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....

I was still living at home for most of the 90s. My mum refused to cook or let me learn/ make my own food. 6 days a week we would have chips from the chip fryer and sausages/ burgers. It was really boring and tasted horrid: always burnt and the chip fat was never cleaned so it had lots of black bits in it. School dinners were a huge cheese baguette, chips and either crisps or chocolate. As a teen I was absolutely tiny but such an unhealthy way of living. Sundays were either a sandwich or occasionally a Sunday roast for dinner.
Went to uni in ‘96 and was determined to learn to cook properly. My diet improved dramatically overnight, even with all the booze and late night takeaways

In the week (Mum cooking) we'd have things like spag bol, pizza/fish fingers/sausage and chips, sometimes a sausage casserole .. then at the weekend Dad cooked and it'd be something like a salad on a Saturday (a huge salad with lots of different things, so not really a healthy option) and then on Sunday a roast dinner without fail.

I think if kids growing up today had my diet as a child their parents would be posting on here asking for help on how to make it better!

Wow thanks for all the responses- have made for a great reading this morning! And made me hungry

As a student - spaghetti and Ravi from a jar with peas and cheddar, or tuna pasta salad. I then shared a house with someone who cooked at London’s finer gastro pubs and learned a lot from him about darting and cooking. I ate out a lot - sometimes fancy places like Pharmacy or the Atlantic when it might just be a starter and lots of cocktails, or Indian - only really discovered it then - also gastro pubs as they were becoming a thing. God know how I afforded it? Lived in Manhattan for. But and as no nearby grocery store, AATW from cardboard deli boxes a lot nut at least there were vegetables in there. Ate out more - discovered Thai food. Oh and also discovered the takeaway cafe latte from Seattle coffee company or coffee republic, often with a blueberry muffin.

Only vegetarian Indian non -processed food. I did not eat processed until I was over 25.

My parents were / are amazing cooks, so i was lucky I think.

Breakfast- always white toast with honey or marmite
Lunch- always ham sandwich a piece of fruit and some crisps
Dinners- beef wellington; chicken schnitzel; my dad would make home-made semolina gnocchi with pumpkin cream and spinach sauce; home made Indian food of all sorts; herbed rack of lamb; arancini.

I’m v surprised by all the PPs who ate so differently to now!
Their diets sound more like the 1960’s/early 70’s than the 90’s.
I was born in the 50’s, and was a widowed mother of toddlers in the 90’s. I cooked all the things I do now - Indonesian, Indian, Chinese, Italian, British. The supermarkets had most of the spices, herbs and foreign veg needed, and specialist shops provided anything more obscure.
I had my gourmet cooking magazines from the 80’s, when DH was alive and we catered dinner parties together, and a shelf of cookbooks from various international cuisines. I can truthfully say I never took my DC to a McDonalds, or served them an instant ready meal, for their entire childhoods. They’re now 30 and 31.

We ate pretty much what we eat now: pasta/chilli/salads/fish/curry/

we had a fabulous Thai restaurant in our town which inspired a lot of cooking. We also lived near to all the fantastic Balti houses in Birmingham and spent many an evening there.
Some of the foods that people are describing above like crispy pancakes are the sort of thing that I might have had in the 70s.
We went to Portugal for our honeymoon in 1990 and brought piri-piri sauce back with us so ahead of Nandos by about 20 years.

Crispy pancakes and honey and mustard chicken tonight!!

Their diets sound more like the 1960’s/early 70’s than the 90’s.

I agree. My mother was an adventurous cook so our diet in the 1960s was more varied than that of most posters' 1990s diets.

I was a child and my diet was absolutely appalling! My Mum worked FT and didn’t have time to cook properly so it was always freezer foods like potato smiles/alphabet shapes with turkey dinosaurs or chicken nuggets and beans. I used to love going to my Nan’s house because she’d give me pot noodles, magnums, endless sunny D, lots of chocolate and sweets, curry ready meals etc. My Dad always took me to KFC or McDonald’s every weekend too. Lots and lots of junk food, I also drank a lot of cherry coke or Dr Pepper. Amazingly I was not fat but I think that was in part due to the fact I played outside most of the time.

Ha yes to crispy pancakes, how did I forget those… My Nan also used to get mini frozen pizzas for me. Also billy bear ham in my sandwiches every day, I doubt I ever took fruit (I used to think my best friend was poncy for taking raisins!).

Lean Cuisine and a shit ton of Mini Kievs.

@Youdiditanyway

I was a child and my diet was absolutely appalling! My Mum worked FT and didn’t have time to cook properly so it was always freezer foods like potato smiles/alphabet shapes with turkey dinosaurs or chicken nuggets and beans. I used to love going to my Nan’s house because she’d give me pot noodles, magnums, endless sunny D, lots of chocolate and sweets, curry ready meals etc. My Dad always took me to KFC or McDonald’s every weekend too. Lots and lots of junk food, I also drank a lot of cherry coke or Dr Pepper. Amazingly I was not fat but I think that was in part due to the fact I played outside most of the time.

Same!

Findus crispy pancakes
Tinned meatballs
Micro Chips
Frozen pizzas
Chicken kievs
Ready Brek
Potato waffles
Baked beans
Caramac
Fishfingers
Sunny D
Coca Cola

Pretty dreadful, really!

I remember doing Chicken Tonight at least once a week
Mexican every Saturday, our favourite ‘interactive’ meal of the week, the children loved to build their own tacos, adding cheese, salsa, salad etc. A roast every Sunday.
Pasta a couple of times a week.
Cottage pie, stew in the slow cooker, jacket potatoes in the oven on a timer so dinner was ready when I got home.
Tomorrow’s dinner prepared the night before if I was using slow cooker or oven timer.

I worked full time, did 100% of the housework because that was “woman’s work” and had three children.
New Dh and I are now vegetarian, I’m diabetic and I’m retired so food is very different.

Oh, and Super Noodles!

Omg we are a big pile of crap. Those Lucky Charm cereal where there were actual sweets in it. Then I ate chocolate cake for lunch the entirety of senior school. Sweets all the time at home and at school.

@Ilikeknitting Haha, yes, Chicken Tonight! That was like fine dining in my house

I was born in 1985 so most of my childhood took place in the 90s. I remember: boil in the bag cod in parsley sauce; Findus crispy pancakes; cabbage, bacon and cheese (watery); lots of curries (my best frenemy at the time once told me my house smelled of curry); cottage pie and spaghetti bolognaise.

When I was 11 my mum met her now wife and started going out a lot more, so I ate a lot more oven food I could cook myself. My favourite was frozen chicken Kiev and potato wedges with half a bottle of Dijonnaise (and a raw carrot to make it healthy).

When I was in sixth form (early 2000s) I had a Saturday job in a department store from which I used to rush home in order to get ready to go out (to Wetherspoons, wearing black trousers and a halterneck top, natch), and dinner was always a microwave curry. Bloody loved those.

I was a student and then just starting work. The main things I ate were - bake potato and frozen veg, chicken in tinned sweet and sour sauce, flavoured packet pastas that you just add water or milk or something to. Now I eat much more varied stuff, never have baked potatoes though and less things out of packets and jars.

Early 90s I was a young teen.
Ate lots of homemade macaroni cheese, minute steaks and homemade chips, tuna&cheese on toast ( yes, I was overweight).
Late 90s I was a student and lived on sandwiches from the garage opposite my flat (cheese was a favorite) and tubs of strawberry Hagen Daz and jars of Nutella that I'd sit and eat with a spoon.
I can't remember doing a shop or having proper regular meals.
Once a week I'd go to the local pizza joint for a pineapple pizza or go to Chinatown and have sweet &sour fish ( was like fish bites from the fish shop) with fried rice.
I actually lost quite a lot of weight as a student but looking back I just ate pure stodge.

We almost never ate out - KFC or McDonald's as an occasional treat, and once or twice a year we'd go to a Chinese or Indian restaurant. I eat out at least twice a week nowadays!

I didn't eat an aubergine until I went to university.

I was a teenager and always on a diet. I remember eating those Lean Cuisine ready meals, special K.

My mom used to make Chicken tonight curry with half rice, half chips and mango chutney which I really liked.

Day to day not that different to now. Hardly ever had a takeaway though unless it was fish and chips. I had my very first Chinese in 1999 at a friend’s birthday and it was the first time a lot of us had had Chinese food!