To think that people were thinner

[Elfina]

In the past in the UK, up until about the 80s because food was less 'interesting'; less variety, seasoning etc so because it didn't taste that amazing you'd just eat your full and no more?

[SuitedandBooted]

People walked more, snacked less and didn't really have a lot of fast food available. Clothes have been considerably "upsized" over the years, - just have a look at the measurements for clothes from 20 -30 years ago. I was born in the Sixties, and still weigh and measure the same as I did when I was 20 (just below 9 stone). In the Eighties, I wore size 12 clothes, - now, 2 children and 30 years later, I can wear size 10 and 8, I must be shrinking! On a serious note, it is really getting quite worrying as we are losing sight of what a normal, slim person should look like, and being a bit chubby is becoming the norm.

[MoominMammasHandbag]

I do believe that being a bit chubby is the new slim.

[tb]

I grew up in the 50s and 60s.

The nearest we had to processed food was either goblin hamburgers with gravy, or a wall's s+k pie. Both were before the days of mechanically recovered meat.

It was also back in the days before naturally saturated fat became the 'baddie' and if you wanted to cut back, it was potatoes, bread that you reduced.

All our meals finished with a pudding, generally home-made cake. Coffee at 11am often had a couple of biscuits with it. Saturdays and Sundays, tea at 4 o'clock was always with cake, but then tea later on was just sandwiches rather than a hot meal.

However, as a pp said, snacks just didn't happen. If I was hungry when I got in from school, the most I had was a bit of bread to straighten off the loaf with some butter on.

However, at a size 14 - measuring 36" 24" 38" - I thought I was fat, as Twiggy was the ideal size. If you had boobs, it was virtually impossible to get clothes to fit at the end of the 60s when I was 13.

[AskBasil]

I think a lot of it was walking as the default mode of transport.

It just isn't anymore.

My mother and aunts are all in their 70's and 80's and they think nothing of walking 3 miles to go to the shop if the weather is good. (OK they'll take the bus back, which 30 years ago they wouldn't have, but they'll do the 3 miles in the first place.)

No one of my generation would even think of doing that unless there was either a pub at the end of it, or they were being sponsored.

Part of it is time. I have a permanent sense of time pressure which my mother and aunts simply don't have (sometimes maddeningly). I seem to calculate how much time I have and decide that walking is time-inefficient because of all the xyz other stuff I think I need to fit in. I have no idea why I think I'm busier than they thought they were. I'm sure I'm probably not.

[AskBasil]

Oh and whoever said that bread was always served at the table to mop up gravy etc. - yes, that was the polite explanation. But the real explanation in many cases, was that the actual portion sizes of the dinner were much smaller and if you didn't have that bread to mop it all up, you'd still be hungry at the end of the meal because there wasn't enough of the other ingredients and bread was cheaper than the rest of the stuff on the plate.

[velvetspoon]

Time (or lack of) and cost is a lot of it.

My mum worked from when I went back to school BUT she was home by 4pm every day, and cooked a 'proper' dinner every night, which we had once my dad got home at 6.30. I've never got home from work til 6 at the absolute earliest, normally after 7, and the stuff I cook is nowhere near as good or healthy as my mum made, because I don't have the time. I know it is the same for a lot of people - working hours are much longer than in the 70s, and there's commuting time too; my mum's journey to work took 10 mins by car, or about half an hour by public transport, and that was fairly typical of the time - now people have hugely long commutes, mine was nearly 2 hours each way at it's worst. Plus working unsociable hours is fairly common now, much more so than when I was a child.

It's price too - crisps and biscuits and chocolate seem to have got cheaper compared to the price of basic foods like meat, fruit and veg. All this multipack stuff, and BOGOF offers contribute to that.

[oliviaoctopus]

I was born in 84 and the foods exactly the same? Whats changed?

[bodygoingsouth]

not too sure really. I was born in the 60s so was a teenager in the early 80s. most of my friends were a a size 12 not a 10. I think the thinness obsession is a new thing.

[LaurieFairyCake]

It's not because we're exercising less apparently, they just did research on children and they're moving just as much as ever.

It's the upsizing of portions and the proliferation of very cheap, sugary foods. 'Sharing' bags are unfortunately being viewed as a one person portion now - and frankly I could easily mindlessly eat a sharing bag of mini eggs.

What stayed with me is the scientist on that Horizon programme (and I've long believed it to be anecdotally true):

"It's amazing we're not all obese given the perfect combination of sugar/fat foods designed to increase our appetite and addiction easily and cheaply available'

I consider it a triumph of the humans that we're not all fat as fuck.

[OryxCrake]

I was born in the early 60s and from what I can remember portion sizes were much smaller. I don't remember feeling there wasn't enough though and yes, there was always bread with a meal. I suppose you get used to what you have.

If my mum went on a diet, it was bread, potatoes and puddings that she cut out. She was often on a diet, and my dad was too, but looking at photos now, they weren't massively overweight.

I think we graze and snack more now than we did when I was a child, particularly when out. I don't remember having big troughs of popcorn at the cinema, but you might get a (small!) choc ice as a treat.

I don't remember there ever being fizzy pop in the house, but I did have sweets (threepence rising to sixpence a week pocket money - pre-decimalisation). We didn't have chocolate or crisps in the house other than pocket-money stuff.

We had things like Instant Whip and Angel Delight (that may have been the 70s) but only ever after a meal and in small portions. We also didn't have a car and walked everywhere local.

I think that as a society we're more aware than we've ever been about nutrition, weight, fitness and health but we're also bombarded with easily-available, cheap foods that aren't good for us. It's a difficult one and I'm not sure we can easily go back to how things were.

[RegTheMonkey]

I grew up in the 50s and 60s. The only 'fast' food was fish and chips, and that was a rare treat. Very few people had cars and walked more, and of course no one had a computer in their home and children played outside all the time until they were called in at bedtime. We skipped rope, played ball games, chased each other, went on rambles - we never topped. Plus at school there was a PT lesson every day, either in the gym, or outside playing hockey or doing athletics. It was rare that you saw a really plump person. Crisps, soft drinks, cakes - that was for when you had a party. And you would be ashamed to be seen eating in the street, unless you were a child sharing a bag of sweets.

[VivienStanshall]

Food has steadily got cheaper relative to incomes.

The graph at the link shows that food has gone down form 25% of income to 10% today (ok it's for the US but we're similar)

mjperry.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/spending-on-food-at-all-time-historical.html

So whilst you may struggle to rent or buy a decent home food has never been cheaper.

[SecretNutellaFix]

However, a size twelve in the eighties is more like an 8 nowadays.

When I was 11 I had a waist measurement of 27 inches which was a size 14 in ladies clothes in the early 90's.

Today that is the waist measurement given for size 10.

[ArgyMargy]

Elfina I think you are being silly because food was just as "interesting" in the 1980s, 1970s, 1840s, 1650s, whatever. Just because you have widened your own horizons in this respect you can't use that as a reason why people are fatter now. And because the rise in obesity is not a UK phenomenon - it is happening virtually all over the world, including poorer countries and those where food has always been much more "interesting" than in the UK.

[RegTheMonkey]

And I forgot to mention the change in sizing. When I was in my early 20s, I was a size 12, and that measured at 34 chest, 24 waist and 36 hips.

[NearTheWindmill]

I just don't get this guff about sizing getting bigger.

In the 1980's when I was about 9 stone I was between an M&S 10 and 12 (10 too tight, 12 too loose). At that time I was between a Jaeger 8 and 10 - same problem.

In the 1990's when I was about 9.5 to 10 stone I was a size 12 in M&S.

At about 10.5 stone - 11stone I was between a 12 and a 14 in M&S

Now, at 11.5 stone I am a 14.

If the argument about sizes getting bigger was true then I don't see how I would have gone from a 10 in 1980 to a 14 in 2010. Surely I would have stayed a 10. This one really befuddles me to be honest.

At 21 my waist was about 24 inches and a 10 was too tight then

[limitedperiodonly]

It's a town planning problem OP and it's gone back over 30 years.

That's when we started building housing estates and separate retail parks and we were told that was okay because we could all have cars to link them and could commute by road or rail to our jobs.

In fact, it became desirable to live in places like that, and anyone who walked to the shops or got the bus after 30 was a loser.

So we all get stuck in traffic jams and get fatter. And they jack the rail prices up and cancel the public transport that doesn't pay. And the only local shops charge a price more than rubies for an apple more wrinkled than Rupert Murdoch.

That's not my reality. I have a wide variety of shops within minutes and an even wider variety within a 15 minute bus ride or a 15 to 40 minute walk which I like to do - even in the Biblical rain the other day.

But that's unusual. And the cost of houses here is breathtaking. Luckily, I lucked in.

Most people round here are slim. That's because obesity is primarily a problem for the underprivileged and there aren't many of those round my way. But more of us are being caught in that class.

So be careful of what you wish for.

[Trills]

you have widened your own horizons in this respect

I would suggest that the country as a whole has "widened its horizons" in his respect, and the availability of "foreign" food has got much greater.

[harticus]

Go to a vintage clothing shop and try on some dresses.

You will be amazed at how sizing has changed over the decades.

[FoxesRevenge]

I blame it all on the remote control. Getting up to change channels kept me slim.

[Birdsgottafly]

"I was born in 84 and the foods exactly the same? Whats changed?"

Our fruit and veg contain less nutrients than they did in the 60's, this has been steadily falling.

They become almost non existent as they sit in our fridges.

In terms of manufacturing our meat is pumped with additives and water etc.

Prepared foodstuffs use different Fats, more refined Sugar and again additives.

Cheap bread and pastry is very different to the bread we used to eat.

[morethanpotatoprints]

I think we were much slimmer because we didn't eat junk food or ready made meals they just weren't available.
People didn't watch so much tv and of course they didn't exist. Everybody walked or cycled to work, maybe got a bus. Children walked to school and played outside quite a lot.
There were fewer office based jobs too and more people worked in industry which could be quite an active job too.

[LightastheBreeze]

Portions did used to be smaller 40-50 years ago, though a lot of the food was pies and steamed savoury or sweet suet puddings with veg and mash. We always had Birds custard with our sweet steamed pudding, golden syrup or jam sponge was typical. We used to eat bread pudding a lot to use up the old bread and there wasn't the waste and all the snacking. Chocolate was luxury we had on Friday evening after school.

Eating out was rare and something we did very occasionally on holiday, we also had packs of cakes like mini rolls or Mr Kipling pies on holiday, a rare treat.