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?

Cressida: I think you are reading this through a particular prism (and of course I'm reading and giving weight to different posts that may resonate with me) and you are then acting as a policer of others. Which does get my goat a bit hence you catching my attention. I'll let it drop now and sorry for the sarcasm.

By the logic of your own last post you are also trying to fight against human nature. Which leaves me a bit bemused but anyway each to their own.

If anyone does what?

I don't think I'm "policing" others - I'm just saying what I think!

But yes - we all see things through our own prisms, I suppose. It's a particular bugbear of mine- the rubbishing of modern life. The threads which denounce all modern parenting or "young people today" are similar. I just don't like it - dismissing a whole swathe of society is just so...lazy!

I realise this thread isn't just that. But, as I said, there's an element of it.

Who are these people who ate lard? As far as I remember lard was used for frying( none of that greasy oil they use in Italy) or in pastry (still is).

Well yes it was mainly for frying and pastry but that is still eating it. Now we would use vegetable or sunflower oil which is a lot healthier. Maybe it is still in pastry but I don't eat that nowadays whereas then eat a lot. There was also "lardy cake" etc.

Now we would use vegetable or sunflower oil which is a lot healthier.

Not neccessarily. Most 'vegetable' oil is extracted at extremely high temperatures using solvents and other nasties.

Not neccessarily. Most 'vegetable' oil is extracted at extremely high temperatures using solvents and other nasties.

Is there any good evidence that the "solvents" and "nastie" are harming people? There is certainly evidence that high LDL cholesterol levels (which is more likely if you eat lard rather than vegetable oil) lead to heart disease and early death.

Yes. They walked and cycled more. Even in the early seventies cars were not that prevelant. There weren’t supermarkets with their junk food selling tricks. Most people smoked. Medicine was not so developed and cancer cures had not yet been discovered. There were smogs. The population was a third less than it is now. We did not drive as much as the motorway network had not been developed. We lived in fear of a nuclear war. The upper classes were still at it. We didn’t have smartphones. A computer was operated with punched cards that you had to codify. People went to church. There was littltle tv. We played outside. At school the teachers used to beat the students up and not the other way around. There was knife crime. Pop music took of as a mainstream art form. There was one fat person in our junior school.

We didn’t eat out at McDonald’s. All food was home cooked with vegetables. Never had cakes or sweets except at birthdays and Xmas. My mum didn’t have access to a car so we walked everywhere. I was never ever driven to school. We walked to the local supermarket and carried the food back. There were no deliveries.

I don't know about lard but my dad ate beef dripping that my mum saved from the roast on a Sunday. He also had a full Engish everyday before he went to work - was never overweight and had no heart conditions.
I'm a 70/80's child and for me the biggest differences between then and now is snacking - didn't do it, fast food - didn't go to a Wimpy/McDonalds until I was about 18 and we played outside a lot - no computer games.

*Is there any good evidence that the "solvents" and "nastie" are harming people?8

Yes.

davidgillespie.org/books3/toxic-oil/

"Vegetable" oils - actually seed oils - are a highly processed, industrial product. If you have to go to such great lengths to extract an oil by artificial means, chances are it's not something we are meant to be eating.

This waist size/vanity sizing thing is bit of a mystery to me. Looking at my own measurements, my waist/hip measurement is 28"/38" so a classic pear (inherited from my non-British parent, for what it's worth) and has been for as long as I can remember.

I am currently slightly lighter than usual, verging on underweight, as I am breastfeeding a young baby. I am 5'7" and currently weigh about 8.5 stone and have a BMI of 19. You can easily see my ribs, hip bones etc. My frame is definitely medium rather than broad.

So I cannot see that it would be possible to shrink my waist without becoming properly underweight. Or that I would have been considered fat in the mid-20th century.

There must be plenty of other people like me around.

broom if you go back 30 years clothes were generally cut with tiny waists assuming everyone was an hourglass. Of course in reality this meant many women had a lot of headaches finding stuff that would fit. Because obviously the size 14 28 waist had big hips attached. They then started making clothes designed to fit average women rather than a manikin. I remember trying to buy clothes in my teens and it was a total nightmare as I'm not built like Marilyn Monroe, sadly

Our rib cages are wider. I have my grandmother’s and mother’s wedding dresses and the measurements around the ribs are tiny. Even when I was at my thinnest and my ribs were visible I couldn’t do those dresses up. I think that element relates to better prenatal and early childhood nutrition.

There were no deliveries. There were deliveries in the 50s and 60s (but no supermarkets in our town) - my mother had daily milk deliveries, bread several times a week, butcher twice a week and grocer once a week.

I've been watching how things cycle - we went through a period where deliveries stopped and we all went to supermarkets, now we're back to deliveries with on-line ordering. Car washes went automatic, now you can get hand washes again. Some shops are doing personal shoppers, so you hang around while someone brings out clothes they think you might like, just as happened in the 50s.

I think we have lost sight of what a normal weight child is. My 7 yo DD is on 50th centile for weight and about the same for height. She looks positively skeletal at times, but is strong despite being slender. She eats well, has the odd snack, but is constantly on the move.

People were definitely slimmer.

My mum was considered 'big' - she was a size 12.

I clearly recall the 3 kids in my class who were considered fat. Photo of our class popped up on FB recently and they looked completely normal - like the majority of my kids classes now. The other kids (including me) looked very skinny.

Both of my kids do a LOT of sport - to keep them healthy. Both are about 30% percentile and look great. I only really notice how fat other kids are when they do sports day etc and their stomachs are literally flabby. My kids are the exception now, not the norm.

I might add, I am fat, I'm aware I'm fat and I'm trying to get back to slim!

Did also make me think today, as a child I had zero need to look in the fridge - nothing of interest there at all!! No snacks or anything. Food was served 3 times a day. That was it. You experienced hunger! I don't think any of us (kids included) really experience hunger any more.

No cars
Rationing
Smoking
Food was blander so not as tempting
No take always apart from fish and chips
Hardly any affordable restaurants
No costa on every corner just old fashioned cafes.
Food cost more in relation to wage
People had more manual work
Running the home was harder more manual as well.

Part of this thread is about people glorying in how disgusting and greedy people today are
Really? Can't say I've picked that up at all.

Can't say I've picked that up at all

Then you really haven't been paying attention!

Also, who are all these people who have "never experienced hunger"?? I really like food, and I make sure I'm hungry at meal times, like any adult with self-control!

Then you really haven't been paying attention
Yes I really have.
As for not experiencing hunger, people that are used to snacking whenever they want to are unlikely to ever be hungry. Having snacks freely available does seem to be quite common nowadays for some people (obviously not everyone). Eg. there have been quite a few threads on here about people meeting their children out of school with snacks, or eating at the cinema during a movie, or people who work in offices being able to eat snacks at their desk throughout the day.
It's not really a matter of self control (note that you're the person who mentioned that), it's what people get used to. If someone is brought up to snack constantly (say every 3 hours) they're never really going to know what it feels like to have a completely empty stomach, except perhaps before breakfast (though many people don't feel hungry when they wake up for some reason).

I’m not from that time but it seemed women looked after themselves more

noeffingidea

I don't really want to argue with you. But I find it strange that you can't see, even if you look really closely, that some of the words used to describe modern habits are loaded with judgement, or even have just a slight pejorative edge. I even went to the trouble of quoting some of them. People don't choose words like "stuffing themselves" without revealing something about their feelings (even if they don't realise it). Words are not neutral!

As for the issue of experiencing hunger... What you say is obviously true. Snacking ruins hunger. But it's so obvious that it's true that most adults know this and act accordingly if they want to enjoy their meals.

A lot of what's been said on this thread is blindingly obvious- that people are bigger, that there's an obesity crisis, that food is more readily available than it was directly after the war. The only reason I can see for a thread full of obvious statements of fact to continue so long is that people love revelling in how fat and greedy "people" are.

One disingenuous way of doing that is to indulge in this competitive retrospective frugality- "Oh you had one grain of rice for dinner in our house..." "Yeah, well we weren't allowed our rice until we'd ploughed 10 acres with our bare hands..." Then you get all these ludicrous statements of "fact", everyone nodding away at the joint narrative about how hearty and strong "everyone" was in "The Past". So I like to comment on these tendencies because I see them, and I think it's a good idea to analyse societal attitudes. I find it odd when others just take everything at face value.

We are encouraged to snack of course that doesn’t mean we have to food is everywhere

It’s a form of indulgence. Wherever we go there is food to eat as it’s so plentiful it never had before and most of us have the money to as its often very cheap

But it is what we are eating too. Many parts of south east Asia they appear to eat constantly street food is part of many people’s diets but they haven’t piled on the weight until recently when it has included a modern western diet

I think we have lost sight of what a normal weight child is. My 7 yo DD is on 50th centile for weight and about the same for height. She looks positively skeletal at times, but is strong despite being slender. She eats well, has the odd snack, but is constantly on the move.

No we haven't. My 9yo is very slim (slimmer than most of her peers) but toned and hardly 'skeletal' eats well etc and is 20th percentile, my 6yo looks average-slim but not skinny (much the same as her peers) and is 60th percentile. Perhaps I live in an area that is on average slimmer than yours.

I think Cressida89 that this is a problem of generational generalisations. As someone born in the late forties I hear a lot of negative statements about people from my generation and older on this thread "veryone smoked" "all food was awful" etc. It doesn't make any of it true.