To wonder why we were a thinner nation before we all knew so much about food.

[Bumblebumble123]

Isn't it funny that in years gone by, people didn't have the knowledge about food they have now. Peoples diets weren't dictated by calories or grams of fat or carbs, they were dictated by hunger. Yet now we have an obesity epidemic.

Is educating people on food counter productive? Would we all be better to scrap the info and start listening to our bodies?

I don't know the answer. I just find it odd that we know more than ever about food yet the nations waistline is getting bigger.

I think all these posts explains it well.

Pp mentioned a finger of fudge. Also. Milky Way ' eat between meals without ruining your appetite'.

Things, not just food, have changed a lot in the last 10/20 years.

Like a pp I would urge anyone who hasn’t seen it to watch Back in Tme for Tea. Watch the 1960s episode where the dad has to work as a miner and the old footage of the Mr Bradford competition where miners show off their physiques - honed by the physical work they did not by a conscious decision to go to the gym. Even working as a typist was more physical in those days as the daughter find out as she bashes the keys. You had breakfast lunch and tea - people didn’t eat out and there was little snacking. Nowadays people consume the same number of calories (maybe more) but don’t burn them off in their daily life. The reason there is more education re food values etc is to try and explain this to people who would have been effortlessly thin in the past, but now need to take some sort of action if they are to be the same size as previous generations. We need to eat less and move more. If you watch the programme you’ll see it wasn’t a case of food being healthier in the past (lots of stodge to fill people up) it’s a simple equation of calories in versus calories burned.

Portion size. There was a thread recently about how many chicken legs a person would eat for a meal and people were saying they would eat 5 or 6 at a time. Of course we are overweight as a nation if that’s considered to be a normal portion

I was born just after the war, still had ration books, experts say that was the best diet, you had just enough of everything you needed, plus we were a darn sight more active, only the local GP had a car, unless you were very rich, lived in a village, sometimes, walked 3 miles to school to keep the money for sweets, (or broken biscuits) there was maybe one bottle of fizz a week, delivered by "the Corona man", Generations not bothering to cook from scratch, and hardly moving.I dont agree that previous generations didnt "know" about food, my late DM went to the village butchers, for what was needed, fruit and veg pretty much home grown, bloke nex door went shootin, we had rabbit and pidgeon. People moan about the "nanny" state, but who is going to look after all these overweights with multiple health problems!

Yes, portion size too.

I remember when I was a child and a ready-made pizza from the supermarket was an exciting and new thing, my Mum bought one pizza to share between 4 of us.

And when I was a bit older & going to Pizza Express with my friends, we always shared a pizza.

Shape has changed too, my mum, aunts & gran all have much more defined waists than myself & my cousins. For me to have a stomach/waist like my mums I would be 8 1/2 stone at 5ft 9. She’s about 10 stone & 5ft 7.

I think the whole portion size & calorie crackdown by the Government is really unfair. It’s similar to the alcohol minimum price crackdown. The silent majority get shafted to pander for the few who can’t control what they eat or drink. It’s like living under the Stasi

noeffingidea ah you see I must have missed the memo about using them to replace meals

Supermarkets just didn't exist. They are designed to make people overshop, impulse buy, throw stuff in a trolley without a second thought. People walked from shop to shop, the butchers, green grocers, the grocers, the bakers. Carrying what they bought.
Supermarkets know if the small trollies aren't available people will tend to go for a basket rather than a big trolley. Basket shoppers buy less stuff.

Yesterday evening DH, DS and I were discussing why our bodies like unhealthy food so much (eg high in fat, salt and sugar) and healthy food, not so much.

Nobody tends to go the fridge and take out and eat a celery stick as a treat do they? I actually do like tomatoes and carrots and eat loads of them, but I like a bag of crisps or piece of chocolate as much as the next person.

I know Mother Nature isn't very sensible (think childbirth - why weren't we given a zip) but we'd be healthier if we didn't like unhealthy food so much.

When I was a kid, food was breakfast lunch and tea. 80s.
I remember my mum saying to me (I was overweight as a kid) “you want an apple? You’ve had breakfast, lunch one custard cream (emphasis on cream in the biscuit), you are over weight! Honestly it seems like it’s my mission to protect you from eating yourself to death”

Cigarettes were more important than food. My mums breakfast and lunch were 20 fags and cups of tea and she had a sandwich in the evening. Just to stay slim.

"I think parents are reluctant to volunteer...because of the abuse they receive from some parents if their child is left out of the team"

well the child isn't going to get much exercise if they don't get to play are they?

Inclusive sport IS really important. The really good ones can play competitively but everyone should get the chance to play in non-competitive matches. Running is a great example of inclusivity. Anyone can take part in a race and get a medal for finishing - the speedy ones can compete for prizes. It should work in team sports too as there are generally leagues so you can seed your players.

We ate less, did much more exercise and food was less easily available.

Nothing to do with knowledge of food per se.

Apart from Skittles really interesting post, there's a lot of emphasis on how individuals are snacking more and eating less...but hardly anyone has mentioned that the actual contents of your food has not changed for the better.

Time and motion studies show that although children may have played out more, there's not as much difference between the average activity level of an office worker in the 1970's and now. There were more manual workers but most weren't.

Smoking rates have gone down as well, which is great for health, but they do put an (artificial) ceiling on metabolism and nations that smoke a lot are often quite slim!

What I meant by food content is that the food you are eating now is simply not as nutritious as it was. There's lots of evidence that the way meat is reared, especially cheap meats (which were expensive then) makes them flabby and fatty- like chicken, so basically your chicken you eat with potatoes is far more fat than a 1970's chicken.
You can easily see this with carrots- 1970 carrots were small and hard and not that sweet- the new ones are more carby and larger and sweeter. Nicer for our tastebuds, but if everything in your diet is sweeter and fattier- you will get fat! The food industry have been allowed to create entire ranges of what are called 'hyperpalatable' foods- high in fat, sugar and processed meat. Look at bacon- it now has added water, often a sugar solution and salt and the meat itself is fattier and less lean. Processed foods full of glucose syrup are an even more obvious example.

This is not individual people's fault. Even if they ate a similar portion size (and they have crept up) and even if they didn't snack and ate a nice bit of chicken wrapped in bacon with carrots on the side- those foods do not have the same nutrients as they would have had in the past, and that is to all our detriments.

We have been done over by the food industry which has been allowed to reign unchecked. Eating lean meat, unprocessed non-chemically covered vegetables and decent bread without huge amounts of processing and sugar, which was common in the 70's is now a luxury that only wealthy organic lovers can afford. That is outrageous. In my husband's country, which wasn't part of the EU for a long time and so didn't adhere to these standards- the food is measurably better quality, the meat doesn't run with white solution when you try to cook it and the vegetables are far more plentiful (he actually laughed on seeing three small bits of purple sprouting broccoli for £3 in a shop once)- even the poorest people eat a lot of vegetables or grow their own because they have to, and there's no choice, but that has turned out not to be a bad thing. In Nordic countries they have banned transfats- we still get to eat them up here.

The international gov'ts of the world, and in the UK are complicit in allowing the market to make everyone very fat indeed, but no-one seems to want to reign them in. Instead they'd much prefer it if you just all blamed each other for a lack of willpower and inability not to snack, whilst the food industry laughs at us chomping on their hyperpalatable cheap rubbish.

No snacking allowed , they were a real treat. No convenience foods or takeaways, they didn’t exsist, and few people had cars, if they did, they were for the men to drive.so , as kids, we walked everywhere.

It's nothing to do with knowledge. People today are generally just not active enough and eat too much of the wrong sort of quick & easy food. A few decades ago, people would have more manual jobs and wouldn't be sat flumped out at a desk all day. They'd be more likely to either walk or cycle to work or at least walk between home/work and bus stops, now they just walk 10 yards to/from their cars. They'd take a packed lunch, often made of cheap food or leftovers due to lack of money, but now that's not trendy so they just have to buy the latest fad panini or whatever which is probably laden with fats/sugars. They'd have a morning cup of tea, but now of course, it has to be a skinny latte with a cream cake or bun. A few decades ago, a joint of meat would last several days, bulked out with lots of veg - very cheap and healthy, today, we just pop a processed ready meal in the microwave full of additives, sugars, fats and preservatives. Today, we think nothing of having a takeaway for our "supper", after already having our evening meal. It's all about lifestyle, having more money, the "have it all now" society. Nothing to do with education. I'm pretty sure we all know sugars/fats in excess are bad for us, yet we seem to be able to disconnect our knowledge for the sake of instant gratification. Quite simply, today we eat for pleasure, whereas a few decades ago, we ate out of necessity.

A while ago as part of my job I set 2 books about life in the early 1900's in Derbyshire. It was really interesting as one was about food and housekeeping and you could see the differences between now and then. A lot I remembered from my childhood as some of the things they did then my grandmother still did (she was born 1906 and my mother was one of the youngest of 6 so she was older by then and my mum was herself an older mum for the time I was born in the early 70's). She still had a washing tub with a mangle attachment when I was a kid. Used a carpet sweeper.

There were always cakes etc for tea but you were encouraged to finish what was on your plate and to never take more than you could actually eat. Of course when I was a kid screens weren't a thing really and not until I was in my teens did we have computers really.

I saw a quote on FB the other day saying: "These days kids have iphones, ipads, ps4, xbox to play with. When I was a kid I only had one thing to play with it was called...outside!"

We are much more sedentary and food is far more processed, I've tried to start making cakes etc from scratch as it's likely more healthy. My mother NEVER bought shop made cakes and she thought ready meals were the work of the devil, mind you years ago there were only the Swan Vesta meals so she was probably right!

I think there is something in what OP says. People are saying we ate crap as kids in the Seventies but it was also in that decade that controlled diets became hugely popular - F Plan, Cambridge, Grapefruit are all diets of that era - and also when bodybuilders introduced calorie counting into mainstream culture. So suddenly we started to be more aware of what we were eating. Since then, it's been proved these types of diets don't work long-term - there's a 98% fail rate and the entire industry is built on repeat customers who lose the weight, put it all back on (plus more), lose again, etc etc. So I absolutely believe that knowledge of food has had a bearing on us becoming obese.

www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-processed-meats-nitrates-nitrites-sausages

This is an interesting 'long read' from the Guardian which shows how the meat industry kept on adding nitrates to bacon from about the 80's onwards, even though they knew it wasn't healthy and might be linked to cancer.

I can remember what I ate every school-day from aged 4.5 - 17. It would be the same breakfast (small bowl of cereal, slice of toast & cup of tea), school dinner (variations on meat & 2 veg and a pudding) and a tea which would be a round of sandwiches, or a small salad in the summer & a cup of tea.
That's it. Snacks were very rare as I'd have to buy them myself and had little money. Cakes / biscuits were reserved for saturday & sunday tea.

If I compare that to what I see most school children eating now, either at their home or on the street, there has been a huge shift towards snacking, typically highly processed food, and away from set meals. Most teenagers I know, for example, skip breakfast, many don't have a school dinner either, but they seem to rely on a constant top-up of fizzy drinks etc.
It will be interesting to see what the ban on 'sports drinks' to under 16 will do - most teenage boys seem to drink one after school.

I think there's loads of reasons, but a top few are:

1. People used to walk more. Now I know loads of people who will take a car for a journey which is a ten minute walk.
2. Snacking seems to be more a 'thing' now. And a lot of snacks are 200-300 calories each if you buy a chocolate bar or large bag of crisps.
3. Drinks have gotten much more calorific. I don't remember anyone 30 years ago regularly buying a latte or a bottle of coke (and again, these are often 100-200 calories each).
4. Eating out and take-aways are much more of a regular thing now rather than a very occasional treat.
5. We have so much more choice now in terms of food. Research has shown repeatedly that people will eat far more calories when there is a large selection of food in front of them, as they want to try lots of different things.
6. Portion sizes have generally grown a lot.

We did move around more, walked more and played out all day long in the sixties. Parents cooked from scratch and there wasn't the same amount of processed food available. Working class families were also much poorer and couldn't afford to eat to excess. Going back another generation, my mother told me that wartime rationing made no difference to the poorer working class as they couldn't afford to buy much food anyway, regardless of how many rations they were allowed. Rationing affected those who were better off financially and used to buying whatever they wanted to.

I think some of the rising obesity rates started once people could actually afford to eat other than the bare minimum, as a reaction to having lived in poverty. An attempt to make sure their children were better nourished and had treats they didn't have. It's just gone too far the other way.

I think actually paradoxically food knowledge has gone backwards with some people, all the while as a culture we're getting more aware.

There are so many people, particularly obese, who live on a diet of takeaways, ready meals, fat and sugar.

In some cases people have lost the knowledge of how to cook, and how to balance a diet and the importance of doing so.

Technically this stuff is suposed to be taught in school, but there seem to be a lot of people who aren't listening.

I had a similar convo to this with DH yesterday as he saw school kids coming out of the local chippy with piles of fried crap and trays of doughnuts from Asda and he said the most he was allowed was a cake. Then they are most likely heading home to play on xbox or tv. I never had money to go to a chippy when I was a kid or teen so would come home and then at best have a sandwich if I felt hungry. I think a ban on the energy drinks is right as I see so many kids with them these days. I mean really, do you need THAT much energy to play ps4?

Rationing?
The use of cars and less manual jobs so less exercise?
Foods with added sugars/additives