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 don't recognise a lot of this from the '90s at all!

Neither do I @JudgeJ, but I was an adult, married, working and cooking proper meals from scratch, and enjoyed cooking loads of different cuisines.

Are we sure we’re talking he 90s here?
I can’t think of any families who ate some of these things as their regular diet. Can't think my children were ever offered bread and butter when they went to friends houses for lunch or supper. Where was this happening? Feels like a post war time warp

I agree @LemonRoses

DD is a student, and she doesn’t eat most of the stuff mentioned on here. She is vegetarian and eats a lot of carbs, but she cooks from scratch and actually does eat a lot of vegetables.

I moved out of home in 1990 and spent my money on booze rather than food so lived on cereal, super noodles & chips.

Once I moved in with my boyfriend in '92 it was lots of processed beige carbs. Crispy pancakes, deep fried potato waffles, that kind of stuff.

Mid-late 90's I got interested in looking after myself more and ate loads of veg, less fried stuff, started going to the gym. Even went veggie for a while, which was way trickier then than now!

Almost the same as now, less veggie and less eggs, too many meat based meals and no curry as my ex didn’t like it.
Typically toast with spread coffee breakfast.
Now fruit, maybe toast and nut butter, coffee .
Lunch sandwich normally crisps, the same now as trying to exclude crisps.
Dinner roast, pasta , meatballs, meat casserole, fruit juice for sons every day.
More chocolate bars, and veggie fingers🙂
Now far more veggie, less roast dinners, more fruit

Student food. Chips, mostly, and lots of sugary drinks. The first year of uni I was in catered accommodation but I didn't really make a lot of use of it. I ate enormous quantities of terrible desserts.

Early 90s teenager . Sugary cereal like coco pops, something and chips at school, dinner was usually meat and potatoes in some form or mini Kiev’s. I ate tons of chips.

Late 90s student - massive amounts of toast, pasta with tomatoes or pesto. Waffles and nuggets. Curry made with a jar. Chips.

I was in my 30s during the 90s and ate much the same as I do now.

I still eat the same as the 90s. Toast or cereal for breakfast, sandwich-crisps-chocolate biscuit for lunch, and spag bol/ chicken Kiev/ Sausages etc for tea.

Roast and a pudding on Sunday.

Slab of meat, boiled old potatoes and veg pretty much every day.

Ended up only wanting to eat the veg!

Ready Break, peanut butter/pork Haslet/corned beef and tomato ketchup sandwiches, semolina, fucking heart and liver. We NEVER had "name brand" pop. It used to feel like a real event if I went to a friend's house and their parents had bought the good stuff.

@Crowsaregreat

Late 90s I think was when bigger supermarkets opened, big Tescos popping up everywhere. We had a lot of fresh pasta as it seemed very fancy - stuffed or fresh tagliatelle with ready made sauce. Lots of frozen pizza and garlic bread too.

Different world to the one I inhabit, clearly. I went to my first supermarket in about 1966 (Tesco), a big store in about 1968 (Liptons) and the first hypermarket I went to , selling everything from food to furniture, was opened near Ramsgate in around 1970.

Where are these places without supermarkets until the 1990's?

I’m not sure the food available was much different but my understanding and choices are better now. I’ve always eaten good staples like fish, fruit & veg and wholemeal bread/rice/pasta, but I used to have more processed stuff that I thought was ‘healthy’ like Muller Light yoghurts, breaded Quorn burgers, Diet Coke, etc. Not awful but I’m more aware of synthetic sweeteners and additives now.

In my less healthy student days (late 90s) I supplemented the good habits learned at home with plenty of Pot Noodles, packets of Pasta ‘n’ Sauce, Cup-a-Soups and anything else that you could prepare by adding hot water to the contents of a packet. I also loved to eat tinned ratatouille and tinned sweet corn straight from the tin with ketchup squirted in and considered it a full meal.

What is currently billed as Gigi Hadid pasta (as if she eats pasta, let alone with any cream involved) was the staple cliche fancy pasta dish of the early 90s - penne a la vodka.

Supermarkets always existed @LemonRoses. I think Crowsaregreat means that more superstore sized supermarkets were built, thus considerably increasing the choice of foods.

I grew up in South London in the 1960s. My mother wasn't English, and she was Cordon Bleu trained, so I was privileged to eat foods that were considered unusual at the time, and virtually unobtainable in other parts of the country - fresh ravioli, olives, sauerkraut, Polish sausage, capers for example.

We always had supermarkets where I grew up, but they weren't the size that they are now.

Same as now. It wasn't the Middle Ages.

A packet of M&Ms on the walk to school then an iced coffee (Australia) for lunch

I was really thin

At uni - stirfries, stirfries, stirfries!

And the first big hypermarket where I lived in Devon opened in 1983. I suspect Devon was behind the curve and they opened much earlier elsewhere, although town centre supermarkets existed long before that.

The 90s were my secondary school years:
Breakfast: Non-sugary cereal with milk.
Lunch: Cheese and lettuce sandwich, club or penguin biscuit, walkers crisps. Fruit might be there but would be ignored. Squash.
Afterschool: A sticky bun, or lots of biscuits from a tin. Squash.
Tea: Boiled potatoes, with some version of boiled veg (green beans, brocolli, cauliflower, peas, sweetcorn, carrot) alongside. A vegetarian 'main' from the restricted selection available - findus cheese pancake, mushroom lattice, spinach and ricotta cannelloni readymeal, sos-mix etc. Bread and butter, and a Mr Kipling cake slice afterwards, or shortcake biscuit and a 2 finger kit-kat.
Drinks: Lots and lots of milky tea, offered ~every 45 mins between 4pm and 9pm.

@WaterAndTheWild

A packet of M&Ms on the walk to school then an iced coffee (Australia) for lunch

I was really thin

At uni - stirfries, stirfries, stirfries!

Oh yes -- all the stir fries! They'd been a staple at home. The uni catering had a stir fry station once a week, which was pretty much the only time I had dinner there. Once I moved out of catered accommodation that was pretty much the main meal staple until I stopped eating carbs.

Diet coke and cigarettes.

Spent the 90's working my way through Delia Smith cookery books. Later we moved on to Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver books. Got married mid 90's and hosted so many dinner parties. If we went out it was often to tex/mex or sports bar type places in London. Sizzling skillets of fajitas seemed very glamorous to me back then. Also ate a lot of lasagne in the 90s for some reason.

Lasagne and garlic bread was my favourite.
Curries with banana slices on top
Steak and kidney pie with dumplings
Chicken kievs
Tagliatelle with mushrooms and cream
Filo pies
Moussaka
Soufflé
Chicken breasts wrapped in bacon with tarragon sauce
Meatballs with vermicelli

My mum was a pretty good cook tbf 😋

Oh yes and toad in the hole every Saturday.

@AngelsWithSilverWings yay to all the texmex! Remember how it was normal to have a girl in hot pants and leather holsters across her boobs selling shots of tequila? (Actually I had a 90s office party in an sn’m bar in New York when we could pay $10 to have our bosses paddled by a girl in leather knickers and with leather sheriff stars on her nipples &nothing else. It wasn’t that long ago but it was also an era ago)
Jelly shots were a very 90s thing too.
Nobu first opened in the 90s so blackened cod was a huge thing too.

I was a child/ teenager. My diet was awful. Parents didn’t really cook, and to be honest they still eat similar today ( basically anything fast, microwaved or cheap). Hardly ever ate fruit or veg, or homemade or fresh.

Breakfast: huge bowl of mixed sugar cereal. Like golden nuggets, Frosties, coco pops

Lunch: marmite sandwich, wagon wheel, crisps like skips or monster munch, those pop straw sweet drinks. Ate pretty much the same at home or at school

Dinner: oven beige, beans, spaghetti hoops, more cereal. Roast at nans some weekends.

Snacks: just piles of sugary stuff. Unlimited snacks galore.

I’m amazed I have no dental issues, never had weight issues, and that I didn’t get scurvy!

I don’t eat any of the above now. Left home at 18, somehow learnt to cook quite easily, and usually eat a pretty healthy and varied diet.

Veggie burgers and Linda Mac pies.

Being a veggie at Uni was quite repetitive. If you were in halls you'd have frozen mix veg in a million guises: white sauce and crumble topping gave you veggie crumble. Mixed veg in sweet and sour sauce gave you sweet and sour mixed veg.... you get the idea.