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?

I think portions were smaller and people struggled for food. Now I think kids are eating way to much junk. Its a constant battle with my kids. They see other kids at school eating junk all the time. However, they play outside every day and get exercise so they are thin. I guess its also genetics as me and my dh are considered thin as well and I am able to eat whatever I want. Including those pumpkin lattes lol. However, I only have that type of latte once a week or every couple of weeks, as I only get it when I want it and I do not crave it every day.

There was a lot of pressure on women to be slim in the 60s and 70s.
My mum smoked during her pregnancy with me to keep my birthweight down for an easier birth!

I was born in the late 50s, and started school in 1959. There were no fast food outlets, apart from the fish and chip shop and that was a weekly treat - if that.

There was not the huge range of fizzy drinks, crisps and snacks that there are nowadays.

Also, for women who stayed home after marriage housework was much more labour intensive than it is now, lots of floor scrubbing, not many washing machines, wringing sheets through a mangle, no convenience foods to pop in the oven.

Plus there were fewer cars, nearly all children walked to and from school.

So I can honestly say that there were very few people of the size you see nowadays, a size that seems to becoming normalised.

Obviously there was the occasional tubby child, or older women looking a bit plump.

Children played out on the streets and in the fields, skipping rope, ball games, running around, cycling - they had no computer screens to sit in front of for hours on end.

So yes, people were much slimmer in those days - for all the above reasons.

I bought a "vintage" - probably 1930s or 40s - set of pudding dishes recently. They are tiny and a portion that size wouldn't satisfy anyone I know these days.

So that might have something to do with it.

No. There were definitely chubby people and thinner ones who developed middle aged spread.

Also in my experience the bigger aunts I knew back then lived ( and are living! ) Just as long as anyone else. They were not sedentary people.

A lot of the males in my family and friends circle died younger. I don't remember overweight uncles at all , it was working in industry and smoking related in some cases that caused premature death.

Also there was a family dynamic of men sitting after dinner while women of all sizes dashed about clearing up. That sitting after dinner is possibly very bad for your blood sugar and health.

Right, off for a walk.

Only one fat child per school in the 1970s.
Most food was quite grim though.

Photos of me back then show me as very very slim. A today's 8 -10. Is vanity sizing a simple size shift or is it a shape shift? I'm a size 10 at the moment, same as I was from about 1970-2000. My bust measurement is the same, but my waist has increased by about 3 inches. If it were a simple size change, size 10 would be really baggy around my bust now, but it isn't.

I saw some newsreel footage from the time recently and was quite struck by how plump some of the members of the general public were. Churchill wasn't a lightweight either and nor was Hattie Jacques.

I can't recall any overweight kids at school although that doesn't mean there weren't any. We all walked to school and back, got chucked out into the garden afterwards and were allowed to roam the local woods unsupervised. We didn't get nosebags of crisps and sweets at the school gates or as we hit the front door either. Maybe a glass of milk if we were desperate but mostly we waited until tea was ready.

I bought a "vintage" - probably 1930s or 40s - set of pudding dishes recently. They are tiny and a portion that size wouldn't satisfy anyone I know these days

They would satisfy people today if they weren't so greedy and been groomed into eating more than they need

I have photographs of my grandmother taken in the 1940 and 50s. She was in her 20s and 30s then.

What struck me was that her body looks exactly like mine. Size 14, exaggerated pear shape. Thighs too big for the rest of her, kind if thing. This despite being in the women RAF, subject to rationing and walking everywhere.

Made me feel a while lot better about my own body seeing her like that back then.

(She did say she used to swap her cigarette rations for sweet rations though. I would totally do that, too).

Someone gave me a copy of a photo of my Dad in a winning pub darts team in 1948. All the men were slim, some positively skinny. Could you find a pub team with no fatties nowadays?
Years of rationing, of course. Even though we lived in a rural area with veg gardens, hens etc - and ate a lot of rabbits and pigeons.

My Mum, was in her 20s in the 1950s and all the photos she has of herself and her friends and family from that time show them all looking slimmer than the same photos would today.

I became a teenager in the 1980s and there are only two overweight pupils in my school year photos of approximately 200+ teens. The same is not true today when I look at the photos of my DC year photos.

My Mum says that people ate differently when she was young. Snacking was an absolutely unheard of. You had 3 meals a day and that was all you had. Eating between meals was believed to spoil your appetite and there were no 'snacks' as such, apart from a biscuit, but even that was supposed to be had with a cup of tea in the afternoon, so you could make it through to the evening meal, which was served after the man of the house got home from work, which in her family meant it was eaten after 7pm. You had toast and a boiled egg for breakfast, or just toast, a sandwich for lunch (no crisps and chocolate, just the sandwich) and dinner was a relatively modest meal which consisted of meat and two veg, one of which was potatoes. The portion of meat was small, because meat was expensive, you had a few quarters of boiled potato and another vegetable. Pudding was usually stewed fruit of some description depending what was seasonal, or a small portion of a sponge pudding with custard.

She said a trip to the butchers, fishmongers and grocers was unexciting, there were no supermarkets and the selection of food products you could buy was very limited.

Additives, sugar in everything, cheap food, low fat trend meaning things are stuffed with sugar (or similar) instead.

Also remember food tasting better, tomatoes and peaches actually tasted of something.

Portion size is a thing which has radically changed as well.

@Tighnabruaich with all that work i guess that explains why the mums in the film are all slim!
I know that as a nation we are all heavier but it was interesting to see that old films and not just hollywood ones had no bigger middle aged people.

I was at school in the 60's and I never knew anyone who was overweight. I walked 45 minutes each way to school, every day of my school life - nobody was ever picked up in a car ! Most of us walked or caught the bus . And you ate home cooked meals, not much takeaway in those days.

My mother never had a car - most families only had one car or none. Mum walked about 30 minutes to and from the shops, up a very steep hill all the way home, with a basket of shopping.

My whole family was very slim - and nobody smoked either.

Oh and although people didn't go to the gym apart from the occasional amateur boxer, post war there seemed to have be plenty of cycling clubs and table tennis and football going on. And always gardening.

There is a lot more eating out nowadays, it is quite usual to go for coffee and cake whilst shopping and stuff like that. When I was younger, I was born in the late 50s it was a special treat to go to a cafe. All the eating between meals as well. There were not many fatter children and teens like nowadays. we did a lot more exercise though, we all walked to school but we didn't need our parents to take us, I walked with my friends after the first few times at 5 or 6, it was about half a mile. Nowadays lots get dropped off in the car.

I agree. But main culprit is agricultural. Powerful chemicals pumped into food chain at every level has disrupted our endocrine system. From Floride in water to harmful pesticides on soil and steroids in meat, We've got no chance

Nobody I knew ever had a takeaway apart from fish and chips. Fish and chips was often once a week though.
Nobody I knew ever went out for coffee and/or cake.
Nobody ate out except maybe once or twice a year at the Bernie Inn or Little Chef.
There were a lot more puddings though.

Often on Mumsnet people defend the amount of stuff they give their kids and come up with 'reasons' their kids fussy eating has to be catered for. They won't accept it contributes to weight issues and in fact claim they will create an eating disorder if they don't pander to their kids demands.
I don't remember parents being so obsessed with their kids diets when I was growing up.

There were two girls in my year group who were chubby .
One obese girl at Brownies.

Older adults were likely to be plumper.

No.

My great-grandma was basically spherical, apparently. Lovely lady, kept everything safely gathered in with stays. Nobody has a bad word to say about her.

My dear old much-missed Auntie Flo was another chunk. One of the best people I've ever met.

Both of my cousin's wives were a good solid size 16-ish. Not got a lot of time for either of them, but I can assure you that's not based on the size of their arses.

My mum was born in 1939 and has basically battled with her weight all her life. She's now disabled and in constant pain and is still banging on about diets. Total waste of time and energy, as far as I can see.

No indeed, but I just wanted to talk about the roots of the obesity crisis. It didn't just spring out of nowhere in the noughties, it had been building for a long time through several generations. Yes, you're right there. In the 80s, ready meals were a marvel, and a with more mothers at work, anything that cut down the time spent on housework was a godsend. That was combined with a move from "home economics" for girls to "food technology" for all meant we grew a generation who didn't learn basic cooking at school, and didn't see their mothers doing it either. Then there was greater availability of cars, a more sedentary lifestyle, and the fact that obesity wasn't even on our radar - for a large part of the population through the first part of the 20th C the main worry was getting enough calories into your children.

Dress size I find is a bit of a red herring. I fit nicely into a size 14 off the peg, and am often a 12 in tops. If clothes were resized back to the 1960s, and I was a size 16-18, I wouldn't mind much as long as clothes shops actually stocked my size and not just say, the range of size 8-14 as many do now, where I can go in and buy a size 14 dress off the peg! And it certainly wouldn't help me to lose weight if I couldn't find any nice clothes to wear and looked rubbish. Losing weight starts with feeling happy and good about yourself, it's much harder if you are being constantly fat shamed. I know I'm a bit overweight and if I were a size 10 now I'd be the right weight, so it doesn't matter whether I'd be aspiring to a ten or a fourteen, it's the number on the scales that counts.

I suspect it wouldn't make much sense for struggling retailers either not to cater to most of their customers.

And it was really difficult when I was bigger and a size 16-18 a few years ago to find clothes to exercise in, as it is. Don't shrink clothes to fat shame and shrink people.