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?

Dontcallmecharlotte oh my god, the size of plates and bowls nowadays - they're enormous! I tried to get some replacement pasta dishes and they are the size of a serving dish. Cereal bowls are vast. Wine glasses you can fit half a bottle of wine it.

I actually find it slightly disgusting how big this stuff is nowadays.

But most women weren't either smoking or at their desk. Fewer than one in ten women in the 50s smoked.

This doesn't sound right - a quick google suggests more like 50%. Where are you getting that number?

I agree with a pp that it's a very localised phenomena. It's really striking the difference in the number of fat children in particular. There are no children who are even chubby at DS' pre-school, some of the mums (including me) are but not many. When I visit the in-laws the difference is really obvious.

As a side issue I think that some foods are probably a lot nutritious than they used to be. Factory farming, fast crop rotations and over farming the land without leaving it fallow mean that important trace elements and minerals are depleted.

So maybe one aspect of what is a complex issue is that for certain categories of food, people are eating more, but actually being nourished less?

I see people on MM posting about their “stash of snacks/treats”.
Apparently it’s a terrible crime for a family member to touch them.
Also it seems to be normal for kids to need a snack between breakfast and lunch and between school and home.
Go into town and people are walking about with coffee in one hand and food in the other.
Food has never been so accessible. No need to move from your chair you can pick up your phone and have food delivered to the door.

Wouldn’t want to go back to those times though! 😊😊😊

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

But if that was the case, everyone would be fat. DH and I are slim and our 4, mostly grown up, kids are slim. We don't eat crap and we exercise. Most of our friends are similar.

My sister, on the other hand, eats a great deal of unhealthy food and doesn't exercise and is obese, as are two of her three, mostly grown up, children.

storynanny is right, I was a size 12 in my 20s back in the early 70s and that was 34-24-36. My friend was a very slender size 10 - 32-22-34.
Size 12s nowadays are much bigger.

We all walked or cycled everywhere .

Takeaways were practically Unknown.
Cafes were a rare treat.
Homemade cakes were simpler and often less rich. lcing wasfor special occasions .

Size 12s are bigger these days, but probably bigger height wise too. I don’t think (ahem...not that this is my exact size or anything ahem), 5’8” size 12s with health bmis are exactly a problem.

@NutellaFitzgerald that's interesting. My 90 year old neighbour is always commenting on my weight telling me I'm too thin. I'm hardly skinny at size 8 or 10. That always led me to believe women over 25 or mothers really got a little bigger even back then.

Think it also depends also on which country during that period. Compared to especially the U.S., UK people were slimmer due to ongoing and quite long-term rationing well into the Fifties. Rationing actually finished much earlier in other European countries, ironically especially those on the loosing side. Germany actually received a lot of support both from the States, as well as the British. Think this is why satires like ‘When the Mouse Roars’ were filmed to show the sheer absurdity of the winners actually living in much worse conditions. I am very involved in vintage 1950s clothes, you can certainly find larger sizes for US and especially German clothing. I also have sewing patterns from that period and again, especially the European ones go up to quite large sizing, which shows that was some demand.

I wish people wouldn't keep saying everyone was underfed back then.
No they just didn't eat crap ready meals cooked from scratch and actually did some form of exercise.

A lot of people I know (myself included) like to eat in the evening whilst watching television. Including snacks after dinner - I think that creates meaningless weight gain too. I’m looking forward to DS starting to eat so we have to get into a “sit at the table for dinner” routine.

Yes a size 10 may have been a 24 inch waist 50 years ago, but that is in the relation to the height at the time! As average height has increased, so too will frame and therefore, average waist size.

As I've said, I don't eat ready meals and do a lot of exercise, and am still overweight.

Could it possibly be that there is more to it than some kind of generational moral deficiency?

And if it's moral deficiency, from whom did we learn it? Perhaps we weren't brung up right.

I think the big difference is the availability and consumption of food outside the home. I was born in the 60s and eating out was a high days and holidays treat, take away was the occasional fish and chips. No takeaway coffees or muffins, 6p worth of halfpenny chews from the corner shop was a big treat.
Yes food was different but my mum was a really good cook and I never felt the lack of "fancy, foreign food"! I don't remember ever being hungry, but essentially you ate at mealtimes and that was that. Also, the 60s and 70s was not the dark ages. We had a chest freezer and mum did a weekly supermarket, butchers and greengrocer shop.
I lived abroad for several years and when I came back to the UK was really shocked by how much fatter people were - particularly young people. I don't just mean a bit plump, I mean obese.

I was a size 12 in my 20s back in the early 70s and that was 34-24-36. My friend was a very slender size 10 - 32-22-34.

I remember this well, my waist size was 25 inches and I was size 12-14, I am now a size 12-14 and my waist is 31 inches, and the waist measurements for size 12-14 are between 29-32 inches, hips for size 12 are 39-40 inches,( it used to be 36) on size tables nowadays.

A PP reminded me of the old (60s?) advert for Milky Way as 'the snack you can eat between meals' - the norm was not to eat snacks at all, really. I can't remember ever being hungry as a child, but my mother certainly limited my sweets intake - they were a real treat, not something I had every day. Also, I'd never heard of anorexia or bulimia, or any eating disorder - not that they didn't exist, just that people were unaware of them, and so the fear of giving a child a bad self-image, which consequently might lead to an eating disorder, simply wasn't there. No political correctness either - if you were fat, people referred to you as fat, unless they were fond of you and didn't want to hurt your feelings.

It was seen as very ill mannered to eat on the street or on transport - except for something like having some chips on the way back from the cinema or by the sea. There simply weren’t the opportunities to buy snacks or fast food - or things like sandwiches from lots of retail sources like now.

Also - corsets .

I don't eat ready meals, I cook from scratch and I do plenty of exercise, I'm still fat though. I eat far too much. My mum has been on a slimming diet of one kind or another ALL of her life, as was her mum. That coupled with smoking like chimneys meant they stayed thin. Mum says her friends (1950s) all smoked, counted every calorie and made themselves throw up if they went over. My other grandma was very hefty, she walked everywhere, miles a day, but also ate large portions and enjoyed a drink.

Snacking was an absolutely unheard of. You had 3 meals a day and that was all you had.

I think this is a major point.

It's often asked why the Italians and French are slim despite eating so many carbs and fatty foods. I thiknk a large part of the answer is that nobody over the age of about 10 snacks. It's considered a mild indulgence for bambini, but slightly sad in adults, expect as a rare treat. That was the same in the UK and even the USA until well into the 1970s - and coincidentally or not, that is when obesity rates started to creep up. Obviously it's not the only factor, but it is an important one.

Also I think waists were measured wearing a corset (or after wearing a corset and being pulled in).

DD is 13, a size 6, 5'2" and seven stone something. Her waist is about 25". My grandmother allegedly had an 18" waist in her late teens and was the same height. Looking at my lovely, healthy, slim, fit daughter I find that rather odd and disturbing. There is really no need for a waist to be slimmer than hers, for health reasons.

vespa curries - dehydrated, you had to add water - were the first ready meal I remember having. They were delicious at the time, would probably find them disgusting now.

This doesn't sound right - a quick google suggests more like 50%. Where are you getting that number? Thank you - I read a graph too quickly, and accepted it because it fitted in with my perception - among my family and friends there were quite a few male smokers, but only one of my friends had a mother who smoked, and there none of the women of our family.

According to ASH 41%-45% of women in 1940s-50s. Now down to 13% (ONS).

Not super over weight but chucky seems to be fairly common in family pictures going back in older women - though men in our families were doing very physical jobs.

I think the % of population who are overweight and obese has increased over the decades – there is a plateau point though where everyone who is going to get overweight does but due to genetics and lifestyles it’s never going to be all the population.

Childhood poverties appearance has change with time I think – in family photos and old photos the poor children are really thin, small often with a pinched look. We live in areas with high depravation while no means all children in poverty are overweight - children in poverty are much more likely to be obese and overweight now.

I think the French and Italians are catching up with us though.