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?

My mum used to shop everyday in the 60’s as we had no fridge, just a cool cellar top. I remember the butchers always had sawdust on the floor. She had to shop with both me and brother till we started schooI, push my pram and carry the bags. I can remember watching her as she chopped the meat up for tea and she’d give me bits of raw stewing steak or bacon to eat. They ate sheep’s heart, liver and kidneys nearly every week. Fresh unsliced bread every day with the black crust with Lurpak butter. We always had apples oranges and bananas and seasonal fruit such as plums and strawberries. Always a roast on Sunday. We had a milk man call. Mum would buy us 1 bottle of dilute fruit juice a week but we also drank lots of milk. Fizzy pop was a treat

I grew up in the 60’s. Water was the norm. Lemonade was for treats. Never had ginger beer.

Cereal/toast/eggs/porridge for breakfast.
Dinner was hot meal with veg and pudding.
Tea was sandwiches and cakes.
Fruit were snacks. But not very often.

Usually had a milky coffee and 2 plain biscuits at 11. Bread and butter was often a snack.

Most meals were home cooked.

Mine's the same at 88. Was amazed my friends and I ALL like curry and dismissed spaghetti bolognese as 'people don't all like that sort of thing'😂

My diet in the 80s for dinner was mostly meat and two veg although we did have spaghetti bolognase. I don't remember much rice. We did have mini pizza. Lunchboxes were similar to today - sandwich, piece of fruit, biscuit. I drank mostly squash.

But a sandwich now isn't the same as a sandwich then - the bread is likely to be processed via a supermarket rather than homemade by Aunt Fanny. Ditto cake. Ditto lemonade which I imagine for the Famous Five was homemade with lemons.

Yes it has. It’s not just our diet but our UNDERSTANDING of diet that has changed. It’s important to remember that diet as a science is fairly new…

I study dietetics at university and vitamins were only discovered in 1912. Essential fatty acids were found to impact health in 1929 etc. As for nitrates being recognised as carcinogens… 2006.

Humans used to base their idea of healthy food on what they considered balancing and fortifying. Much was based on how it made you feel and what your mother fed you and what would make you ‘big and strong’.

Equally yes Blyton wanted kids to imagine these places were fun and joyful… hence cake and sweets and midnight feasts.

I think when they are describing 'cake' in Enid blyton books it would have been a far cry from the heavy icing loaded cupcakes people buy now.... It would have been a simple tea loaf, un-iced, just a simple plain cake that might have had a few raisins and sultanas in it. Far less sugar than something like a fudgy chocolate brownie people would enjoy.

The serving size would have been far smaller, children would just have been given what my mum would refer to as a 'finger' - just a piece a rulers width and only a cm or two thick.

Bread was sliced thinner, sandwich fillings were more modest.

I do think that a more traditional diet was cheaper and healthier, and more filling.

I.e

Porridge

Lentil soup and bread

Meat and two veg. The odd pudding

Little sugar and little processed food

Another huge factor about the Famous Five which is representative of the time was that kids were outside, moving around.

In general people were far, far more active, just from doing stuff that wasn't automated.

I am a 60s child. My mother baked bread every day. The only snack available was a slice of her bread. On Sundays my dad would buy one Mars bar and cut it into 5 slices - one for each child. Juice was non existent- we drank water or milk.

There’s a programme on TV called the 1970s diet. That was only 50 odd years ago. You’ll see a huge difference from just then.

I agree things like cauliflower cheese were not a side to a roast - it was a main meal in itself by the 80s

However in our home potatoes were not restricted but the lack of diversity -interest - in a meal meant you ate less calories as you got bored with it

I think you are one of the only people who has said that their mother gave them raw meat! My mum used to give us small bits of raw steak too! Bacon as well 🤔

And now I boak at the thought of steak tartare 😂

I was a child in the 60’s and we only drank water from water fountains in the park. We always had squash at home. No takeaways apart from fish and chips and that wasn’t often. I didn’t have a Chinese or Indian takeaway until the 80’s. We didn’t have cakes often. We never ate out. We had chips with nearly every meal and fresh fruit was always covered in sugar. I read all of Enid blyton’s books as a child, loved them and thought everyone in them was posh. They were compared to us.

Chinese was a very special occasion in our house. We did have fish and chips on Fridays though. I’m 54. We never had fizzy drinks , only squash and quite diluted .
We had instant whip or Angel Delight sometimes for pudding or my mum would make a rice pudding or sometimes prunes and custard.

I don't think am average person from the UK 70 years ago would recognise most the food we eat in our house and we eat minimal UPF.

Today for example (fairly typical for a weekend) we had buckwheat, flaxseed and banana pancakes with pecans and blueberries for breakfast alongside a silken tofu, pineapple, mango and coconut water smoothie.

Lunch was leftover chickpea tagine with quinoa.

Dinner was blackbean and chipotle tostadas with avocado plus cashew creme.

We've snacked on cashews, hazelnuts, macadamia nuts, satsumas and pomegranate.

My son did also snack on apple, cucumber and carrots though, which I assume would be more familiar.

The Enid Blyton Famous Five books had entire chapters on the high tea the housekeeper made them when they returned from some adventure on the beach etc. It was total food-porn in today’s parlance. I lived for those chapters when I was a kid!

I was born in 1969 and pasta was definitely on the menu by then, eg we had spaghetti bolognese regularly. We also had shop bought pizza when I was a girl - maybe more in the 80s than in the 1970s - and people did drink pop but only on special occasions I think. I remember everyone being given a can of coke each at a party when I was about 12 and I thought that was very extravagant. We got a soda stream in the 70s but after the initial excitement died down it never got used. We had flavoured yoghurt (I only liked strawberry) but I remember it being more runny than it is now. My Mum cooked fresh meals for us every day - the Good Housekeeping recipe book was well thumbed - and always made a pudding too. We used to eat curry sometimes and often had rice with other dishes, but potatoes were the staple carb. For some reason we never ate Chinese and I didn’t try that til I got to university. Fish and chips was a rare treat (usually eaten at the seaside) and a takeaway KFC would happen once a year maybe - if that. My mum loved baking so we had cake or buns etc everyday when we got home from school. Gallons of tea. I don’t think we ever had a ready meal or a stir in sauce and the idea of buying a ready made sandwich or a bottle of water would have been laughed out of town.

Our diet at home in the 70s and 80s was based on the meat and two veg formula, very little spice or seasoning, home baked cakes made on Sunday; 'high tea' on Sunday, dinner in the evening other days. Fizzy drinks strictly rationed; squash was the acceptable everyday drink. Breakfast boiled eggs and toast, or cereal. Lunch often soup or cheese on toast. We didn't get a freezer or microwave until I was about 10. Frozen pizza then made an appearance as my dad liked it, it would be one slice per person.

Both parents born during WW2 so rationing would have been in place until their late teens.

Takeaways for rare occasions and only fish & chips available (provinces, sure there'd have been more choice in a city)..

A McDonalds appeared in town in the early 80s, my mum took us once and didn't like it, so we didn't go again.

Snacking frowned upon - 'you'll spoil your dinner'.

In the 50s and 60s, our family diet was virtually all cooked from scratch - meat, fish, cheese, eggs, potatoes, fresh vegetables in season, occasional rice. Not a lot of fruit, apples from the garden, strawberries, plums, etc. only when in season, the strawberry season was a lot shorter then. Oranges and bananas now and then, but they were too expensive to have ad lib.

My DM was generally a good cook - she made a lot of cakes and puddings - there would be some sort of pudding after most meals - e.g apple pie or chocolate blancmange. I do remember her making the odd curry (usually with leftovers from a Sunday roast) - DF had developed a taste for them during WW2.

Before frozen food was generally available, tinned peas. Except for the odd tin of corned beef, bacon and sausages, baked beans were about the only other processed food. We hardly ever ate out, and had takeaway fish and chips maybe once a year, on holiday.

That's what I would think too. The children reading those books would all have experienced rationing so would I'm sure love to read about an idyllic world in which there was plenty of lovely food.

Also, milk was much more widely drunk by children.

At breakfast, school, teatime, before bed. Lots of milky puddings too. It was regarded as a sort of wonder food.

I remember most meals seemed to come with bread and butter on the side. Whyever did we stop that? I bloody love bread and butter!

Not quite 70 years but memories from my childhood in the 1960s:

no water seems ever to be drunk- only lemonade or ginger beer

Hardly ever drank water on its own - milk, tea and squash were the norm

bacon and eggs seems to be de rigueur for breakfast

Common at weekends and for the men of the family. We kids had a lot of boiled eggs, porridge and unsugared cereals.

there is so much bread and cake! Sandwiches, bread and butter or cake at every meal, sometimes all three

Yes, bread and butter with every meal. Cheap and filling. And lots of home-made cakes and fruit pies etc.

lots of fruit but barely any vegetables

No. Local and in season for both fruit and vegetables were plentiful and cheap. Fruit was often cooked in pies and crumbles or stewed with custard rather than eaten raw. Vegetables didn’t come prepared so we’d pod peas ourselves, for example.

I've read a few of the books assembled from the Mass Observation diaries and bread & butter / jam features heavily. I think I remember reading that post war bread was abundant that it was sometimes used by children as a football.

There's also a charming bit about someone bringing a banana into the workplace (some people had never seen one) and everyone having a slice - one woman took her slice home to share with her family...

This was one of the books and it was totally fascinating!

Our Hidden Lives: The Remarkable Diaries of Post-War Britain - Simon Garfield

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Our-Hidden-Lives-Remarkable-Diaries/dp/0091897335