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.

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

And in some cases rationing actually helped the worst off because it meant each family member got a guaranteed minimum, which they may not had had before.

Deepdarkwinter
Interesting post. I totally agree about the power of food manufacturers. People ( or at least the DM) shout “nanny state” whenever controls are suggested but we really do need tough legislation on this.
However I would say the worst diet I ever had was in the 1970s. I was about 14 when Vesta Curry, Smash ( artificial potato) pot noodle and Findus crispy pancakes arrived. My Mum, like many, embraced these. They were heavily advertised as fast, convenient and modern. Recipes were based on tinned mince, tinned tomatoes and Smash. By the end of the 1970s people were much more awake. The Good Life was on telly. I had a child and my bible was, Whole Food for the Whole Family.
However as you say, eating in a healthy way is not a choice for many families nowadays

This is such an interesting thread.

If we're comparing to the 70s/80s then I think the single biggest contributor is the amount of food we eat nowadays. Portion sizes are so much bigger than they used to be and it's totally normal to snack all day long.

At every toddler group, parents are bringing out snacks within the first ten minutes. In my office people are drinking lattes and eating biscuits at their desks at least twice a day. That just didn't happen 20+ years ago. It's totally acceptable to have a huge takeaway once a week or more, when I was growing up we got a takeaway once in a blue moon.

Going back to pre WW1. The ideal body shape for a woman used to be rounder and plumper. This was partly because that's women's natural shape but also because thinness was associated with poverty. (And being brown too - which indicated working outdoors). Being plump and well fed was aspirational and indicative of a certain status. Because so many people pre welfare state were underfed and in some cases starving.

Rationed foid still had to be paid for. Minimum guaranteed amounts were irrelevant if you couldn't afford to buy the food, unfortunately.

When I was a child/teenager in 70s/80s we:
Walked everywhere
Food shopping was done once a week on a Saturday at the market involving a bus trip and mums shopping trolley
Used local baker/grocer sparingly as relatively expensive
We had one treat a week which was either a bag of boiled sweets or jam doughnuts to share
No central heating in the house
Played outside after school daily in fact parents would kick us out and tell us not to come in until teatime
Big school playground for football/rounders at break/lunch times
2 hour swimming lessons at school each week
PE at least a couple of times a week
Family outings were usually to local parks with playgrounds which we walked to
Shops all closed by 5 pm so limited food purchases
Food was relatively expensive so you just bought what was needed
Fizzy drinks, chocolate, ice cream, cakes etc were definitely an occasional high days and holidays thing which we only had a few times a year
No car and when we got one when I was 13 it’s use was limited ie not for school runs
Limited TV programmes for children and few toys/playthings so no point staying in
Household tasks involved a lot more manual labour- shopping without a car, cooking from scratch, no tumble driers, car washers etc

When I first visited the US in the mid 70s, I found the availability of junk food everywhere, the huge portions of everything, and the number of equally huge people, frankly jaw-dropping.

Sadly we have now gone the same way. Or not far off.

Yes, the 70s was really the advent of processed food. Not in my house though. My mother was clear: processed food was bad for us, she cooked everything from scratch. We were never allowed Smash or Findus anything, she used to talk about additives and E numbers. We weren't allowed chocolate or crisps regularly. We used to have nuts and raisins, dried fruit and health bars.

The upshot is I've grown up with a revulsion for processed food, and rarely eat crisps and chocolate.

As if by magic, there a concurrent thread running about domino pizzas:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/_chat/3188758-Dominos-pizza-how-many-does-a-large-one-serve?
A large peperoni contains 1920 Kcal.

I think lack of exercise has a lot to do with it. And low calorie processed foods and mad diets and misinformation from people who should know better.

I'm my early 50s, we were always slim as kids because yes we did a lot of outdoor stuff as there was nothing to do indoors really, however I also remember summer holidays just sitting watching tv for hours and hours to the point I'd get a headache :) We did eat some rubbish too but I was also really hungry quite a lot as we were poor and it was the time of rampant inflation. I was one of 7 kids. Something like a tin of campbells meatballs would be split between 4, you would get 2 or 3 meatballs, a little gravy and a couple of spuds with a bit of fruit from the garden (rhubarb, small hard apple) for afters. Supper would be a plain biscuit and a cup of tea. Breakfast usually porridge made with water with a small sprinkle of sugar and a splash of milk. Lunch would be a tin of soup split 4 ways with half a slice of bread. I remember vividly having lunch at a friends house and we had a tin of tomato soup between the two of us and whole slice of bread each which was actually buttered! It was a revelation, I remember the butter melting into the hot soup as I dipped it in, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!

My mum and dad both worked but if mum had time, we did get some better meals such as mince and mash and carrots and homemade rice pudding, but the convenience foods were expensive so were made to spread out further than they should.

About 40/50 years ago the whole notion of low fat eating took hold despite not lot of research. We began to believe that dietary fat caused weight gain and the whole low fat industry was born. Low fat products had sugar added as well as chemical flavourings to make them more palatable. In the last 40 years the incidence of diabetes has sky rocketed. Gary Taubes "WHY WE GET FAT AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT" is a brilliant read to explain what has happened to our eating habits to cause such an epidemic of obesity and diabetes.

At the risk of sounding like an episode of Monty Python ...

When I was a child in the 70s, the mobile shop came to our village once a week and we were given 5p to spend on sweets - which usually went on 10 x halfpenny chews. Or maybe a sherbet fountain.

We had home-made cake or scones if someone was coming round for tea. Otherwise it was toast & jam and a mug of tea when we got home from school.

My kids nowadays expect lots of treats routinely when they get back from school. They are very fond of those plastic tubs of little things you get from M&S or Waitrose. Which only ever last about 2 days. My fault, I know.

Luckily they are very sporty and not remotely overweight.

Actually, OP, my mother (born 1918) was always very clued up about what constituted a good diet - protein, carbs, veg, etc.
But like just about everybody decades ago, she cooked everything from scratch. The odd tin of peas or baked beans was as far as convenience food ever went in our house in the 50s and 60s.

Whoever mentioned cupcakes and the amount of icing, I agree it's gross. Another OTT American import. Who else still makes fairy cakes - smaller, with just a little icing? I still make them now and then, inc. for little Gdcs' 'birthdays - they always go down very well.

Cars have power-steering, electric windows, contoured seats. Gear levers and handbrakes within easy reach, and smooth to operate. No need to use any muscles, and even less so with an automatic.

Three weeks ago, I spent ten minutes at the wheel of an old van with none of the above. My shoulders and arms ached for days after. It was a reminder of why, years ago, I would lose weight and have tighter core muscles after a week of extra driving.

The silent majority get shafted to pander for the few who can't control what they eat or drink
It's not a few. The majority are now overweight or obese (66%of men and 52% of women).
As for the government stepping in, well they have a responsibility for public health policy.

Rationed foid still had to be paid for. Minimum guaranteed amounts were irrelevant if you couldn't afford to buy the food, unfortunately

The point was that for many people were better fed than they had been before the war. People who had been a poor diet - say subsisting on mainly potatoes and bread for example - were able to increase their intake of protein and vitamins because they received the same ration as everybody else.

Thus infant mortality rates declined and the average age at which people died of natural causes rose.

ludog that theory has been more or less disproved. Many people in the 70's practically mainlined sugar but still managed to be thin.

The average sugar content of food has skyrocketed since the 70s.

Comparing breakfast cereal sugar content over the last 40 years is extraordinary.

Shops all closed by 5 pm so limited food purchases

I agree- shops were closed, and the 'sweet shop' was a separate shop in which you went in about once a week. Now, they are pushing large Dairy Milk chocolate bars at you for £1 each, which don't even contain proper milk but some other type of fat, when you go to buy a newspaper!

It's called the 'obesogenic' environment, and it's great for manufacturers and industry who make billions on us being unable to resist all the time every time. Even if you say 'no' 9 times out of ten as you go past a snack display at the exit to a supermarket, or in the garage or go quickly past the rows and rows of biscuits, you can't keep it up all the time and every now and then you succumb. Some can't resist at all or have faulty mechanisms for recognizing hunger and they are really likely to get fat in this environment.

It's also worth saying, although I don't think this is the whole reason, that in the 50s/60s and 70's, most people only lived, sparsely, off one wage. So, one person was home, like my granny and spend her entire day cooking high quality meals, peeling veggies and so on- I guess each main meal took 1-2 hours to prepare, serve and wash up. Now, most people need either 1 1/2 or 2 incomes to pay the mortgage and/or women prefer to work outside the home, this type of time spent on peeling knobbly carrots has gone out of the window and it becomes easier to use jars, pre-prepared veg, ready made lasagne, and also possibly more economic as that ready lasagne is probably cheaper than buying (shit quality anyway) mince and doing it yourself.

Ridingwindhorses the rationale behind rationing was so that people couldn't panic buy and stockpile food. The economic changes occured mainly because women were now employed in industry and other jobs that had previously been done by men, and therefore even poor families had more money to spend on food, and women had control over their own earnings because they were now running the household. They no longer had to wait for their husband to come home from the pub on payday hoping there was still enough left over for rent and food (not all men, obviously).

I do think with kids a lot of it’s exercise. Everyone had a bag of skips & penguin in their lunch box at my school which would now be frowned on yet there were very few chubby kids.

Smoking is an interesting one. I used to work in fashion & the super skinny ones had a diet of fags, jelly beans & diet coke.

They were thin in the war years as food was scarce of course - rationed to , so lots more veggies and the people worked a lot harder, so more exercise, maybe walking to work more etc etc.
our knowledge of food isn't better these days - its just there and promoted as good - look at the amount of chocolate for sale everywhere for christmas, mothers day, easter etc - we have become brainwashed into eating and buying more because its there. all this isnt news of course, just hasnt helped and made people overweight. myself included! In the war they did eat more fat, just burned it off quicker. I don't know the answers though, not unless everything thats bad is banned for good and i cant see that happening!

As for sugar content in breakfast cereal, people just to add sugar to it. The sugar bowl was always out on the breakfast table.