To ask what you ate in the 90s?

[Caligal]

What was your daily diet then like compared to now? Whether you were a kid, a teen or an adult. I’m curious how different it was to today....

Home food was roast meat and veg. No much seasoning in sight. Toad in the hole, a terrible bolognaise if we were lucky but my dad believed it wasn't a dinner unless there were potatoes on the plate.

Student food was instant noodles, pasta n sauce packets, spaghetti hoops with melted cheese on top, wheat crunchies, cans of lilt

I was at home for the first half of the decade, and my mum and dad have always been good cooks, so pretty healthy meals at home, though with a bit more oven chips and lasagne than they’d probably cook today.

When I went to college (1995) we pretty much existed on pasta with tomato sauce and chopped veg (and tuna); stir fried veggies and noodles, and just generally toast with Marmite, soup, scrambled eggs, home made pizzas and sandwiches.

Very late 90s I was at work in London, and mostly ate pasta with M&S stir in tomato and mascarpone sauce, or fries and gin and tonic in bars after work! Managed to be very thin too, have no idea how.

A sample day from about 1993 (I was 15) would be:

Cocopops for breakfast

Generic packed lunch at school - probably cheese sandwiches, crisps, a Club bar, an apple

There seemed to be a LOT of chicken Kiev type things for dinner - some with different centres to the usual garlic butter - creamy sauces inside I think. With oven chips and probably beans or peas.

A couple of bars of chocolate from the local shop as snacks. Cadbury usually.

Chicken Tonight sauces were a regular for our bigger Sunday meal. They were rank. Why were they so ‘shiny’? 🤢

I was a child in 90s.

Breakfast:
Least favourite meal of day - often skipped.

Wheatabix with butter on not milk.
Egg on toast each Sunday.
On holiday if In France pain au chocolat

Lunch
Sandwich and fruit and a yogurt or crisps usually grapes apples oranges bananas and strawberries only in the summer.
Ham sandwiches
Cheese
Philadelphia
Sandwich spread
Spam
Pate
Sometimes just an apple and banana if on the go. Sometimes a McDonald’s or Morrison’s scone with jam and cream.

Tea-
Something homemade usually-
Cottage pie
Fish pie
Liver and onions
Lasagna
Trout or salmon cooked in paper with a slice of lemon.
Stir fry

Salmon en croute
Anything traditional really.
Fish n chips every week after a weekly shop.

At one quick meal a week/ fortnight - Fay bentos crispy pancake, pot noodle

Lots of roast dinners, lots of homemade chips cooked in lard in a chip pan, eggs on toast, cheese on toast, chilli con carni, meat with boiled potatoes. Sausages, cheese and potato pie.

Some freezer food like findus crispy pancakes and fishcakes.

Lots of sweets and cheap fizzy pop.

Late 90s I existed on chilli made from frozen Quorn mince. I used to eat it with rice, grated cheese, and a massive dollop of natural yoghurt.

Lots of goats cheese in restaurants (late 90s)

Cafe Rouge seemed to feature heavily as somewhere I ate at (would have been 17-20 for the end of the 90s).

@ZaraW

Mine was pretty good. We moved to London renting a flat off Portobello Road, there were really great vegetarian restaurants near the market and they reasonably priced. Hardly ever cooked, too busy working and socialising.

I also lived there, Dunworth Mews, in the middle of the market.

Ate a lot of pasta & pesto, samosas and pakora, baguettes and cheese, jacket potatoes and not a lot else 😂

I was born early 80s so was still at home in the 90s
I remember lots of casseroles most likely made with Coleman's packets, roast chicken thighs with salad and potatoes seemed to appear a lot, spag Bol which I wouldn't touch so just had plain spaghetti, love it now. Lasagne. Roasts. Quiche. Takeaway curry and Chinese food on special occasions. Rarely had things like fish fingers or nuggets which I used to think made me very hard done by

A teenager in the 90s
Coco pops for breakfast
Fags, toffee crisp, Pepsi for lunch
Frozen pizza or a quorn burger for dinner
Sounds really unhealthy, I did eat some Home Cooked food some of the time when I was home. Amazed at how slim I was then.

This also featured quite heavily in the summer rotation

Marriage and children were born, so moved to more regular, sit down family meals. Three week rolling menu by end of the decade to make life easier.
I don’t eat breakfast, husband grabbed a slice of toast with marmite or ate at work. Children had different things depending on their age but boiled eggs and soldiers were a favourite or fruit salad and yoghurt. Pancakes in the holidays.

Suppers were stir fry, curry, pasta, salad, baked potatoes, casserole or traybakes, much as now.

Child in the 90s.
We ate a lot of Kwik Save No Frills goods.
Drank fizzy pop straight out of the big bottles!

Sausage casserole made in slow cooker...yuck.
Spag bol
Roast dinner. Veg cooked in salt.
Sara Lee Lemon meringue
Oven chips a lot.
Stodgy cheap white bread sandwiches. Especially cheese or corned beef, it was cheap back then!

Student for early 90's and vegetarian. Pasta dishes - Veggie Spag Bol made with textured vegetable protein mince. Veggie lasagne.
Curry dishes, made with cook in sauces and TVP chunks.
Vegetable stir frys
Linda McCartney's was one of the few ranges of Veggie food available.
Started eating humous and tzatiki.
Even at age 15 with a sweet tooth, Sunny D felt wrong.
Drank Yazoo yoghurt drink, Kettle crisps were quite sophisticated (to me) at the time.
Mid 90's onwards better versions of the above dishes.

I was very slim back then so everything I ate had to fit into 1000 cals per day.

Breakfast - tea or coffee.
Lunch - sandwich (coronation chicken was my fave) plus packet of fruit gums.

Evening- baked spud with beans/cheese/ whatever.
Fruit gums.

Home cooking was fish pie, chilli, baked spud or sometimes lasagne.

Afters was always fruit gums. My teeth are buggered.

McDonald's as a weekend meal, especially if travelling back from somewhere.

Oh, and Diet Coke. Copious amounts.

Didn't discover Sunny D until much later.

I'm surprised at how many posters ate so few "foreign" foods only 30 years ago.

Like @Ragwort we were more adventurous. I guess that living near Bradford we had access to some brilliant Indian restaurants and some excellent Chinese restauarants in Leeds.

I was, and still am, a massive cookery show fan and watched Ken Hom, Madhur Jaffrey, Keith Floyd, and many other TV chefs make mouth watering dishes. Madhur Jaffrey was such an inspiration, and I remember driving for miles to get hold of some fresh coriander.

Tween/teenager - lots of meat, potato and two veg meals. Soup or bacon sandwiches for Saturday lunch. Oven chips, croquette potatoes, occasional smiley faces. Takeaway once a month - either a curry or fish & chips. Roast dinner at 6pm on a Sunday. Chicken tonight featured as well - agree with PP about it being so shiny.

Used to be able to last an entire school day on a bowl of cereal for breakfast and a packet of crisps at lunchtime.

Late 90s - I consumed a lot of alco pops before discovering vodka.

Incredibly managed to stay under 9 stone until I went to university.

Ohh sunny D. Wish you could still get that stuff.

Mum would cook the same couple of meals. Sausage casserole, tuna and mushrooms, spag bol, shepherds pie with loads of peas, haddock cooked in milk!

Also happy meals or Burger King would be fairly regular.

Early 90's had just moved in together and couldn't cook....so it was Turkey burgers, mini kievs, waffles, oven chips and other frozen delights.

Dm then bought me a Delia cookbook and it was a revelation...I couldn't believe what could be produced by following simple recipes! I would host dinner parties at weekends to try them out but for day to day quick meals I also started using bought sauces to make things like spag Bol and chicken casserole.

Nowadays I cook everything from scratch (not usually time consuming things) but I'd still happily eat turkey burgers beans and waffles!

I had a bad diet lots of white bread, club biscuits, pizzas, chips etc. I was also vegetarian and ate lots of horrible processed Linda McCartney ham and ‘facon’. (Fake bacon) definitely didn’t eat as much fresh food as I do now.

I was a teenager in the 90s and pretty much lived on convenience food. Pot noodles, frozen ready meals, basically anything that could be stored in the freezer and cooked in a microwave!

Had a revelation at around age 25 in the early noughties and started eating healthily. I used to follow carol Vordermans
detox diet book 😬

Oh and pretty much every day at school I had a chip butty from the fish and chip shop. I don't know how I wasn't overweight (obviously at the time I thought I was but I really wasn't!)

I got some Sunny D the other day. But it's a shadow of its former self.

60s to 70s
Mince, potatoes and greens
Beef Casserole
Jacket potatoes
Always a Sunday roast
Chops, greens and boiled potatoes
Cottage pie and greens

We didn't have sweet treats in the house at all times,

Remember loving black Jack's, fruit salad, sweet cigarettes, chocolate bars, favourite being the milk tray bar, bovril crisps...
Ahhh the good old days.
No one was obese either, as snacking between meals wasn't a thing.

Early to mid 90s I was still at school. Usually had a glass of Coke for breakfast, skipped school dinner because it was disgusting (seriously, the highlight of the week was the day you got a slice of cold cooked meat like corned beef and some tinned potatoes) then had whatever my mum cooked in the evening. Usually "proper" food though plenty of frozen stuff.

Late 90s I was a student so my diet was mainly prepacked sandwiches, crisps and lots of takeaways. And booze of course. Funnily enough, I'd run out of money a couple of weeks before the end of term every single time and have to live on the cheapest of the cheap Tesco Value items.

Once I lived on Tesco Value Weetabix-style product for a week. Literally just that and water. Other times I was lucky, this was the height of the supermarket bean wars where you could get a tin of Tesco Value beans for 2p and a loaf of Tesco Value bread for 7p.