was everyone slim in the 1950s/60s

[ambereeree]

I've been watching old films and it seems that everyone was slim in the 50s and 40s. Even women with quite a few children. Is this reality or just in films?

It's interesting that in many Asian countries, the trend towards obesity is starting to catch up with the west. I'm in Singapore atm and there are so many more western snacks and foods than there used to be. Western coffee with a ton of syrup and calories is really popular. It used to be that most people were really slim here, but that's definitely changing.

What interests me too is that there is this whole body positivity trend too in the west. While I absolutely do not agree that people should be starving themselves or exercising excessively, I also don't think that it's a good idea to just accept you're fat and think that that is all good and should be celebrated. There's a balance.

@ambereeree yes they do look healthy, but I don’t think they look particularly small in comparison to a person of a normal BMI these days (normal being anywhere on the healthy range). This idea that everyone was Audrey Hepburn like in the old days is wrong. Incidentally my mother when I grew up in the 60s was never slim - size 16 and always trying to lose weight.

My grandma went dancing 3 nights a week in the 50's. That probably helped keep her trim.

I read somewhere that always being cold helps burn off the calories! When I was a child we had a coal fire always burning in one room but upstairs no heat at all. There was an electric fire in the other downstairs room, but we only put that on if we were going to watch television.or if someone came round.
Schools were often cold too so.
And we walked or cycled everywhere. We didn't have a car until I was about 12 and that was only because my father for a job that was too far away to cycle.
I think older women often put on weight (middle age spread we called it) but most people were thinner, but also shorter.
My parents were 5'2 (Mum) and 5'8 (Dad). Very few of their friends were taller than Dad, although there was one man who might have been 5'10.
Incidentally Dad died at 99 and my mother is still alive at 92.

Gluttony wasn't encouraged as it is now so yes, people were naturally slim in the main

Actresses are always The slimmest example of a society aren’t they?

Thinking of my grans family, one aunt was always very overweight (house bound from the 1990s) she was an amazing cook and served enormous portions: everyone used to love and dread Sunday lunch at hers in equal measure, as kids we’d sometimes be physically sick afterwards.

My gran was a crap cook. Her food was awful. Her and her siblings were all quite stocky, which was obviously the family shape, but she wasn’t over weight until she got older. She smoked 20 a day and died from bowel cancer in her early 70s.

They lived through the war, which must take years off your life. My gran smoked from 12, given her first cigerette for shock after her house was bombed in the blitz

If you are interested in the subject of obesity you might like this article
highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/

In particular, if you think that all people need in order to not be fat is "more self control" or "tough love" you may want to rethink that.

Delia Smith's cookery course is on iplayer now, dating back to the 80s. It's really interesting to see how unappealing the food looks - very plain. I think that food over the intervening period has been pornographised and our responses to it are very strange. Back in the 80s you ate to live and now we live to eat.

Such a great article Trills

That article (I read it a while ago) had a lot of points I disagreed with. It's almost like people identify as 'a fat person', like it's something that doesn't change like being gay or straight or black or white.

Yes, there are unhealthy skinny people. But being obese is a far greater indication of ill health. I don't think we need to demonise people, but I don't think putting yourself in the category of 'fat' is a very good idea either.

Another mention of Marilyn Monroe - she wasn't even a size 16 then, I have no idea where that fallacy comes from!

Again. She was tiny.

Modern KPop stars (South Korea) aim for BMIs around 15.5-17. Being obese still means big social stigma in SK & Japan.

yeolde that's changing (not in kpop). There are far more fat people in SK these days. Not in Japan so much.

9 years of rationing, loadsa fags, fewer cars thus lots of walking, fewer housekeeping tools therefore much elbow grease, indifferent food as fuel rather than for pleasure.

I grew up in the fifties hearing, "don't be greedy" and "your eyes were bigger than your stomach". Does anyone say that now? Food was expensive and people hated to waste things. Might be a lesson for the future?

I was born in the late 50s & totally agree about the lack of snacking, I can remember being invited out to lunch at someone’s house and as well as the usual salad and fruit there was a bowl of crisps on the table, to share! It was such a treat. Now I gorge on crisps and a large glass of wine or two every evening just as a ‘snack’ . We also had the shared mars bar between five of us !
Fast food, snacks, coffee shops, eating out etc are all very tempting and far too accessible for most of us.

Just noting, Audrey Hepburn had a well documented eating disorder as a result of the German occupation in WW2. Not something to emulate.

Totally uninformed unscientific article based on their personal experience.

Obese or overweight people in their 20s/30s can very well be as healthy as their slim counterparts, however, they start not so any longer in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Diabetes is the biggest costs to the NHS running in billions, yes not million but billion and diabetes IS without dispute linked to extra weight.

Science also evidences that the chances of being fat in your 50s and 60s is much higher if you were so in your 20s or even as a child.

We are a fatter generation because of the cumulation of larger portions, snacking on unhealthy food, and women drinking more alcohol all this while being less physically active.

My two sisters were insect skinny whilst I was the chumby one. They would definitely have been qualified as too skinny nowadays yet they were perfectly healthy and have become healthy slim adults.

long not to say she didn't or anything, but I so often see being slim/skinny being pathologised these days. Someone says 'oh this/that person is so slim' and someone crops up 'they have/must have an eating disorder'. Being slim is normal. It is not some weird, rare or a medical condition.

I think so much of the trend towards obesity comes from people constantly reassuring themselves that being thin is not normal, that being fat is normal.

This, as well as needing constant rewards and treats. A hard day at work - need a treat (cake/chocolate/snack). A birthday - have to eat cake AND coke AND crisps. If anything, it is that need for constant reassurance and reward through food that is pathological, not being slim.

shins didn't she have a 23" waist or something? Fucking heffalump! There's a lot of believing your own bullshit from a today's 16 claiming they're the same size as Mazza!

Just remembered cream cakes. It must have been a survival from rationing but 'cream' cakes from a bakers shop were filled with a repellent concoction that tasted as if it had been made from whipped margarine and sugar. Utterly disgusting. I don't recall seeing a cream cake with real cream in until late 70s? Early 80s even?

Cakes with real cream definitely around in

cream.
I give up. Please fix this MNHQ. It has been weeks now.

I love how this thread relates to the "mythological Mumsnet chicken".

I inherited my mum's talent in stretching a chicken through a week for two people.

Slice of breast with the roast.
Leg with picnic the next day (granted this only works for two!)
More breast for a pasta meal.
Chicken sandwiches from the pickings.
Broth soup from the carcass.

Now I'm no dieting marvel. In fact I am currently 17st, down from 21st. But it has always, ALWAYS made me laugh to see people comment that you couldn't possibly stretch that far, but you can, if you're used to small portions. My mum would do the above except for four people - the leg meat would be divided into four lots of sandwiches, and she'd probably get another round of scraps out for a pie.

Physically, we don't need as much fuel as we did. Economically, food is cheap. I've been working with a PT since March, and my appetite has been reset by months of reinforcement. I had a small breakfast and a sandwich the other day that took me right through to 8pm after a heavy workout at the gym without feeling hungry before I had dinner.

Real cream cakes were around in fifties and sixties.