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?

-"we're no longer in tune with our bodies"

I think it was more about knowing that their resources, be it money or food/heat, could come to an end. So you were frugal and made do with 'just enough'.

There are massive bodies of research about this, focusing on people who came through, rationing, poverty, starvation and it takes until the third generation for habits to change. Which makes sense why the last generation, lives with more excess. That and marketing/advertising.

They didn't have the safetynets that we have. People lived under a lot of stress. They were no better or worse.

subtext of "we used to be better in a variety of ways
I don't see a subtext of we used to be better I see a subtext if it used to be different. But then I was there so know the less than good things then that you get less of now, racism etc- it was a different time , we are / I am fatter now end of.

Different, yes. But is it just a coicidence that in all three of those examples the people from The Past are better/understand stuff more?

No , you are over thinking it.

Fact is we have an obesity crisis far too many people are overweight and over eating

Simply because we as a nation are eating too much, more food than we need to, our environment has changed and food is plentiful and available everywhere and we have become accustomed to high sugar high salt diets that make us crave more food

I don’t think it has much to do with less smoking and more to do with indulgence in that cheap accessible food is always available to the majority which in history it never has been

I think we are also starting to excuse obesity or our view of what is considered overweight is changing as we become accustomed to people being bigger which isn’t healthy so of course we look back and see that on average people were not as large/overweight/fat as they are now.

I have done so myself - I blame my health condition but really I could do something about it but the desire to eat and my greed is reason why I struggle to lose weight

over-thinking

I just call it 'thinking'.

Yes, people are bigger now. Does that mean that people in the past (or people living in France, Spain, Italy, any country except the US because they are ALL fat bastards and the root of the world’s problems, yes?) were/are wiser, more abstemious, more sensible, more feminine, less greedy, less uncontrolled, less prone to ‘stuffing themselves’, etc.?

Of course not, and the implication that British people now (not us, of course, finger wagging posters with our 26 inch waists and self control!) are greedy, lazy gluttons waddling between branches of Greggs, Starbucks and McDonalds in their elasticated waisted tracksuits labelled size 16 - a size 32 in old money, the deluded fools - and are, in fact, a different species to the stoic, self-disciplined people were alive in the 1950s, because things are just not as good as they used to be is silly.

People aren’t that different. The opportunities to eat nice things, affordably, are different. Does that mean that we should look back to a rose tinted past where food wasn’t that nice, was possibly rationed and was expensive and wish that things were the same as they used to be? Fuck that!

I think we are probably are generally greedier simply because food is in abundance

The human condition is rarely happy with just being we always want more of what we have

"Slim" with shit food and no civil rights.

No idea what that means.

The idea being that people were slimmer but they didn't have full civil rights and they didn't have access to a decent range of food.
Your weight is, up to a point, a personal choice but this longing for the past when everyone was "slim" overlooks the facts of gross inequality and access to food that we have less control over.

Actually the food wasn't shit, it was better than it is now, not full of additives with meat stuffed with hormones.

What civil rights did you have in mind? I'm assuming you're not in the UK as it's not a term we tend to use here.

Brexit now civil rights

Oh ok

Now back to the discussion are people bigger and the answer is yes do many of us over eat absolutely

I think people are bigger, even if not over weight. My waist on my wedding day was 22 inches. My DGC who are very slim are much larger than that.

Civil rights like equality legislation. Yes I am in the UK.
Were you ever asked in an interview if your religion meant you were going to get pregnant and have a baby soon? My mum was. In the 60s. She was slim so that's ok. She died of lung cancer from the fags she smoked to stay slim.
And the lack of equal opportunity employment was a civil rights problem in NI in the 50s and 60s. That being in the UK in case you had forgotten.
This equating being slim with the good old days is ridiculous.

This equating being slim with the good old days is ridiculous
No one's done that though. People who lived through those years (such as myself) are already aware of the poverty, smoking before all the health risks were known, etc etc. We don't need people like you to inform us. But thanks anyway

Plenty of posters have done that but hey, thanks for the biscuit.

nettle I don't think anyone has said that anyone over a size 14 is waddling about between Starbucks and Greggs or whatever, but it is just silly to think that being overweight is healthy. The risks are well-established. People seem to want to live in a bubble and act like anyone who dares say that is some sanctimonious prick who wants everyone on a kale diet, but it's not like that. It IS unhealthy to be overweight. That's just a fact. And pointing it out doesn't make you some judgy moraliser who hates anyone who doesn't go to the gym seven days a week.

Don't most people look back with some fondness on their younger years? Mine were far from idyllic but I look back fondly on much of it. My DCs look back fondly on theirs.
Why have others to beat us into submission to agreeing on what crap people we were then and no better than now. Political correctness gone mad.

We are built bigger. I was born in early 60s. I was so skinny that I got teased at school all the time. Yet my waist was bigger than my mum’s even at 14/15. She use to say to me that I would have trouble with my weight when I was older. I believed her and did lots of side bends. Little did we know then that you cannot change your basic shape. I’m a rectangle. She wasn’t.

No one is saying the 50s or 60s. were better. But we didn’t have a car. I walked two miles each way to school every day. I then had to walk to brownies and the shops with my mum. At 13 I use to catch the bus to gym lessons at 5pm and return at 9pm - no mobile phones in those days. I use to sit on the top deck with the smokers until I got accused of smoking by my parents. We just walked more. McDonald’s opened a beach in my town when I was 14. Until then we never ate out.

You must submit to the acceptable view Witchy or be labelled a naive non thinker or worse..

Actually, after a certain age, being very slightly overweight is healthier. Or at least, it’s beneficial to have a bmi of about 26 or so if you get conditions like pneumonia etc.

But then, obesity can contribute to you getting other life threatening conditions.

It’s not black and white though. I think they call it the obesity paradox.

My doctor friend (very senior in nhs) said that you ideally want a bmi of 22-23 till you’re in your 60s, then you ideally want a bmi of 26ish.

Just one opinion.

WithAFaery.

I'd gleaned that from readiing health news over the years and sincerely hope it's true!

longing for the past
Nope. Still not seeing it

Ooh I hope that’s true. My very slim mother died of pneumonia very quickly (no one realised how ill she was & I was overseas) my plumper relatives have all lived at least 10 years longer than her. Very sad as she’d tried to be healthy & active all her life.