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?

It was common for children to be scolded for being greedy

Wonder what they would think about the vast amounts of food that children put away as always described on MN

noeffingidea yes - if you were too big for the usual sizes you had to shop at Evans, which was known as Evans Outsize at the time

I can only remember one overweight child a primary school & two obese teenagers at secondary school, one of whom dieted over the summer holidays & came back transformed!

Plenty of women could drive and many worked

I was going by my experience - few of my friends' mothers could drive and they certainly didn't have their own cars if they could drive. We were the only two car family I knew.

I didn't know many other mums who worked either, my mum worked part-time from when I was 6.

People's comments are interesting.. If you think your children get less exercise nowadays than you did as a child, why don't you make sure that they get more exercise? If you think you/they have more snacks why don't you/they stop eating them? Or are you just talking about what you perceive other people do or did?

I don't see the difference in exercise (where I live secondary children walk at least three miles a day to school and back) and I don't give my children large portions of food/lots of snacks. If anything they and their friends eat less sugary food as people are more aware of the problems it can cause.

I was going by my experience - few of my friends' mothers could drive and they certainly didn't have their own cars if they could drive. We were the only two car family I knew.

That is the problem with this thread though. People are saying that this or that happened in the 1970s as if that was everyone's experience when actually it was just their own personal experience. My mother drove a car and worked once we started school (as a teacher) and that wasn't at all uncommon among those I knew. Even my grandmother, who would now be over a 100 years old could drive.
You wouldn't assume everyone does as you do today so why assume that everyone was the same then?

Oh yes, alcohol was christmas only in the house.

Otherwise my parents only drank on rare meals out- which were far more formal "best outfits" etc, rather than the cba cooking lets go to the local gastropub.

I think i was about 10- i remember my mum having a discussion with her friends about whether i should be put on a diet, or was it just puppy fat i wasn't actually fat at all, just my body changing pre-puperty Parents thought nothing of restricting your diet, and were open about why, if they thought you were putting on weight.

My diet in the 70's was shocking. I was incredibly fussy cereal for breakfast. Sausage roll or sweets for lunch with a tip top drink. Loads of white toast with butter and marmalade when I got home from school and if I ate dinner it was always chips. I was skinny but wtf were my parents thinking!

I grew up on a council estate in the 70s and mom always cooked from scratch every night. But my kids eat healthier now than i did. inThe biscuit tin was always out (but never more than 2), the 'pop man' brought fizzy drink deliveries to the whole street. honestly it was like the messiah was coming - everyone ran out to wave and afterwards all the kids would compare what 'pop' flavours they had. Our neighbours' kid would get through a whole white loaf in one sitting making jam butties. skinny as a switch but his two sisters were like violet beuragarde after the blueberry gum. My mam would say thinks like 'look at that Monica, buying strawberries out of season. she's just showing off.' and many of the neighbours when to the chippy 4 nights a week (a further source of lip curling for mam) and cooked chips the other nights. We also had sweets every day and home cooked puds most nights.
eeeh those were the days. bad flares and worse haircuts.

www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730322-100-bitter-truth-how-were-making-fruit-and-veg-less-healthy/

Apparently we have also bred our fruit and veg to be less healthy as well.

If you think your children get less exercise nowadays than you did as a child

I think mine get more and that's mainly because we don't drive - so days out or trip to town starts with a good long walk. I do think car's mess with perception of a long walk as well - though seen similar with ILs and busses. Since they had free bus passes they get the busses more and walk less and less - walks that 12 - 18 months ago were short suddenly don't seem that way to them anymore.

I was just reminded about the common use of tinned veg and the perception that fresh veg was 'fancy'.

Not everyone by any means but using tinned veg for all veg was normal for some people. Freezers might gradually have changed that.

I do remember at school in the early/mid 80s having a conversation about veg and tinned being the norm for some people, both as an ingredient and as the veg part of the meal. There was a definite perception that using fresh veg all the time was a very upmarket, even ostentatious thing to do.

I agree with all of the above - no ready meals, very little tv, no computers, no mobile phones (I was going to put phones and realised that we did have those!!) - if I wanted to talk to my friends i'd get on my bike and go and see them. Sweets were a treat - in your christmas stocking, chocolate at easter(so exciting) my children hardly ever eat their easter eggs as they're not a treat, birthdays - you had a cake much more special than now because you rarely had one in-between. Only ate at restaurants very occasionally again special occasions - it just wasn't the norm - it was such a special thing when you did go out.
The more I think about it and list it all the sadder I feel about the world my children live in.

Marynary we can only comment on our own experiences/observations though. Happens all the time on mn.

Being an army brat the rich/poor divide, class divide was not only more obvious but encouraged! As was drinking alcohol, the people saying there was little alcohol consumed at home that was true I think and something I observed and mum was never a big drinker but the men drank a lot! Plus the bars and clubs were heavily subsidised and drinking was a big part of army culture then (don't know if it's still true).

My dd is far more active/sporty than I was but in recent years due to disability has had to rein it in. She's never been a big eater, hates chocolate and chips and is very slim (just within healthy bmi lower end). Whereas her friends are all definitely on the chubby side and a few are VERY overweight, do v little activity (especially now in last years of school and PE no longer compulsory), their families eat large takeaways for dinner several times a week and they snack constantly to the point I don't think they know what hunger feels like. Dd I have the opposite problem I have to remind her to eat and drink.

Something I have definitely noticed we eat tea later now. When I was a kid it was 1730 on the dot every day including weekends, supper of tea n toast at 2000. Only variation was occasionally on holidays (if we were caught out somewhere unfamiliar) and Christmas Day.

The more I think about it and list it all the sadder I feel about the world my children live in.

Well, I don't. It's very personal, isn't it? I wasn't miserable as a child but my children had a better childhood in the 90s and 00s than I did in the 60s and 70s - on balance.

They had a better diet and better health care.

They had (at nursery and primary level, anyway) a better education. (At secondary it was probably very similar.)

Money was a lot less tight so there was no atmosphere of teetering on the brink, which is one of the things I recall being aware of. We could afford decent holidays (occasionally, anyway) and the four of us (two parents, two children) enjoyed each other's company. When they needed new clothes or shoes they got them. If we fancied a takeaway or going out for a meal or an outing, we did it. There was enough money for extracurricular activities like piano lessons and chess club.

If they misbehaved, by and large we managed to deal with it by talking. When I was growing up, hitting children was commonplace both at home and at school. It wasn't just not condemned, in many circles it was almost encouraged. Bullying was not challenged (and it often came from teachers, not just fellow pupils).

OK, they didn't have as much freedom to roam as I had, but that wasn't an unmixed blessing. We tend to forget the children who died or were injured in accidents, or suffered abuse or bullying in the time they were wandering about unsupervised by their parents.

I quite agree that its all very personal and agree with many of the things you say Gasp
I don' t think there was any difference in the accidents that children had on their own - there are plenty of ghastly things happening to children now.
What makes me sad is a world where kids communicate by phones and screens and on the whole take any things for granted in a throw away society. I remember feeling really hard done by when at Christmas I didn't get what I hoped for knowing that there wouldn't be any more presents until birthday.
I would never condone bullying or corporal punishment in any form but as a teacher myself I definitely feel that discipline is a huge issue in schools and that many children run riot and rings around the staff.
As for feeling on the brink I don't think in my life time I have felt that as much as I do now - the world we live in is a very scary place.

no snacks
smaller portions (buy 1970's wine glasses at the dump)
food was relatively much more expensive (3-4 times current prices)
no lycra
expensive clothes - if you got too fat for your clothes, you could not stretch them or afford more

sniggy, I totally agree the wider world is a very scary place at the moment! However, that wasn't wonderful when I was growing up either. Cold War, Cruise missiles (OK, that was the 80s), IRA bombing, constant strikes and power cuts, rampant inflation...

And actually my 'on the brink' comment was very specific to my childhood, and will have been quite different for lots of other people. For the first few years of my life my parents were very worried about money and also pretty tired and stressed by family life. It happens (through luck, largely) that things were nothing like as stressful for my husband and me when our children were small, so family life was a lot more relaxed.

Is your belief that UK child accident rates haven't decreased since the nineteen seventies based on any actual data sniggy?

Of course I don't have any data - do you?
I was a child in the 70's and 80's and was really speaking from my own experiences - maybe I wasn't aware of all these horrific accidents that were happening - I just know that accidents still happen to children, they are very sadly still abused and bullied as they have been throughout history and we can now add grooming through social media that certainly wasn't happening in the 70's and 80's.

If you wanted to change channels on TV you got up and walked over to the TV. If the phone rang, you had to charge downstairs to answer it.

This is such a good point, notagiraffe . I wonder how much different the energy consumption adds up to of not having these and a million other little conveniences. Even washing machines - lugging stuff to the launderette, or wrestling with a twin-tub is a lot harder work than the machine I use now. (I used to make pocket money by taking my big brother's shirts to the launderette for him - 50p profit a load! I tried to increase it to 75p but he wasn't having it, the skinflint.)

If you go back to Victorian/Edwardian times though more matronly looking women were described as stout.

And i think the reason so much emphasis was placed on a womans looks a couple of decades later and onwards and that women policed themselves over it (and each other) was because that was still the only "capital" they had in a lot of cases.

And as women started gaining more ground in the 70s and 80s the pressure on looks was ramped up from the late 80s onwards. I dont find it a coincidence that the pressure from the 1980s onwards was ramped up a good couple of notches.

The press focus and obsession on Princess Diana helped with this.

I have looked up some data for you 'Actually' and children involved in fatalities due to car accidents has reduced - this is because cars are on the whole safer and children are required to travel in a car seat.
Fatalities / murders and abductions of children hasn't altered significantly during any decade since the 70's but it is still only a small percentage of these that are committed by a stranger.
The only other data that seems relevant is that of accidents in water (mainly swimming pools) the amount has again decreased and is explained by supervision and life guards in place.
There is also a lot of research into the perceived threat of accidents and harm by parents so they do not let their children out alone etc and this means that there are less accidents happening as the children aren't at risk.
Hope that helps 'Actually'

Just read that through and it seems that parents are perceived of harming their children when what I meant is that the parents perceive that their children will come to harm

Thanks sniggy. I did know that Gaspode was right and your initial preconceptions were wrong (it's my area of work although I can't access the spreadsheets on my phone) but it's nice to have it backed up.

Multifaceted ... Firstly genetic inheritance...post war rationing had ensured our parents were brought up modestly fed leading to generally less number of fat cells in newborns thus less insulin resistance, thus a leaner individual..

The ever increasing availability of foods such a pizzas and The McDonald's culture has made subsequent generations inherit more fat cells...

Technology... Remote controls, iPads, phones etc, even central heating.. all too easy to stay in the same seat.. A phone call in the seventies for example, required a trek to the nearest kiosk..

Centralisation.. Closing the local banks, police stations, work places, post offices, youth clubs and centralising such places to the nearest large-ish town inevitably led to increased car use and reliance..

A combination of the above as well as all the other stuff would certainly have an effect..

Peace
no lycra !