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?

People ate less. Three meals, no snacks = Skinnier population

No snacking. No fast food. Proper home cooked meals. Chips an occasional treat.

The posters saying that people didn't have take aways: my parents ran a fish and chip shop. There were people that had every evening or lunchtime meal from there and other regulars that came at least once per week.

Some of my school mates tried weird diets in the late seventies... An especially nauseating one was boiled eggs and grapefruit. My mum used to eat a dried fruit salad for days on end. My parents drank shedloads of booze in the seventies but mainly outside the house. There would be the odd bottle of matues rose or bulls blood on the table on a Sunday by the late seventies. Loads of people drove home absolutely hammered too.

DH is eating Whitakers Coffee Creams left over from Christmas . Looking at the back of the box they are 14g of sugar for two sweets. A lot but the recipe has been the same for many many decades.

People did have takeaways fleecy but it was rare (on a population level) to have them anywhere near as often as now.

Of course there will be a few posts to the contrary, but that doesn't change the fact a takeaway was a rare treat for most.

Also, the odd portion of fish and chips/saveloy and chips was very different to the piles of kebab meat and ridiculously cheap fried chicken that many people (especially school children) seem to be walking about the streets eating on any given day.

Or the McDonalds/Burger King/KFC/Greggs/Starbucks/Costa that some people see as part of a shopping trip in town every Saturday.

there were supermarkets and snacking i don't get this thread!

My mum cooked from scratch every night in the 70s for us, we ate like kings, probably really unhealthy now, carbs, fat etc. it wasn't a healthy decade people died young from all sorts.

We had a roast on Sunday, leftovers on Monday which was cold meat with bubble & squeak kind of thing, cooked in the dripping from the roast or lard. Our vegetables were all home grown.

School dinners which were proper meals, no chips or pizza, it would be meat and veg, fish fingers mash & beans,that sort of thing plus a sponge pudding or butterscotch tart.

We didn't have processed food, no Macdonalds, no pizza, never ate out, and fish & chips was a special treat.

Sausages were from the butcher and were made of meat not fillers. We had shops, butcher, baker, greengrocer, grocer so you would tend to buy what you needed rather than wander around picking up random selections of crap and snacks.

We did have crisps but not much else and Lyons cup cakes or jam tarts when we had visitors.

Food tasted good, it wasn't brought from far away places and heavily treated with pesticides and hormones. Bread wasn't full of soya flour and palm oil. Food was REAL food.

We didn't have lots of sweets, no Cola, just the odd bottle of Corona delivered with the milk and Squash in the summer but mostly drank tea or water.

Lots of people were still recovering financially from the war and health had not been great for many due to rationing and illnesses that we don't hear about much now, being overweight was very rare as a result.

Someone's mentioned how we feel the need to snack all the time now... this is so true! My local swimming pool has now got it's own cafe (it used to have just vending machines selling really vile hot drinks). If the cakes are there, I will buy them! Cinemas used to sell a much smaller variety of snacks, just popcorn and sweets not GIANT hot-dogs and enormous portions of nachos and cheese sauce. So you'd just snack less. (I find it really easy to eat LOADS at the cinema as I don't notice how much I'm eating). I'll go to the pub now and order a bowl of chips, you used to be able to get crisps, peanuts and pickled eggs (!) and that was pretty much it in a lot of places.

Also portions seem to have gone up massively. The 'grab bags' of crisps you used to get didn't exist. As PP said, you used to get Penguins in your packed lunch, or a 'fun-size' bar... you can now get 4 large Snickers or Mars for £1, so there's no need for the smaller bars as they aren't good value anymore.

Maybe the lack of bus services (which have been axed massively where I live) means people would now drive to town/nearest shops. The culmulative effect of walking to the bus-stop and then from the bus-stop in town would have a significant impact after a while. Likewise, I have no local post office to walk to, so I drive to the next closest one. When I was little there used to be a small local library which my mum would walk me to (short walk), it has now gone.

There are lots more out of town retail parks and I find that I go to these more than my nearest city centre as they have cheaper shops e.g. Matalan, Poundland, Home Bargains.

Where we lived supermarkets were a bus ride away, people used was was closest, ie: the local shops.

Food simply wasn't freely available. As a child I had no money given to me, so no sweets. Fruit in the house on special occasions, tinned fruit and condensed milk was a dessert. Christmas we'd have a tin of roses. You could not go to the cupboard or fridge and get something, there was nothing to get. Food was for meals. I had school dinners, no one had a car, walked to school, got the bus to the shops so you could only buy what you could carry. To my parents rationing was the recent past. There was no alcohol in the house, again except for sherry at Christmas.

I smoked from age 13. I didn't have a Wimpy till I was 16 and was worried about being in there in case I got into trouble. It was only when I started working in London I could see there might be other food available, and people might be buying it ...!

Exercise. Smaller portion sizes. Parks and school playing fields more readily available for children. children played in streets- less traffic and parents less scared of paedophiles. Fewer incidents of stabbings. Booze more expensive to buy. Less of a cake culture. No Starbucks/Costa in Britain. Fructose syrup wasn't added to everything! Fewer hormones in meat

Dinner plates were so much smaller back in the day. Agree with the less snacking and so much less variety. Fizzy drinks came in glass bottles with a five pence return. We had fizzy drinks on special occasions, Christmas, easter, birthdays. And ditto with the one car that Dad took to work.

We had fish and chips
a) on holiday at the seaside
b) When decorating
c) once when we moved house

We ate out (Berni Inn anyone?) about once a year.

My dc think its normal to have a pub meal or takeaway every 10 days or so.
You see people eating takeawyfood throughout the day in any High Street or city centre. I live in the same place i grew up. In the 70s there were 2 fish shops in the high street. Today I can count 13 takeaway food places plus 6 cafes plus 2 coffee lounges (plus costa is opening in feb and a drive through starbucks is being built on the bypass round the high street)

When i was growing up it was considered vulgar to eat in the street - "common" if you prefer.... just not the 'done thing' whereas people walk around eating all the time now.

I used to walk to school a mile and a half each way whatever the weather parents didnt have a car. Hated it but when I left and could get a bus to technological college, put on a stone within a year and diet no different.

Well I grew up in the 80s but for me.

We played out all day everyday.
We never ate out, ever.
Takeaway was chips once or twice a year, and no extras either, it was a portion of chips to share and maybe a bit of my dads fish or a sausage between siblings.
Portions were smaller.
Food was meat potato and veg.
No coffee shops, McDonald's or crappy snacks aimed at kids.

Because some twat decided fat was the problem and cut it out replacing it with sugar so sugar is now in EVERYTHING and people are getting fatter and more unhealthy and still buying low fat and thinking thats all it takes NO it will take a low sugar/ No sugar diet and exercise people used to walk everywhere not rely on cars. Thats it in a nutshell fat fine in moderation sugar bad exercise good now just to put that into practice and Id be fine :)

Also, I think back then people were still eating high fat/animal fat diets then which doctors now tell us are BETTER for us than low fat products which are often full of sugar. I am not sure that our use of vegetable oil with everything now instead of dripping (in moderation) is actually healthier for us? Also fewer diet companies pressing dodgy (high sugar low fat) ready meals and cereal bars etc on us

According to different articles I've seen on average people in the 70s ate around 800 calories, or 20%, a day more than us.

According to livestrong.com you would have to walk for 100 minutes at 3.5mph, or run 5 miles in an hour to burn just 500 calories. I'm pretty certain my parents, although skinny, didn't do quite that much exercise.

Also, according to "Supersizers Go Back to the 70s", the 1970s was when ready meals began to take hold. White bread was preferred, whole milk drunk and most housewives would have had a chip pan.

So I'm willing to believe that it's more complicated than they cooked from scratch (so do I) and had manual jobs (I do, my mother didn't).

Another 40-something here.

Agree with most of what's been said here.

"mothers did not ask their children what they wanted to eat etc." My mum cracks up at kids being given so much choice on meals now. We'd one choice - eat it or starve! And yes mostly beige, chops, mince, faggots, offal... Yum (not envy) I'm veggie now

But also not just portion sizes but product sizes were smaller too 'small' packs of crisps can be as much as 45g now where back in the 70's they were 10-15g the ones we had our of multi packs for packed lunches. supersized chocolate bars etc too.

Yes white bread but it was thinner sliced and smaller area than now too (my mums still got her 70's bread bin and 'normal' sized loaves of now are far too big for it so she gets 'danish' loaves that fit).

Sweets on Saturday only paid with using our ltd pocket money. Pudding on Sunday after Sunday dinner.

No tv remote, only one tv, few programmes worth watching.

Walked to school (couple miles at least- rural) one car and dad needed that to get to work which was a fair distance away. He had a manual job. Mum worked part time (usually quite physical jobs too plus walked to work) plus did all the housework (no dishwasher, no tumble dryer, no freezer till I was in my teens), no central heating till after I left home.

Also yes playing out and even as teens cycling/walking to friends houses to 'hang out' and when there dancing and singing to pop music. Summers going to the swimming baths was the thing to do, not watching screens or playing computer games.

But yes thinner =/= healthier. Parents smoked heavily, dads an alcoholic, 2 grandparents also smoked heavily and 1 who didn't but lived with one of the heavy smokers died young of a condition likely caused by the passive smoking. My siblings and I have all lost friends/schoolmates in car accidents (no seat belts/more drink driving then).

Definitely remember dieting/exercise being around then. Nimble bread etc I've an aunt who's always been slim but also always been on a diet of some kind since the 70's.

But each generation it's different health problems. My grandparents who were extremely poor lost friends and siblings to malnutrition and poverty borne conditions, lack of vaccinations and decent hygiene.

Sorry, should have made my exercise point clearer. If you have to run five miles in an hour to burn 500 calories you would have to run, what? Eight miles? to burn 800 calories. And that's just to take calorie intake in the 70s down to what we consume today, according to these articles. So, in order for exercise to be the answer as to why they were slimmer in the 70s my parents generation would have had to do a reasonably paced ten mile run every day and I just don't see the evidence for that in my family, who were all slim by 70s standards.

I'm not sure people used to be healthier. Just thinner.

If you had a bag of crisps in the 70s it was a small, single serve bag. Now the bags are as big as your torso....same with chocolate.

I had three meals a day and an apple in between....nothing else unless it was Friday. On fridays I got my pocket money and bought a flake and a comic.

Puddings were for Sundays only. No pop ever. We didn't even have concentrate.

There is an episode of Dave Allen at Large where he talks about the plethora of food available at the cinema. This ep was filmed in 1976.

People burned far more calories back then being more active especially walking more. I grew up in the 70s/80s and whilst we seldom ate out or had take aways, things certainly werent as austere for us as memories of other posters here. Tonnes of the food was fried and we used to eat stodgy puddings, full fat everything, syrup or jam sandwiches and real, glorious, sugary coke. We weren't grazing all day long or eating McDs between meals though!: It certainly wasn't some utopia of healthy eating the way I remember it!