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Original poster

Late 80s/90s kids - were you allowed to eat beef?

135 replies

magicalkitty · 17/08/2023 08:47

90s kid here and I was not allowed to ever eat beef as a child. This was due to a fear my parents had about mad cow disease so it was never in the house.

I am a vegetarian now anyway, but I think I've only eaten beef once in my life, at a BBQ in my early teens.

Just wondered if other kids were also banned from eating beef, or if my parents were just odd?

OP posts:
squeakyckeanteef · 18/08/2023 22:53

OMG! I totally forgot about this. Born 1990 and we weren't allowed to eat beef either over concerns about mad cow disease.

Crinkle77 · 18/08/2023 22:58

No never stopped eating it. The chances of catching CJD were and are still so rare.

coldseedlessgrapes · 18/08/2023 23:00

Born early 80's. Our parents stopped us eating beef and gelatine for years and I don't think they ever went back to eating beef.

AuntMarch · 18/08/2023 23:04

I assume we ate it, don't ever remember it being mentioned! It could have been lamb bolognese I almost lived on as a fussy kid though.

I worked in a childcare setting in around 2007 that still didn't have it back on their menu though.

MonsterRehab23 · 18/08/2023 23:07

Born in late 80’s. I remember in the 90’s my mum stopped buying beef burgers. Pretty sure we still ate McDs though!

CoodleMoodle · 18/08/2023 23:09

Grew up in the 90s. We had beef quite a bit (always at Christmas as we had turkey on Boxing Day at GPs) but DM did stop buying it for ages when MCD was announced. We did eventually go back to having it, but I wasn't really bothered either way.

StJulian2023 · 18/08/2023 23:13

Born in 79, no beef in our house. However I got invited to a Wimpy birthday party and it was one of the best afternoons of my young life 🤣

Absolutelynotfornow · 18/08/2023 23:13

I am in my late 50s and I genuinely cannot remember 🙃I was out partying in Australia so maybe I just missed it !

GoingInsaneAhhh · 18/08/2023 23:16

Yes I remember seeing a news article on the telly of a woman with mad cow disease cjd? Then we werent allowed chicken or eggs because of salmonella 🙄 im still alive and eat all this stuff now

Whyohwhywyoming · 18/08/2023 23:23

Interested in the actual link between beef and the illness - a man my mum went to school with died a year or so ago from CJD. I can’t remember what she told me about it but I believe it was a quick progression from becoming ill to dying. Very scary.

I was born in 79. My mum was veggie anyway but we still ate beef, mainly mince. Beef cobbler was my favourite. I don’t eat meat now either but I guess the damage, if any, is done.

Yellowlegobrick · 18/08/2023 23:28

I remember a phase (late 80s early 90s) when we didnt really eat beef.

My mother made a lot of things with lamb mince, there was definitely a concern about BSE. It seem to dissipate somewhere along the way in the 90s.

LBFseBrom · 18/08/2023 23:30

Dotjones · 17/08/2023 09:03

We had beef all the time. The mad cow disease scare was just that, a scare, part of the human need to always believe we are facing the biggest crisis in history and are about to face catastrophe.

Before mad cow disease there was AIDS, before that there was atomic annihilation. Before that there was Hitler. Napoleon was an existential threat, witchcraft was a real danger.

After mad cow disease Islamic terrorists were going to be the end of us. Now there's climate change.

It's a weird part of our nature that we seem to need to believe we are at a particularly key moment in history. Usually this expresses itself in us stoking fear that unless we take drastic action right now then we're fucked as a species. This is why I don't give two hoots about climate change - it's just part of a long tradition of things designed to scare us that actually turned out to be nothing. (Well not "nothing" because some people will die, I just mean our fears are always grossly over-exaggerated.)

No Martians on your list? I remember, as a small child in the 1950s, thinking they might land in the allotments behind our back garden. I used to look out of my bedroom window when it was dark, looking for suspicious lights. Then there was 'the bomb' (which you did mention), and I dreamed I was riding my little bike around the local park and nobody else was there - radiation sickness. Some years later Bob Dylan wrote a song about WW3 and 'the only person in the world was me' (which shows nobody ever really has an original thought).

Alba82 · 19/08/2023 00:10

Born in 82. Yes on average 2-3 times a week...My dad worked in a job that took him to mostly rural area & farming communities, he saw firsthand the devastating impact of the crisis, many farms went under because they couldn't market their livestock even though the herds tested fine.
As a family we kept eating 'safe' beef to help support the industry. We'd been eating it for years & didn't make any difference to us

ConsuelaHammock · 19/08/2023 00:11

I grew up on a beef farm
so yes I ate beef .

Proudmummy67 · 19/08/2023 00:13

I'm born 88. My parents stopped us eating beef for years. In my mid-teens I was at a friend's house for tea and her mum gave us a beef burger and I really enjoyed it. I went home and told my parents like I had done the worst thing in the world by eating beef! They then said it was my decision if I ate beef or not so I chose to. I don't think they ate it for quite a few more years after that but they have the odd beef thing now.

RosieRainbow1986 · 19/08/2023 00:14

Yes I remember this with the mad cows scare - I think I was in Yr 8 or 9 at the time and we didn't eat it until the scare was over!

XenoBitch · 19/08/2023 00:15

Yep. Ate it then, and eat it now.

I know someone who lost her mum to CJD. It was random, and nothing to do with beef.

Klausnextmum · 19/08/2023 00:16

70s kid. We def never ate beef. It was too expensive than mad cows. I had a blood transfusion in the 90s and now can’t give blood in case I was infected. I wish they would check. So I know if I’m infected and if not I could give blood!

RosieRainbow1986 · 19/08/2023 00:16

BillCar · 17/08/2023 09:11

@Hopingforno2in2023 it's actually very sweet! The memory made me smile although it must have been such a worrying time. I remember my mum relenting and letting us eat burgers at the seaside - must have been around 1997

This memory made me smile too! I've just told my husband about it and how paranoid my mum was etc! But yes, it must have been a big worry at the time!

MargaretThursday · 19/08/2023 00:19

We didn't eat it for over 10 years.

FijiSea · 19/08/2023 00:23

Now you are asking - no
But not because of mad cow disease…
we just lived on fish fingers / beans / cheesy pasta
I was aware of this disease because it was all over the news but we honestly never ate meat products, a burger would have been a luxury. We never ate meat pies ( didn’t have one of these until I tried a scotch pie as a teenager). I’m

binglemyoats · 19/08/2023 00:24

No, my mum didn't give beef to us as children while the BSE threat was active - we'd use pork mince instead, that sort of thing. I think it's probably why I don't have much of a taste for beef mince as an adult and still get a bit funny about eating it, even though I know it's safe.

Interestingly, people from the UK can't donate blood in other countries if they lived here in that time.

Lockeddownagain · 19/08/2023 00:32

I stopped eating it as a teen in about 94 and didn't eat it again till I was in my 20s.dont eat it now

TrickorTreacle · 19/08/2023 05:07

Yes Greta, I ate beef and still do. Next question?

Caspianberg · 19/08/2023 05:28

Yes. My mother never read the news or had any concern about events that’s might affect us. So she definitely had no idea about it, if you ask her now she’s probably never heard of it.
It utterly baffles me how she wandered through life not having a clue about any event that’s ever happened ( wars, 9/11, drought, brexit, politics, weather). Just lives in a bubble