions

Most of the Famous Five meals are eaten out and about or quick meals between going out aren’t they? Rather than formal meals that might have veg.

Bread and butter has been staple food for yonks though in the uk . Either plain or as a sandwich. Jam, sugar and hundreds and thousands were commonly added for treat.

Personally I save a ton of money ( and calories) just eating plainer food. Having simple meat and veg instead of dishes with multiple ingredients like curry or lasagne.
Wine is an acceptable UPF in my house however.