To not understand why the 70s were so much healthier considering the crap we ate?

[Destinysdaughter]

I'm currently reading the thread about what was considered normal in the past, cooking with dripping, jam sandwiches etc and am curious as to why obesity was so rare in comparison to now where it's virtually an epidemic?

Prof - so you were living in a centrally heated house by 1974? I suspect that the house I lived in as a baby wasn't centrally heated either, but our combined experience illustrates that perfectly ordinary, families on low to average incomes, were living with central heating by the mid to late 70s. I also lived in a couple of places without central heating in the 90s.

Not having a car until the mid 80s does seem unusual in my experience. I didn't have wealthy friends or extended family but I don't remember anyone not having a car at that time.

I remember the Corona deliveries we got in the 1970s. Full sugar fizzy pop, delivered by the crate load direct to your front door. As kids we lived off cream soda, cherryade and half penny mojos.

Because 70's recipes were like this and they out people completely off their food?

www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/truly-upsetting-vintage-recipes?utm_term=.ejleDz3bYP#.tlxdvp1rwx

cup cakes were fairy cakes

The only one of those recipes I saw in the 70s was the suet puddings, which you can still buy today and are delicious. We did get served prunes and custard for pudding at school though which were vomit inducing.

Then as now, people's experiences were very different, even within the same area/family. We lived in:

1. Rented house with open coal fires, early 60s
2. Flat bought on mortgage with open coal fires, mid 60s
3. Council house with underfloor heating, late 60s to early 70s
4. Brand new house bought on mortgage with electric wall heaters, early 70s on - my mum and dad paid to have central heating installed in the late 70s (I think the cost was added to the mortgage).

In every single one of those it was freezing all winter and we often found ice on the inside of the windows when we woke up. The central heating put a stop to that.

I wonder if they weren't healthier but just more smokers - smoking suppresses appetite - ex smoker often tend to weight gain.

But I suspect snacking and longer commutes meaning less daily walks or bike riders as we all live further from work places and less works to schools as both parents now have long commutes so drop kids off in cars.

Think we had central heating - born late 70 but didn't have double glazing and heating was sparing used due to cost - so cold and jumpers were the norm.

Virtually all of those would be American dishes. The Atora one was probably British.

The banana candle looks erm interesting

My mum has a 60's Fanny Cradock cookbook I don't think she ever cooked recipes from it but I used to love looking at the almost hallucinating inducing pictures

Rose tinted glasses. The parents of the 70s were raising the obese generation.

I have to say that Trainspotting has a point there. I was thinking about that last night. The obesity epidemic didn't come out of nowhere. All of us posting about growing up in the 60s and 70s are over 40 now. The majority of the UK population in our age group is overweight. Many, many of our children are overweight. It didn't come from nowhere. Industrial and retail practices have not helped, but most British people were delighted to be able to spend more on food and drink as the cost of it fell and incomes rose in the 80s.

Life expectancy was much lower in the 1970s (68/75 vs 79/82 today) so can we really say people were healthier

Which year in the 70's are you using for the life expectancy stat, as its doesn't match any that I have seen? It was 72 years in 1970, and increased year on year.

I've skimmed the thread- has anyone mentioned supermarkets yet?

As in there were none in the 70's. My mum used to walk to the local shops for fruit, veg, butchers etc every day.

No massive fridge freezers either so no storage of endless crap, ice cream was a rare treat as we only had the ice compartment in the fridge to keep it in. Meals planned, and we were often refused something as it was needed for the next days meal.

Of course there were supermarkets in the seventies - not as many as the ones in the eighties but they were common. And chest freezers in the garage were very popular for the middle classes.

I suppose that's where we can be grateful really- no women Forced to trudge from shop to shop buying food. Thank god for ocado.

I didn't have central heating until my second year in uni in the early 80s. I remember working in bed with my gloves on much of the time.

As a child I remember the bathroom had a tiny little wall heater with a pulley and it was absolutely freezing at bath time.

Of course there were supermarkets - I lived in a small town and they had two!

The big out of town supermarkets came in (I think) from the mid 80s. In the 70s supermarkets were a lot smaller, more the size of a big poundshop today. Most high streets still had baker, butcher, greengrocer, fishmonger, ironmonger and so on till the bigger supermarkets opened. By that stage it was so common for both parents to be working, with consequent squeeze on time, that shops that depended on women coming out to shop most days of the week just weren't viable any more, not to mention that the big supermarkets were cheaper too.

My area definitely did not have a supermarket in the 70s. I lived in a built up area and remember going to individual shops eg greengrocer, butcher with my mother. When a supermarket opened in a neighbouring town about 8 miles away it caused great excitement but you needed a car to get there and my mother didn't drive.

Which year in the 70's are you using for the life expectancy stat, as its doesn't match any that I have seen? It was 72 years in 1970, and increased year on year.

Yes it does, it matches perfectly what you've seen. 68 male life expectancy and 75 female life expectancy give an overall life expectancy of 72.

Lost - again I guess it just depends on your peer group. On our council estate roughly 10% of houses had a car.

We had Sainsburys in the 70s,most of our shopping came from there. My mother was grief stricken when we moved to Scotland in 1978 and there were no Sainsburys.

We hd supermarkets in the 70's, there was a Bishops on our town and I'm sure that we went to Sainsbury's too in the 70's, there was somewhere called Presto too.

We had Co-Op, Kwik Save within half a mile