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?

Indeed. Some of the generalisations are simply to suit a particular narrative.

Great post, Cressida, that's absolutely it.

The tone is always that there has been some moral degeneration. I don't believe that at all, and at any time in history people were people, and just dealing with society and life as it presents to them.

At risk of continuing the 'well I only eat green leafy vegetables and water' theme of most MN weight threads, my DS is on the 7th percentile. He's not skeletal. He's very slim though. My DS is on the 50th percentile at 7 and above average in height. He in no way is skeletal ever. I went to the doctors because DS1 was bordering on underweight and he said the average has gone up so even though he was slim he was actually normal healthy weight.

I still remember the revolting smell of lard. No thanks!

Although for every "moral degeneration" post, I also hear a narrative of "we are so much better now than they were then".

There’s loads more palatable and delicious lookin food around now.

I’m only 46 but yesterday DH and I were describing to DSS (20) what choc ices were like before Magnums etc were developed. Small oblongs of ice cream made with hydrogenated fat, covered in a thin skin of fake chocolate. You wouldn’t be clamouring for one of those. If Magnums and Haagen Dazs etc had been available in the 1960s and 1970s, perhaps we would all have been fatter then. As a previous poster wisely noted, we’re not a different species to the people living then, are we? It’s us, and the people who brought us up.

Food is relatively cheaper. You wouldn’t have got a multipack of chocolate bars for the same price relative to wages in the 1970s. That encourages snacking, instead of saving stuff for treats.

I don’t think that we’re fundamentally greedier now. We’re animals designed to like energy rich food. I think we just deal with what’s available in different ways.

For example, my mother (82) is open about the fact that she took amphetamines in the 1950s and 1960s to stay slim and smoked 40 a day for the same reason. She and her friends liked to eat, and they were not atypical. She doesn’t do that any more, thank god, and I don’t think many women would do that today either.

Women were keen on diets during the period we’re discussing. That’s not so different to now. Just look at a vintage annual from the early 1970s, aimed at teenagers: it will include diet advice and the comic strip stories quite often included a character who was ‘glad she’d cut out the coke and crisps for elevenses’ or was ‘too chubby to be a beauty queen’.

(Incidentally, I’m with Cressida on the moralising so I hope I haven’t done any by mistake. If I have to read one more post boasting about the poster’s 26 inch waist!)

Although, raised, lard - i.e. good animal fat - is much better for you than a lot of other foods and the higher good fats and lots of veg way of eating is pretty normal and traditional - it is modern junk food which is the problem.

My mum didn’t have access to a car so we walked everywhere
I know a woman who can’t drive and so walks everywhere, she is obese.

My mum was considered 'big' - she was a size 12
My mum was a size 12, she was the same height and weight as Princess Diana was when she was 20.

I noticed in Fat Face yesterday for the first time ever there is a man's size of XXXL.

That used to be a very US sizing as their obesity crisis is much more serious than ours in UK.

I regularly buy size 10 nowadays because size 12 swamps me on the waist and hips. The clothing manufacturers are having to increasingly cater for people who are larger than our parents. It isn't vanity sizing, it's about sizing which corresponds to the statistically average frequency of dimensions of the population at large.

Like all things it probably depends where you were in the country.

We lived rurally and I cannot imagine any of the GPs doling out amphetamines. They were very 'Dr Finlay's Casebook' types. And no women smoked where I lived, only men. And lard makes great shortening so savoury pastry is better for it imv.

People are critical in their comments about people's weight but why are people more overweight in the UK than say France? They have the same food availability as here? I know posters will come back with example of overweight french children but it appears to be much less of a problem when I've visited.

I'm sure that less snacking and food which was less sugary/highly processed would have made a difference in the 50's and at least some of the 60's. They perhaps consumed more saturated fat than we strive to nowadays but there will have been less sugar, and I'm convinced history will eventually conclude that sugar is the real problem, not fat. Did the big change in our diet not start in the 70's?

I'm taller than either of my grandmothers (or great aunts) and have larger feet - even if I was very underweight I'd struggle to fit into what they wore because my frame is larger.

I agree Witchy. I live in France (not a city) and the difference in size hits me as soon as I get to the UK. I also notice the food outlets and how many people are eating in the street (and on the platform and the trains).
I find that people eat far less between meals here in France and don't tend to snack. Portions are smaller and cakes and pastries are a treat. My French visitors drink far less wine than the English ones.
Obesity is increasing here and is much more obvious in the supermarkets in the poorest parts of town
I am not judging anyone, just observing.
.

Who’s keeping the patisseries in business, if cakes etc are only an occasional treat?

Don’t say ‘British tourists on their way to Greggs’.

It is mostly bread at our local patisseries during the week and the pastries and cakes are weekends and special treats. Today they will be sold out after mass. The ones in the bigger town have more pastries and cakes during the week, especially the one by the hospital.

Is it because in France the cakes are the treat in an otherwise pretty healthy diet/eating pattern. Less sugary crap generally?

I would say so. My neighbours have three course lunches and puddings are normally home made fruit purées, yoghurt etc. In the evening they all seem to eat soup. We are in a very rural village and people grow a lot of their own stuff. The men are mostly whippet thin and the older women a sturdy size 14 ish. The younger women are thinner and many of them smoke.

Aha! So it’s the holy people and the invalids eating all the cakes, is it?

I’ve never seen a patisserie in France that only sells minimal cake during the week. That’s in rural and urban areas. So I’m not sure that I believe the myth of the abstemious French nation. I don’t doubt that they are thinner overall, but to present them as free from any kind of desire to overeat tempting food is disingenuous.

I really hope that this thread doesn’t start to disappear down the ‘why can’t we all be more like French women’ rabbit hole. Partly because it’s dull, partly because women living in the sixteenth arrondisement are presented as typical French women and mostly because many of the French women of my age that I knew and worked with during my twenties had borderline eating disorders, were obsessed with being thin and experienced considerable social pressure to remain so. I’d much sooner be British, thanks!

Um no Nettle. Sundays are the day when people like a treat and it is probably a kind gesture for people in hospital. I have no idea about the women in Paris, but after 15 years I know my bit of France.

I regularly eat cakes and sweet treats and only manage not to be overweight because I generally only eat when properly hungry, don't snack too frequently, and have a decent diet with lots of fibre, protein and fat. I used to combine sweet treats with sweet snacks and grazing from dawn til bedtime and I was obese. I think many Britons, until recently myself included, have forgotten that it's normal to feel hungry regularly.

In my village it is also about poverty. The average income is under 15,000€ a year. Patisserie cakes are not cheap.

Sigh. I have no objection to people in hospital eating cake. Let’s try again. Your position is that hardly anybody eats cake during the week and the patisseries only sell cakes in any quantity on Sundays after mass, apart from near hospitals.

Well that is patently bobbins, isn’t it? Patisseries sell delicious cakes all week, in quantity. Each town has several. So people must be eating them during the week, see?

This is why I get impatient with the smug ‘why can’t you British heifers eat like the dainty French?’ arguments. They are generally based on bollocks, like ‘nobody ever eats cake during the week!’

If the income in rural France is as low as you say then I ask again, who is keeping the patisseries in business? Or does your argument only work in your village?

I didn't say that Nettle. I said our local one sells mostly bread in the week. The ones in the nearest town sell more cakes, especially the one near the hospital which has a bigger range than the others.
I only have the fiscal stats for our commune so can't help you with any generalisations I'm afraid.

I'm sure I read recently that 50% of young French people smoke.

At Primary school in the 1950's I only remember one of my classmates being "fat". She was very much the exception and was very indulged by her parents.
However growing up in the 50's and 60's in our household sweets were not a treat, they were always there in the cupboard in a tin . but we had to ask for them.
We were more active than a lot of youngsters today as we walked everywhere, the car was for use at the weekend and holidays. When I started secondary school I would walk 3 miles to and from school (with a couple of friends).
All home cooking was from scratch Mumused to shop for fresh veg every day.
Our lives are time poor now as we all have to work to keep the wolf from the door. I think our lifestyles are much different nowadays there is less time to walk everywhere cook from scratch etc.