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?

I was born in 1969. My Nan worked in a sweet shop and when I was staying with them I used to help out there - ice cream came in small blocks, as did chocolate, and children generally had a 10 or 20p 'mix' once a week. The portions of puddings, sweets, ice-cream consumed then were tiny compared to now. Families spent a higher proportion of their income on food, it was more expensive then than now.

There were no bucket-sized coffees and hot chocolates in the cafes and drinking alcohol at home was a very occasional (Christmas or birthdays) thing. We walked almost everywhere, my Mum had her first car when I was about 10, for work, but rarely drove me anywhere - we all walked or bussed to school. We also played out much more - children's tv amounted to about an hour and a half after school, ditto Saturday mornings.

It's so incredibly easy nowadays to access large (and cheap) portions of highly calorific snacks and drinks - combine that with a more sedentary lifestyle and it's not surprising we're getting bigger.

Fast food and convenience food is a massive industry now. It wasn't then.

Kids were more active then. Many walked to school and spent hours playing outside in the road. Children spend hours attached to screens now.

Sweets were a special treat rather then a meal replacement.

Most adults could actually made proper meals. Cooking is a lost skill today

The eating carb obsession started in the 80's

There are actually aisles in supermarkets called "snacking".They make me shudder for about 6 different reasons. Including linguistically.

Food was fewer more expensive then. There were no ready meals. People cooked from scratch. Food was dull so there was no incentive to over eat.

I think we always ate carbs - my childhood in the fifties involved lots of potatoes, bread and puddings. We had those to fill us up, as meat and fish were so expensive. When I had our children in the seventies it was still potatoes but more pasta, rice, lentils and wholefood (we were a bit hippyish though).
I am intrigued by people saying there were no supermarkets - there were loads! We shopped at Tesco and then moved south at the end of the seventies and found our first Waitrose. It was heaven.

We ate loads of carbohydrates! Bread and potatoes were the mainstay of many meals- particularly for poorer people.

Food was not inevitably dull! We cooked all kinds of casseroles (carbonnade was a dinner party favourite), duck with different sauces, soufflés, all sorts. We had loads of dinner parties with friends.

I grew up in the 70s. Only one shop in town had an escalator, Woolworths, and it was clogged up with kids going up and down for fun. No automatic doors anywhere either. So there was a lot more small bits of exercise, stairs, pushing shop doors open, walking instead of going by car. My mum had a rug beater, no one beats rugs now!

I did snack. We all took a playpiece to school to eat in morning break. Cocoa before bed was a thing, too. We had more puddings, school dinner puddings like sponge puddings, crumbles, chocolate crispy with custard, plus stuff like arctic roll, birds mousse, angel delight etc.

Who remembers the adverts for birds mousse?

Meals were spuds meat and a ve. Roast chicken Sunday dinner was a treat.
Must less snacking and we played out all the times as kids TV was only on maybe 45mins a day really? Everyone walked more. Portions are huge now in comparison. No fast food. No processed foods with tons of sugar hidden in except we did eat lots of spaghetti hoops and stuff!! Dripping is no worse than butter or any other fat. Jam sandwiches only had a tiny bit of jam on as food was expensive. More manual work for adults in and out of the home.... and yes never knew anyone really that was greatly over weight except one child that ate sweets constantly

It's interesting that so many of you are saying that everything was cooked from scratch in the 70s. That was not my experience and I know it wasn't universal amongst my friends and family either. The most popular TV commercial in the 70s was for Smash (instant mashed potatoes) and there was any amount of similar processed food available in the supermarkets (of which there were many, in the cities and larger towns at least - we shopped at Safeway once a week from the mid 60s onward). Dried food, ready mixes in packets, tins, jars, frozen food were all massively popular because they were so convenient as more and more married women went out to work.

There was a parallel health food boom that got a big boost from hippies and 'alternative' lifestyles, and that led to the emergence of a few wholefood/health food shops, but all of that was utterly dwarfed by the demand for convenience food, which lots of people saw as the modern, better way - less fuss, less mess, quicker to prepare. And this stuff was full of additives! Colourings, preservatives, thickeners, emulsifiers, monosodium glutamate, artificial flavourings, you name it, it was in there. What wasn't there at that point was high fructose corn syrup, as that hadn't been invented. That and hormones in meat are probably a large part of the obesity epidemic we have now.

Food today isn't the same as it was back then. In the drive to keep costs down manufacturers use things like fructose corn syrup and palm oil and it's in so much if what we eat today. Fructose corn syrup was also added to food when fat became the enemy. The body cannot process this stuff and it actually turns into fat and causes type 2 diabetes and other modern day health issues. The rise in obesity can be directly correlated to the use of this stuff in food. So things like sliced white bread with jam and clover are not the same thing today as back in the 70s. Take a look at the labels of cereal bars, biscuits, drinks and everything in your cupboard. This stuff is cheap and often disguised with other things.

Gasp you are right. I our house I do recall spag Bol in a tin, angel delight and bits appearing. Arctic roll was a favourite. My parents were old school so suspicious of packet processed foods however so we didnt have much at all. I think they were viewed as expensive too.

Kids climbed trees not played on Ipads.

We had Arctic roll often! I don't remember us not having a fridge, but it was late 70s (if not later) before my mum and dad had a fridge freezer. Before that we had the little icemaking compartment at the top of the fridge and there was room in there for a tiny packet of frozen peas and a block of Neapolitan or an Arctic roll. Viennetta came in in the later 70s, I think, and became a staple for my parents from that point on.

I think the massive rise in food on the go being a normal thing has changed our relationship with food. We used to get a pasty once a week if we helped mum go down the market for meat and veg and lug all the shopping back! She would do a big Asda shop once a month which included treats like biscuits and crisps. Once the treats were gone, you had to wait until the next big shop was done. Now its relatively cheap and easy to get a coffee & snack on the way to work, eat huge muffins at coffee break, buy ready made sandwich with loads of mayo and rich fillings for lunch with large bag of crisps and pop, snack on cereal bars as you think they are healthy, have ready meal for tea, or a big takeaway or McD. And add calories in wine at home which really was not normal in the 70s

We went to Bejams every week for our frozen food.

My parents were quite strict about what we ate and grew quite a lot of fruit and veg in the vegetable patch in our garden.
We played out loads with kids down the road or on the school field behind our house or the local woods.
We only had one car which my dad used for work.
I think we had cereal or toast for breakfast with a small glass of juice, school dinner which was meat and veg (and vile) followed by a milk pudding/sponge & custard pudding, then had a "tea" at 5pm of something like boiled egg/beans on toast etc. We only had family dinner when we were older, maybe late 70s.
We weren't allowed to spend our pocket money on sweets, the only regular sweets were grandma's small bag of pick 'n' mix on a Saturday that was shared between 5 of us.
Fizzy pop was ordered from the milkman for birthdays/Christmas, ours are in December, so once a year, really.
My dad stopped having chocolate bars/crisps/biscuits in the house when we were quite young and a snack was an apple from the fruit bowl.
Chocolate at Christmas and Easter, really, maybe one or two smallish Easter eggs each.
A lot of family meals were made from scratch at weekends, both my parents cooked. Lots of fresh veg, spaghetti bolognaise,"curry", boil in the bag fish!

High fructose corn syrup is banned in the UK though.

I think it's a combination of things.

Lack of exercise and the screen culture has a lot to answer for.

I remember the Bejams shop. My sister and I used to sit outside and play in the car. I suspect ss would be called if I did the same with my DC now.

GreenGinger2 Our Bejams was opposite a seafront and huge water fountain, I remember it always being busy.

Sorry not banned but restricted.

It is only 5% of sugar consumption in Europe.

No Mumsnet.

Yes it was hugely busy, v popular.

I remember the frozen cottage pies defrosting on the back of my grandparents car after a day out.

I remember Angel Delight we had with choc drops added in and Ski yogs with a crust of sugar on top.

My mother cooked a lot from scratch,baked but used convenience foods too. We snacked too- digestive biscuits,home made cakes....

No squash or fizzy drinks and only Friday sweets( thank god considering the sugar consumed in puddings). My parents were war babies and lived with rationing. Mum liked her sugar. We were never fat though.

Born late 60s. V slim till my late 30s when got into wine at home!

As a kid

Drinking alcohol at home was really rare with people we knew.
We had sweets on a Friday and that was one chocolate bar.
Fizzy drinks were a special treat.
Ate out at birthdays in the Berni Inn, hardly ever else.
Take out was fish and chips about 5 times a year.
A snack was a rich tea biscuit with butter on
A lot but not exclusive cooking from scratch mum was a working single mum and we had a freezer and convenience food...findus crispy pancakes...

Basically we ate less, moved more and drank less.

And I think dripping is fine...

Anybody remember Findus frozen crispy pancakes?

We bought crisps and penny sweets every day at the school tuck shop.

We were far more active. I remember back in the early 80's my friends and I like to go swimming in a Saturday afternoon - we were about 11 or 12. 2 hour swim session at the local pool - which was at my school. We walked there, never given a lift - round trip of about 5 miles. No cafe at the pool to pig out in afterwards, there was a vending machine which sold little cartons of Just Juice and crisps that's it. Walked to school every day. The only time we were ever given lifts was if we wanted to go to the cinema in the nearest "big" town as that was 10 miles away.
My DD is pretty fit but if she had to do that much exercise a week she'd be calling Childline

My mother wasn't an adventurous cook, our food was quite plain but always from scratch. We didn't snack and a take away fish and chips was probably a once a month treat. Portion sizes are much bigger now. I remember going to the cinema for example and buying a packet of Revels, little packet probably about 15 sweets in it. These days they sell "sharing" packs, except they don't get shared!
Life expectancy is up because smoking rates have dropped and we are better at keeping people with chronic conditions alive.