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?

crumbs how old are you? It sounds to me that there was a really vast difference in the standard of living in the 70's, perhaps more than now. We had central heating, a washing machine, dishwasher, tumble dryer, 2 cars so we were clearly living a far more affluent lifestyle than many on this post and it's likely then probably that our diet reflected that. I certainly have recollections of eating steak as a young child and we always had smoked salmon on a Sunday. I remember eating spaghetti, although no other pasta, and chili with rice and pita long before my parents divorced in 1980

stil I never saw a steak until I was 18, and then I was a bit flummoxed over what to do with all that meat. Just didn't get the point really (still don't as I'm a vegetarian now). Smoked salmon - was probably in my 20's before I tasted that.
Yes I think there was quite a gap in lifestyles. Our family should have been well off, both my parents worked (at least as we got older) but we were quite poor because we were a bigger family (5 kids). Because food was relatively expensive it really made it hard to feed us all.

My parents generation are expected to live longer then my children's generation. I think this is shocking.

People (on average) just eat more now, particularly lower socioeconomic groups as food is much cheaper. Junk food is an affordable "luxury" whereas it didn't use to be. Consequently the poorer you are the more chance you are overweight/obese. It probably used to be the other way around.

I'm first half of 50s. We were very poor when I was growing up but not uniquely so. I won a scholarship to an independent school so knew there were differences in standard of living. We had an outside loo too - which was freezing. My husband came from a much more affluent family. I think we kid ourselves to think the same polarised wealth isn't a problem today - I suspect it's more marked now but I am at other end of spectrum now.

I grew up on a council estate in the north. We had salmon as a very rare treat but it came out of a tin and was mashed with vinegar.

I remember coming home from school one day and finding a whole pigs head sat in the middle of the kitchen table. My dad got it cheap from the butcher's but thankfully my mum refused to cook it.

I was the same Crumbs. I got a scholarship to an independent girls school. It was like entering a different world.

Ever even heard of smoked salmon until I was in my twenties. First restaurant went to was when I was 12. Never had steak until adulthood. McDonald's didn't exist. Pizza was not something I remember. We did have spaghetti and curry (spiced minced beef rather than a takeaway). The only takeaway was a fish and chip shop. My mother often went without to feed us. Our food was, usually, dreadful. We did 'scrump' and forage. I remember winkles for Sunday afternoon tea, eaten with a dressmaking pin.

Stil, I do think what you experienced was unusual. I was mid teens at the end of the 70's and remember clearly our family having a twin tub until at least 78 or 79. Tumble dryers were pretty well unheard of. We had a car, ine car, most of my friends had one car too (two cars would have been quite unusual in the 70's). As for heating, my first childhood home had one gas fire in the lounge, that was it (upstairs was freezing), and we had paraffin heaters elsewhere. We did live in other house in the later 70's that had radiators but these were new houses or ones parents had modernised.
I was eating steak at 10 years old (Berni did half portions for kids). We also had fish and chips, the occasional chicken fried rice (one portion fed us all) and certainly I recall our first Indian takeaway in about 1978 (the best bit was I went with my dad to collect it and as we waited the staff gave us popadoms to eat).
There was actually a huge change in lifestyle between say 1971 and 1979, a lot happened in that decade.

I also remember watching It's A Knockout on the black and white tv and the frustration of not being able to work out which country was which. The commentator was like "Luxemborg are playing in yellow against England playing in blue". It's all grey to me

I wonder if there is a modern day equivalent to smoked salmon? I was thinking Sonething like COus COus but that is very commonly available

I guess modern equivalent of smoked salmon might be lobster, wild boar sausages and tuna steak. We had spam and chips. Truly disgusting.

Born in 1972 here and lived in south of England. There were supermarkets in our small town in the 70s, but not very big -International and Fine Fare.

We ate much less healthily than my kids do now - more biscuirs/cakes, less fruit. We had pudding every day - usually something with custard. My mum was always baking.

We were pretty active, as other posters have described. But truly, so are my kids today. My DDs are slimmer than I was as a kid.

And there was McDonald's from quite an early stage - certainly by the early 80s where we lived (Essex). It was a huge treat to go there!

I was 10 in 1970, and like maddiemookins we had no central heating, gas fires downstairs, plugin electric/paraffin heaters elsewhere- no automatic washing machine, no tumble dryer, we did have a car though.
We had dripping in the fridge (used to cook with, not usually on toast)
we drank squash (with sugar of course) but fizzy drinks at christmas only
we had cake and pudding every day BUT these were homemade, I can only think that this was somehow a key feature. We had virtually no food that wasn't made from scratch by my mum and apart from using margarine all the ingredients were very basic- flour, sugar, milk, fruit, veg, cheese etc. We DID have snacks- always something when we got back from school, (cake usually) and before bed Ovalitine (yuk) and maybe a plain biscuit. We had sweets- not loads, a small paper bag on saturday. At secondary school I sometimes bought snacks from the tuckshop. I don't remember portion sizes being small, or being hungry, but we were all dead skinny apart from my mum, and she wasn't exactly huge.

I'm mystified really as to why we weren't all much fatter. Lack of heating, more exercise and lack of highly processed food must be the reasons. It wasn't lack of cake

Really interesting. I was born in 73 but can remember quite a bit from that pre-school to end of infants period. Outside loos at one playgroup, strikes, power cuts and candles. Anyway, food. My recollection will reflect households with young DCs of course.

While I agree there wasn't snacking in the sense of grazing, there were Elevenses and Supper - in the late evening snack, following an early tea sense. So that's five meals / substantial snacks in a day, for some I'd guess many people.

I guess Elevenses were an 'at home' thing, perhaps enjoyed most by children and pensioners but I bet far more workplaces had proper tea breaks morning and afternoon than now, and that tea came with biscuits. I remember there being a lot of biscuits. Everyone had biscuit tins - so a steady supply, not the occasional packet, mostly for guests, I buy now. I have young DC, don't offer biscuits often. I had 'biscuit time' daily as a pre-schooler at home (Elevenses) and we always had a snack of biscuits and squash at playgroup.

We did eat an amount of processed food - fish fingers, baked beans, tinned hotdogs were a fave (yeuch), Angel Delight and I remember the Fray Bentos pie.

Alcohol use varied by social class I think and massively by gender. Ladies did not go to pubs. But upper-MC families had wine with dinner. In the 70s there was a huge explosion in home brewing and wine-making, I remember my dad doing this. Part of the economic downturn, a huge fashion for everyone making all sorts of things.

Also, there was a bread strike, so all the SAHMs baked bread for a while. Some continued.

In my family and their MC section of society, there was definitely a social expectation of slimness. It was a social duty. Being overweight would have been seen as a moral failing, slatternliness. That came from my grandparents' generation but I felt it from them, and a bit via my mother, as a teen in the 80s.

I believe that people had less food in the house, so less chance to pick at food. Parents would have lived through rationing. My mum certainly bought smaller quantities of meat than I do.

I don't get why people have the idea that we were "healthier" in the 70s. People were just (on average) thinner because they eat less food. Due to the drop in smoking and medical advances we are probably healthier now, if anything.

I was born in 1970. Sweets were a treat - once a week now most really. Now those little bags of Haribo are so prevalent my dc treat them as a basic human right!

I agree that home brewed wine and beer was a huge thing - the equipment and supplies sold all over the place because it was simply too expensive for a lot of people to drink alcohol regularly any other way. My middle class but broke parents and all my aunts and uncles certainly did (junior doctors, teachers, nurses, junior officers). They all had elderly cars bought on the never never but not automatic washing machine and certainly not dishwashers or tumble dryers. Central heating was common but far from universal - it very much depended on the sort of housing you were in. I was at boarding school and constantly freezing cold.

I think there were definitely differences in people's experiences according to wealth and class. When I went to uni we had a twin tub and mangle! Definitely no tumble dryer.

I also think people's memories are different depending on if they were born in the 60s or 70s. There would have been a lot of progress in a 10-20 year period.

My adult diet is certainly much better than my childhood one, certainly different, possibly better, than the adult one I saw at that time - more and more varied fresh veg, less stodge.

One big difference is that very few adults did 'exercise'. They might have played tennis or football etc but that was more as a social activity. The jogging boom came in the 80s, followed later by gyms. I know there was 'keep fit' for ladies and that probably was driven by social expectations of slimness but I don't think all that many women over 30 did exercise - most seemed too busy with work and families and there wasn't the same expectation as now that one should do it for ones own health.

I can remember when the nearest McDonalds was in Regent Street - I lived in Kent!

Agree with PP it might not always have been the healthiest food but you didn't have anything BUT that.

I couldn't believe it when I went to America for the first time. So much food, Such pretty food. Food everywhere.

Somehow we just became eating machines.

I think we got lots of exercise. There was a lot more dancing. I was in my twenties with small children in the seventies and did ballet and modern dance. My Mum also always went to dance classes. We swam a couple of times a week and we walked in the Peak District every Sunday. OH used to run and loads of people I knew played rugby, football and cricket. I would say people took more exercise not less.

What I mean is that i think fewer people did 'exercise' as an activity in itself, with fitness, slimness and health as their objective. They may well have taken more exercise but as a social activity. Or through work.

I do think that for many people, especially perhaps mothers with less leisure time outside the home available - due to social expectations of who went down the pub and who's responsibility the DCs were etc - it was easy for the social exercise of early adulthood to tail off into nothing.

I suppose I'm comparing me in my early 40s to my mother at the same age. She would never have gone out for a run as I do. She'd have liked to go swimming but didn't find time. Evenings out were for more sedentary social activities, or evening classes. Yes we went for walks as a family but not that often. To me, making time for exercise is important and a normal expectation. I didn't see that amongst 40+ or really 30+ women then.

I think that links to people being old before their time, compared to now. 60+ grandparents then seeming like 80+ people now.

My adult diet is healthier than my childhood one (at least as we understand a healthy diet now, I'm sure that will be subject to change.) More fresh vegetables - we did eat vegetables, but they were boiled to death in the pressure cooker, so I'm not sure of their nutritional value - and we also ate a lot more processed meat: sausages, corned beef, those dalepack 'steaks', gammon, also boil-in-the-bag fish with parsley sauce, but that was the only fish I remember apart from fried cod from the chippy. Processed meat products seemed to be the ready meal of the time.

These days I eat meat a couple of times a week, mostly fish. I'm more affluent so I can afford better quality food, but there's also less of a social expectation that there should be meat with every evening meal. We weren't well off growing up, so processed meat was what we got, alongside mince, and a roast on Sundays.

My Dad died of bowel cancer and I think his diet contributed to that; it certainly increased his risk. Perhaps the crap diet of the the time just takes a couple of decades to have effect: bowel cancer is very slow growing. It might be that eating a bad diet in the seventies has only started to kill people in the last decade, so people don't make the link.