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?

There was a 'Pop Man' who used to come round in a van selling all different bottles of pop. We had Dandelion & Burdock, Sasperilla and sometimes Orange. They were all fizzy and I loved them. I was born in 1956 so this would be around 1965.

My Dad thought spices were awful things and not natural!

Seventy years ago was the 1950s, well before homes had fridges, microwaves, mixers, blenders, and in fact anything but the most rudimentary kitchen equipment - whisks for eggs and cream, grinders for meat, wooden spoons, etc.

My DM never drinks water even now. She grew up on a farm where they had a well, and water had to be boiled before use. She lives on tea and a strict meat, potatoes, and veg diet. This is what she has eaten her entire life. She eats pizza with a knife and fork.

Back in her heyday, my mum tried lots of the fashionable meals and desseets of the 70s - baked Alaska springs to mind. We had fabulous Christmas dinners, with meringues, sherry trifle (custard made from scratch), plum puddings, Christmas cakes decorated like little snow scenes, and mince pies. An apple pie every week in autumn and winter because we had a tree in the garden, and endless jam as DF grew lots of other fruit there. Daily soda bread or brown bread. My granny had always made meals from scratch and DM did too.

I've gone down a bit of a rabbit hole with this

I completely agree with everything you're saying from my 80s childhood

But all the data I can find is saying that people ate more calories in the 1970s. I agree with the poster who said that bread and butter on the side was pretty normal too

But with fewer puddings, smaller portions, I'm thinking how could they have eaten so many calories? I feel like it doesn't add up.

i'm going ask my mum if she knows how many calories she was eating then. I don't think it was ever 2000, maybe before I was born? She's never been overweight in her life. It looks like there were lots of diets doing the rounds in the 70s so people were definitely having issues.

I was born here but my parents were immigrants. We were very poor as everyone had to start again having lost all but the clothes they had to stand up in.

My diet was definitely carb based but with veg and curries and casseroles. No bacon but we did have the odd fried egg. I grew up on fresh vegetables bought each day and very little meat as it had to be divided between many. Potatoes and Rice were staples I remember playing out and being given a plain baked potato in a tea towel and eating it for tea.
however the baked potatoes were massive compared with today’s offerings

First Chinatown in Europe was in Liverpool

Sorry that was to rainy day in London who didn't know there were Chinese restos outside of London

Yeah that’s nothing like my diet! We are all so different which I guess is the other difference

I had porridge and banana for breakfast
scrambled eggs with avocado on toast for lunch
cottage pie with lots of veg and extra gravy for tea

cups of tea and water plus a latte

I think it’s mainly portion sizes that have changed, and how much/often people eat. There was a thread a while back where a poster went on holiday with a fat friend and saw for the first time quite how much more a fat person eats than a thin person. For example, the insistence of 3 meals plus snacks every day regardless of how much activity/exercise was done that day. Also portion sizes - if you watch old cooking shows, they’d make a 4-egg omelette and cut it into 4 pieces and dish it up with a bit of salad. Nowadays the whole omelette would be one person’s meal.

I’m a 60s child.. I can’t remember drinking water as a child unless it was from the drinking fountain in school or at the park - it was always orange squash or sometimes lemon barley water.
I would often have jam sandwiches for tea.
We did have processed food like fray Bentos pies, tins of mince meat and sponge puddings etc but they came from a tin so maybe didn’t need so many chemicals.
we would have chips made in a chip pan with the fat/ lard left over from the Sunday roast about 4 times a week. We didn’t have a fridge until I was about 7 so milk was delivered everyday by the milkman and kept by the kettle.
My school packed lunch from home would be a cucumber and ham sandwich with a club bar and an apple.
Looking back my diet seems carb laden and unhealthy but I was very skinniy and full of energy.
We were also much more active back then.i would walk about a half mile to school and then back from age 8 on my own or with friends and friends and I would ride our bikes for miles from about the same age.

Actually my mother went mad on healthy eating in the 1970s, I cant remember who bought a book out but she had it and banned normal food we had at that time.
It was brown rice, chickpeas and tofu.
My father was desperate 😂

The Pritikin diet was popular in the 1970s.
An Aunt was mad for it.

We had plain, vegie focussed meals.

Changed for our family since the 1980s. Yes.

Changes ..
One or two food items from fast food every week.
A full milk coffee everty day.
Buying bottled water. They were just not popular in the 1980s.
Eating more home made pasta and pizza.
We learnt to make Lasagne and Bolognaise but had not eaten them as children.
Eating less red meat now. Much more chilcken and fish.
Drinking soft drink weekly, whereas soft drink used to be a treat for birthdays and Christmas.
We eat less canned and stewed fruit now; our puddings seem to taste sweeter, involve chocolate or icecream.
Eat more berries now. Berries were very expensive.
Bread is softer and baked with processed ingredients.

Breakfasts have not changed much.
Lunches have international influences - Sushi.
Dinner is more carbs, less red meat and fewer vegetables now.

Hugely I’d say. My Grandad wouldn’t eat anything from a take out for years except fish and chips once a week. His wife managed to convince him to have a curry for the first time a few years ago. Definitely no fast food of any sort. Everything was home cooked, very little in the way of processed food including things like cereal for breakfast- it would always be porridge or bacon and eggs as you say. Cake would also be homemade.

The weight loss diets were a thing in themselves in the 70’s/80’s. They were clearly an industry as there was literally a new one every few months. I think it was a bit more of a hobby for women - certainly obesity was nothing like it was in the mud 2000’s.

Health now it’s all trend based- - no carbs or no UPF rather than daily plans.

Not to mention that all the vilains had bushy eyebrows, brown eyes and black hair. I wonder if Farage got influenced ?

Virtually all imported, and much of it grown in ways that are very damaging to the environment. Much better to eat seasonally surely, and support UK agriculture. However, I assume from what you've mentioned that you are vegan. It must be extremely difficult to eat a varied diet as a vegan in the UK without relying heavily on imports.

Food was much plainer. Tea might be a small plate of liver, boiled potatoes and carrots or smoked haddock, boiled potatoes and peas. Pudding was often something boring and milk based like semolina or blancmange. If your mum was a good cook, it was tasty and satisfying. If she wasn't, it was almost frighteningly horrible. Either way, you didn't overeat.
And the physical activity was so much more. Grocery shopping everyday. Had to walk everywhere. No screens. Kids played out etc. Or you could read books and comics and magazines ... which were not as addictive as gaming and social media and porn and gambling. Just like the simple food was not as addictive as upfs.
People were nastier though. And everyone smoked.

One of the reasons many people were slim was smoking. The first evidence that smoking was linked to lung cancer was published in the 60s, and I certainly remember news items about the evils of smoking from TV and newspapers in the 1970s. I was worried sick about my Dad, who was a smoker, particularly because my uncle, who was a very heavy smoker, died of cancer before he was 40. My Dad did manage to cut down but didn't finally give up until he was in his 50s. It's hard to think back to it now, but smoking was everywhere, and I believe nicotine is an appetite suppressant (not that it had that effect on my Dad ...). It was commonplace to hear people trying to give up complaining about how much more they were eating and how fat they were getting.

They were middle class children. Housekeeper or Mother was at home baking and washing Uncle Quentins shirts
He had his his own lab/study at the seaside home. Children were at private school in the Famous Five. Everything was made fresh and there was a baker/butcher in the village. No crisps, no snacking.

I also remember crispy rolls, Energan??

They were one of the first diet things I remember. Also Ryvita which tasted like cardboard.

I was born at the tale end of the fifties. What I grew up eating is hugely different from my current diet.

Lack of heating must have made a difference as well. We got central heating in the mid 70s and what a luxury it was. Before that we had to brace ourselves to leave the living room, the only warm room in the house, to go to the loo or go to bed. We were cold a lot of the time. We must have burned a lot of calories off just trying to keep warm.

Yes it has changed enormously. Including smaller portion sizes and FAR less meat and sugar than today. Virtually no UPF except baked beans, sausages and some cereals (although we most luckily ate porridge and muesli).We bought freshly baked bread from the baker.

In my house 40 years ago a light weekend meal could be thinly sliced cucumber or tomato sandwiches (never both!). Good quality bread from the baker. Cup of black tea or water.

Bread was a staple of at least one meal a day.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g everyone I knew smoked. We smoked in pubs, restaurants, at work, just everywhere. Especially on flights where rows 1 to 18 were for smokers and rows 19 to 40 were non smoking. Of course the smoke stopped at row 18.😁

Few things came to mind from reading this interesting thread.

Mars Bars used to be enormous with thick chocolate so cutting them into slices was the best way to eat them. Now they are sad shadows so who would bother?I even remember in the late 80 there were king sized mars bars that could feed a family of five for a week! They were like house bricks!

Was also reminded of Heinz tinned steamed puddings. Growing up in a household of deprivation (part of overall abuse not poverty) I craved sweet treats when I left home and became addicted to the treacle ones and would eat it cold straight out of the tin.

Also, regarding Enid Byton books I remember that at one of the many midnight feasts at either Mallory Towers or St Clairs they ate tinned sardines pressed into a slice of ginger cake!