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?

And I don't think food was horrible, just different. Simpler, plainer meat and veg. The meat and veg was better quality and had more flavour than it does now though. Roast chicken when I was a kid was absolutely amazing.

Your taste buds were better not the food!

Growing up in 70s, I don't really remember having many sweets, apart from the little chews you could buy for 1/2p each. We sometimes bought a few buns from the bakery on the way home from school (sold cheap as it was the end of the day). I don't remember snacking between meals very much, certainly no cupboard at home with bags of crisps, chocolate. No fizzy drinks apart from Lucozade when you were ill.

My mother cooked, hardly any ready meals apart from fishfingers, and the Findus crispy pancakes ☺️ From the age of 7 I got a train and then walked at least half a mile to school. Out all day on foot or bicycle when not at school. I don't remember any fat children, maybe a couple of chubby ones in the whole school (which went right up to 18).

Banana, even after the end of rationing there were still shortages of many things (bananas especially). People grew their own veg for a long time afterwards and we still only had meat once a week for the early 60's stretched out over several meals.

Getting a job could be a problem if you didn't have a trade so food was basic, lots of bread (and dripping) in the 50's, cheese on toast, poached egg on toast, home made soup. Lots of chips from home grown potatoes. But we didn't go everywhere by car so didn't get fat.

In the 60s people mostly shopped for food daily in local shops.
We didn't have a fridge or cupboard full of stuff.
My mum bought what we needed for that days meals or for a couple of days. There was no browsing in supermarkets or a massive choice of processed foods.
We weren't in the habit of snacking or asking for alternatives to what was being cooked for dinner and no, we weren't hungry all the time!

Bucking the trend. I was brought up on convenience foods in the 80s and my friends were the same. Dinners were dalepak grills, spaghetti hoops, tinned ravioli, Vesta curries, Mr Kipling cakes, Angel Delight, Ice Magic. We had salad at the weekend and any other veg was cooked until it was falling apart. I had school dinners and a sugary breakfast like Frosties, or jam on toast and Kia-ora to drink. I'd have a chocolate bar when I came home from school and then eat all my dinner. I wasn't fat but tall and solid and eventually got a bit chubby in my teens faced with tuck shops, ice cream van and vending machines at secondary school.

DDs have a much better diet than I did growing up as I cook a lot of meals from scratch and use mostly fresh vegetables, meat and fish. They also do more exercise, and are lighter than I was as a kid.

Yes, I think people were slimmer for lots of reasons, no readily available snacks, small portions, rationing mentality from the war. Women, even slim ones, also wore extremely restricting girdles every day, there was no room for food!

I think there is a big divide by areas too. Where I live in I see lots of slim parents in the playground and the children are mostly all slim. I went to Middlesbrough recently and was shocked at how many overweight people I saw.

Eh? Most films NOW have slim actors

And no, food wasn't horrible, it was free from additives and weird stuff (thanks Jamie Oliver) and tasted of what it was. Meat was left with the fat on, not trimmed off and little bit provided, the fat rendered down into dripping, good dripping which you could put on toast or use for cooking.

Fruit was ripened naturally and had flavour, people actually look for speciality apples now because the plastic bags we get have no taste and are sprayed with wax. We used to have apples from the tree, fresh, and the excess were stored for use throughout the year, they tasted like apples, not water, wax and plastic.

I miss proper unadulterated food. It was in season, grown naturally and not 'forced' by artificial means to produce it quickly and remove the taste.

I think it was reality not films. We had one overweight boy in my primary school, who was allowed to wear trousers not shorts, and before he arrived we were all told not to tease him. And I can't remember many in senior school, perhaps one in each year group. On the other hand we didn't have many really thin people either. For women, size 10 was the smallest readily available size.

There are more very overweight people now - I can't remember seeing anyone in our town whose size was making it difficult for them to move around easily.

Differences in the 40s/50s - rationing, which didn't finish till 1956. Lots more walking in everyday life - even if the family had a car, the wife didn't have access to it during the week. Less snacking. Limited fast food options - no pizzas, for example. Limited food in general - no ready meals.

Yes, they were definitely slimmer. There was usually only one fat child in each class of thirty. Dress sizes were much smaller- a size 14 in the 1960’s was the same size as a 10 now. There was no junk food, fast food outlets, ready meals or even supermarkets in most areas.
We did not own cars, and carried all our shopping by hand daily from several separate shops, before doing all the food prep from scratch. I remember having to gut rabbits and knead bread dough.
We didn’t have washing machines or driers - clothes were hand washed, fed through a hand mangle then pegged on a line.
There were no computers, smart phones (or in our case, even a landline) - you walked to a public telephone box, and kids played active games outside in all weathers. Sweets were a rare treat - we cut up one individual size Mars bar to share between four people in my family.
None of my family smoked, either- our slimness was purely down to healthy food and high activity levels.

I agree wildones. Where I live (near London) I don’t see that many fat people. We go to lots of playgroups and all the mums look slim.

When I visit where I grew up though, and when I go on holidays elsewhere in the uk, I always notice a lot more really quite fat people. Entire families who look to be properly obese. A friend of mine works in parliament and she says they were discussing this sort of ripple effect from London outwards where obesity becomes a bigger and bigger problem. It’s shameful tbh as it smacks of the less privileged being left to linger as usual.

Fags would be the main reason many adults stayed slim. And yes she was more active generally with fewer labour saving devices. My mum died recently of lung cancer. It was a gruesome way to go.

Your taste buds were better not the food!

I don't think so. You need to read up about mass produced chicken. The stuff we get now bears no comparison to what we ate 40 years ago. And have you never eaten veg straight from the garden, it's nothing like shop bought supermarket stuff that's been stored for goodness knows how long.

In the 60s and seventies you bought peaches and they were ripe and ready to eat. They weren't rock hard and then rotten before fit for eating.

It's far, far easier to be fat than slim today.

I am fit and healthy, low blood pressure, good cardiac fitness and heart health, perfect cholesterol, I don't even get colds, but have struggled for nearly 10 years to get back to normal BMI after having children, and I maintained a BMI of 20-22 from the age of about 17 to 29.

At my primary school in the late 60s and early to mid 70s all of us were thin apart from one tubby child. The tubby child stood out as she looked so different to the rest of us. In contrast at my dds Primary there were as many tubby children as thin ones, with many in between.
I don’t know what has changed ? Less outside play ? We were always out, building go carts, on our bikes, exploring.

People were slimmer BUT shorter too, which meant that they had a smaller frame overall.

Rationing didn't end until 1954 and there were still food shortages, so yes, people were definitely slimmer in 40s/50s/60s.

I guess people had got used to eating smaller portions too, and far fewer people drove, particularly women, so most people got a lot more exercise than they do today.

Come Brexit there'll be rationing again and we'll all slim down.

Fags would be the main reason many adults stayed slim

No it wasn't. I know fat people now who smoke and slim people who have never smoked.
Those who smoked instead of eating had issues.

People are mentioning smoking, but fewer than 10% of women smoked in the 50's (compared to 35% of men). Smoking peaked in the 70s for men and late 80s for women.

I live in the north west and every time I go to London I notice how much slimmer people are, lots of rushing around and walking quickly probably helps.

I wonder if people were simply ok with being hungry?

it's a class thing. I live in a very middle class area and it's unusual to see fat kids (though there are a few fat adults). Go a few miles out into a less middle class area and the kids are fatter and also dressed in far more hyper genderized clothing.

so I think middle class kids are much healthier than middle class kids in the 80s were.

People were not all skinny in the 50s. My mum was quite plump,for a while - until she went to Weight Watchers, yes it existed in the early 60s.

People were actually better nourished back then due to the wartime Government information films.

We were much more active in those days - I walked a mile and a half to school every.