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?

We didn't eat any of.that in the 70s. We may have had white bread, but always fresh from the bakers. Cereal was All Bran, Porridge, Weetabix or Shredded Wheat, with Muesli sneaking in. I didn't like milk much so rarely had cereal. We never had things like spam, corned beef, fishfingers, etc, and rarely sausages. Beef burgers were a treat and made at home with beef minced by the butcher. I can remember my mother giving me a dairylea triangle once, but I didn't like it. I liked Edam which tbf was probably processed.

I had squash and we had biscuits and shop bought cake.

I don't think that poster was talking about what you, personally, ate or didn't eat. More that processed foods were abundant at the time.

I'm sure that the 'science' of making UP food more moreish and palatable, while using cheaper and industrially produced ingredients has evolved a lot since those times though.

I'm gluten intolerant so presumably would have felt awful on my great granny's diet, as it presumably involved a lot of bread.

Can confirm, was absolutely awful even on a 70s diet, especially with issues with dairy, too. My mother didn't believe the 'stupid doctors' saying cutting out wheat and milk might stop my stomach pain, digestive issues, allergic reactions, inability to breathe through my nose, general weakness and daily headaches, never mind cross contamination and cross intolerances, along with a need to increase sodium intake to reduce fainting for what was eventually termed POTS. But at the same time, she banned me from having fizzy drinks, sweets and anything with artificial colouring in it because I 'went crazy on it'. Probably because I had some energy and didn't feel sick on the E numbers, sugar and citric acid.

Result - breakfast - single slice of homepride toast and margarine or cornflakes, shredded wheat, shreddies, readybrek, weetabix = start the day feeling sick. Easier not to eat at all.

Lunch - sweaty ham and salad cream sandwich, yoghurt, Club biscuit, juice carton. Or school dinners with all of the wheat = headache and feeling sick.

Tea - whatever I'd eat (which wasn't much, as if it didn't make me feel more ill than before, it was unflavoured, unseasoned and pretty miserable). I'd eat every vegetable, potatoes, rice, some fruit, chicken when available once a week, most fruit and nobody ever connected the fact that I felt so much better in summer with big salad plates of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, strong cheese, boiled eggs, celery, radishes, pickled beetroot and boiled potatoes - and stone fruits afterwards.

She never could reconcile that her 'faddy eater' would happily eat pulses, beans, anything spicy, vegetables that she'd never seen before (and wouldn't dream of going to buy because it was run by people who didn't look like her), pickles, seafood, fresh herbs, spices, smoked and preserved meat products (they tasted of something, thanks to the salt and smoke), gefiltefisch, sushi, stir fries, olives by the ton and nuts/seeds.

Yes baked beans are UPF added salt, sugar and preservatives, doesn't mean they have nutritional value though.

I agree that tinned foods were reasonably common but things like fish fingers were still a bit of a treat. I only had them if friends came round.
Cereals were basic - cornflakes and weetabix not as sugary or processed as today’s offerings.
School dinners in the 70’s were home cooking - meat with “ tubes” was still a risk. I only got cheap barley water squash. Push families had proper Ribena

Entire nations didn't get fat because they were earnestly following the food pyramid. Fastfood franchises exploded in the 1980s. There are a myriad of reasons for the enfattification.

Ricicles? Coco pops? Frosted Shreddies? Sugar puffs? Frosties?

They were all in the selection boxes with just one standard cornflakes and one of rice crispies.

Flipping hated the lot of them, but that's by the by, they were definitely there, along with the advertising for Robinson's Jam, complete with inappropriate children's toy imagery.

I don't think there is any doubt that there was plenty of processed food available when I was a child, and in some respects it was worse as less regulated. I remember seeing a lot of very vividly coloured food and drink that I'm sure wouldn't be allowed now. But, if I recall rightly, it was expensive. Now obviously I was only a young child and in no way involved in managing the family budget so I could be wrong, but I do remember being told that we couldn't have things like shop bought cake, processed cheese slices or ham etc because they cost too much. My sandwiches for school on a Monday were usually made with leftovers of whatever roast meat - usually beef - we'd had for Sunday lunch. What I wanted was the slices of bright pink processed meat that my better off friends had in their packed lunches but I rarely got it! That seems insane now. These days it's fresh food that is too expensive and processed stuff that's cheap.
I don't think my Mum served us mostly fresh food because she really knew it was better for us, it was down to finances and logistics. We had no freezer so seldom ate frozen food and we didn't have a lot of money so we ate what was cheapest. Ironically we ate what I'd now see as total junk for a treat on birthdays etc whilst something like roast beef was a regular thing. There's no way that a family on the equivalent income nowadays could afford roast beef or lamb as often as we ate it. Chicken was expensive though, and salmon was something I'd heard of but never seen, whereas cod and haddock were cheap and plentiful. How things change.

I grew up on a diet of absolute garbage in the 70s.

Cheap white bread, plastic cheese, margarine, chocolate 'yoghurt', brightly coloured sugary cereals, endless biscuits, squash and soft drinks instead of water, no veg other than peas and corn. Dessert (usually ice cream and/or jelly) every day.

I first had pasta (apart from spaghetti hoops) when I was about 14 and we were on holiday in S of France and went to Italy for the day. I'd never seen it before!

My mum always had a ginger beer plant (still no idea what one was) and we had Sodastream drinks. The cola was vile.

We'd always come back from my auntie's with a bowl of dripping.

Fancy when I was growing up (my mum was the worst cook ever) was Birds Eye cod in parsley sauce served with frozen rice and peas followed by tinned peach slices with evaporated milk or tinned rice pudding.

There's a reason I learned to cook!

One of my favourite primary school puddings was milky coffee with doughnuts. They'd take away those lovely tin jugs and they'd be filled with instant coffee made with whole milk. I kid you not. I can still taste it now.

My DM was at Uni in the 60’s/early 70’s and she learnt how to make amazing curries and pasta dishes - we very rarely had meat & 2 veg meals growing up (I was envious of my friends at the time tbh) but she made - and taught us to make amazing proper curries from scratch, the best ever lasagne and also how to make a decent meal from whatever was in the fridge.
my roast is now the best, but I can turn my hand to anything, and avoid UPF as much as possible, as my DM always has.

Oh dear! Poor you 😞

The selection boxes were too expensive for us to have, except as a treat once in a blue moon. We tended to have for breakfast:

1. porridge
2. French toast
3. Full English
4. Weetabix or shredded wheat
5. scrambled or poached eggs on toast
6. Derbyshire oatcakes with eggs, whatever on top

An egg man (chicken farmer) came every week and sold us his eggs direct, and my mother bought a large tray of eggs, probably cheaper than in the shops?

I also forgot, we ate tripe, pigs trotters, cow heels and chitterlings for tea. I used to see brawn at the butcher’s, but luckily I don’t remember eating it.

My mother made her own bread and cakes every week. (She was well into cooking)

Yes, the cereal selection boxes were a once a year treat, when we were on our summer holidays in a caravan or similar.

The whole way we think and learn about food has changed since the 1950s.

My Mum, and grandmother, were good cooks. They had no cookbooks except the Be-Ro Flour Book. People exchanged recipes from handwritten notebooks and carried them in their heads. So not many new influences. Later my Mum had the Hamlyn ‘all colour’ cookbook, a terrifying ‘marguerite pattern ‘ book and later in the 70s a set of cards from Cordon Bleu.

My MIL who is an exquisite cook and grew up and lives on a sub tropical island is the same now, she can cook a huge range of complex dishes and has never owned a recipe book or use the internet.

So a lot of people my age were suddenly introduced to Cookery Books and ways of eating that were new to us when we left home as students. Rose Elliot’s thrifty spicy bean based recipes. Proper curries. Etc.

I got my first wok in the 1980s I think.

Now every second programme is a cooking programme. Cookery books have been overtaken by the internet but lots of us still have a range of upmarket recipes from around the world by notable chefs and cooks.

I am always picking up the latest Masterchef fad, Tonka beans or whatever.

Unless you count sugar, salt, vinegar and spice as preservatives, which they are, but naturally occurring, no, I don't think there are preservatives in UK baked beans. There are some other things like maltodextrin, flavourings and modified maize starch which are not normal home cook ingredients, agreed.

I was very surrpised to find that many brands of hummus contain preservatives and I've been doing my best to avoid those now.

I inherited my nans Mrs Beatons cookbook. She had a Raeburn, which was the aga of it day.

I believe you. We had the same coffee but with shortbread or parkin. Sadly, never doughnuts.

Grew up in the 1970’s. My dad did not approve of Enid Blyton books. I think some of it was political and some of it was he thought there was better children’s literature. I think I read one but never really got into the Famous 5. Fruit was expensive. We were allowed one piece of fruit a day. There was one bottle of squash or Vimto per week between 3 and once it had gone it wasn’t replaced until the next week. Biscuits were plain digestives. A Corona lorry used to come round the estate but we were never bought anything from it.
We never had puddings during the week. We did have Angel delight but then we’d get told off for using too much milk. Only had puddings on a Sunday.

parents both worked so we sorted our own breakfasts out from quite a young age. Just cereals and toast. Walked back and to from school about a mile each way. Never had a lift once in 7 years. Left home at 18 to go to uni. I was very slim at that point.

same here, although not when I was growing up but rather in the early 80’s when I had my first 2 children.
Those boxes by the way are another indication of our changing diets - one box is one portion. If we had them in our house now both my husband and teenage grandson would need at least 2 boxes each to consider it “ a bowl of cereal”. One box barely covers the bottom of a cereal bowl!

We got one bottle of crap Asda orange squash a week ,I would have killed for Ribena or Vimpto.

When my mum started work full time when I was 11 one of the noticeable life improvements was that we were finally allowed bottles of Vimto rather than cheap orange squash

oh yes the Friday night mars bar! My dad proudly brought it home ( on his bike) after work on Friday. After “ tea” he cut it into 4 pieces and we took it in turns to have the end bit as it meant you got a bit more chocolate. That was in the late 50’s early 60’s and both me and my sister have such clear memories of those Friday nights.

We always considered the packs very small when eating them (as a special treat!) in the 70s too 😁 They’re 24.5g portions. The serving size suggested on larger packs is 30g so I think they’re marketed for children.
Most people eat more than 30g suggested per serving I think though!