To ask what you ate growing up?

[Bature]

And how it compares to what you and your family eat now? Particularly interested in people who aren’t in or originally from the U.K.

I grew up in a west African country and grew up on home cooked everything, lots of fresh veg, minimal animal protein (it was a garnish or flavouring, not the ‘main event’), pretty elaborate meals and lots of spices. Almost no sweets (we ate fruit), limited processed food and very occasional fizzy drinks.

I now live in the U.K. and I’m trying to feed my family similarly. On the upside, my diet is incredibly varied (everything from Vietnamese curries to Swedish meatballs). On the downside, there’s probably more processed food than is ideal, I take the occasional shortcut, and I eat rather a lot of chocolate.

How about you all?

Oven chips and Findus crispy pancakes mainly 🤣
I cook bog standard stuff like chili, roast chicken or spag Bol.

As an Indian child in the 80s and 90s we had lots of vegetable Curries, lentils ,chapattis and rice.. occasionally fish fingers ,chips and frozen pizza which I loved more. Now I cook all the foods I ate as a child but also other foods like shepherds pie, fish, more meat dishes, fajitas and have more variety. I think media has helped us bring different types of food into our homes

Brought up on roast dinners, breaded fish, peas and potatoes, stew, sausage and mash, kievs. Mum went through a curry phase and my friends used to love trying her curries, I hated them.

Now I cook everything except fish. I hate fish unless it has breadcrumb or batter on 😂 make our own pizzas, pies, curries etc. My kids grew up loving it when I worked away, as dp would make ‘kids food’ nuggets, fish fingers, smiles etc things I never done lol. But now they will eat and try everything as adults.

Child of 80's /. 90's. A lot of cabbage. Meat and 2 veg. Lots of roasts. Very little of stuff like spag bol. Or pasta. Always potatoes. Don't remeber having pizza until late teens. Bacon sandwiches. Fry ups (with black pudding gross). Chinese on a saturday night as I got older.

Bbq's were big in my house. But always steak or chicken. Never just sausages.

I ate much more veg than my children do but they have a more varied diet.

Stew.

Salad with salad cream. Or vinegar.

Always pudding - viennetta, walls ice cream, apple strudle, sttrawberries with sugar and cream.

My dad was a builder and always had bread and butter with his meals. I realise now that was probably to fill him up.

Not a lot in the way of processed foods but i remember friends having alphabet bites and being really excited and then not being able to eat them as they were so horrid. Always had things like penguins and kitkats though.

80s and 90s Midlands kid here.

My mum was a SAHM until I was about 8, when she went back to work. She's never been a great cook. She's averse to herbs and spices and overboils things. We ate a lot of convenience food during the week, using a packet or a jar sauce, or she'd use the slow cooker (gross stew!). We rarely had a takeaway or ate out.

On a Sunday we'd have roast dinner but I hated the lamb because it was greasy and dry. My dad used to make us stay at the table until my sibling & I finished it. 🤢

At the childminders it was things with chips or stuff she put in the microwave..🤢

Then my parents went vegetarian in the very late 90s. They ate Linda McCartney things out of the freezer or just veg with pasta sauce. I hated that but I was about 11/12 so in the end they ate their crappy food and I learned to cook in Home Ec at school giving me some skills in the kitchen. I fed my brother & myself from 12 to 18. Just badic things but it got us through.

After I met my husband I learned from him about herbs, spices, marinades, salad dressings...he's a keen foodie and a bit of an ingredients snob. Although I still struggle to put a meal together without swearing (I hate cooking as much as my mother) I can at least knock something together that's healthy and tasty now. I rarely use a jar sauce and never use a Colmans packet to flavour food. We eat a lot of vegetarian food because we like it, and we make it from scratch! We eat a lot of fresh and frozen veg and salad. We eat meat too, but because of the CoL we restrict it a bit. We buy good meat and try and make it last, so chicken is very economical, because you can soup and/or use it for stock afterwards.

I grew up in the UK but was brought up vegetarian in the 70s/80s. My mum cooked all meals from scratch and we had yoghurt/fruit for dessert except on weekends when she’d make a pudding. In the 80s we did have Vienetta but only on the weekend as well! She did bake and always had homemade cakes and biscuits too.
I ate wholewheat pasta, brown rice, wholewheat bread etc when most people had white everything although I think I persuaded my mum to buy rubbishy breakfast cereal.
Sadly she Wasn’t an amazing cook - she could’ve made fantastic vegetarian food but it was all a bit bland really. It did put me off being healthy as an older teen/young adult but I swung back to healthier food after having kids. I’m not veggie anymore either but I only really eat white meat and fish and try not to buy ultra processed food now either.

Everything cooked from scratch, but this was in the 50s/60s. The most we ever had that wasn’t, was a tin of peas (before we eventually had a freezer in the 60s) or baked beans.

My DM was actually a very good cook, especially give that money was always very tight until we’d all left home.

Interestingly although my parents ate all home cooked from scratch food in the late 70's I was entirely weaned on jars of food. I can remember my mum proudly telling her sister when i weaned my eldest (she makes all of the babies food, she hasn't given her a single jar) as though that was amazing.

Born in the early 50’s it was meat and vegetables, nothing ‘fancy or foreign’ as my dad would say , never had pasta and the only takeaway was the occasional fish and chips when we went on holiday (same place every year because my grandparents owned a bungalow there)
Roast chicken every Sunday, everything cooked from scratch, never had shop bought cakes or ready meals (apart from Vesta curries I don’t think ready meals existed!) We didn’t have a freezer until I was 10.
I remember mum going to cookery classes for specialty foods, Italian, Spanish etc and dad refused to eat ‘that foreign muck’ 😡. She was a wonderful cook and could make perfect pastry, cakes, desserts etc.
We only ate what foodstuffs were in season.

@IHeartGeneHunt We were similarly mocked at school for our homemade packed lunches and flasks of elderflower fizz rather than squash (ugghh, Ginmonkeyagain has drink with flowers in it!!)

Was born in 1950 bread was still rationed
Lived in a village, Money was tight late F had arthritis in his 20s, often unable to work,no benefits in those days. Bloke nextdoor caught shot rabbit, pigeons,F fished. Every thing from scratch, even drinks homemade lemonade ginger beer.Sunday roast, pudding spotted dick, roly-poly syrup tart custard.Monday cold cuts, Tuesday the mincer came out, shepherd or cottage pie. No snacks or fizzy.Grew fruit and veg, Bantams, bred, regular supply of eggs and chicken. I mostly cook from scratch,was completely veggie for 30 years, now occasionally chicken or fish now
Grow a lot of fruit and veg

We ate pretty much as my kids do now. About 90% home cooked stuff (everything from pastas, stews, roasts, salads to curries etc) and 10% processed stuff like pizzas. A lot of our after school teas would be stuff like egg on toast when we were very little.

Similar to a PP, my mum went through various diets though that then influenced what we ate. Vegetarian for a bit. Slimming world. The horrible cabbage soup phase! Then later everything became cooked in coconut oil, which was horrid. Even now she goes through at least one new diet a year and repeats an old one. I've become very determined not to put my kids through that!

Traditional English meals cooked from scratch meat and two veg. Often home home veg.
I ate what I was given.

My mum was not a good cook and as I child I hated food. I was made to finish everything and was often given an overloaded plate of things I didn't like and that was burnt. We had things like tinned meatballs, turkey drummers, potato waffles etc. Rarely she would cook something from scratch like cottage pie. I do still feed my kids frozen stuff but I try to cook from scratch 3 or 4 nights a week. It's hard with autistic kids who refuse to eat most things and will only really eat bland food.

90s kid and it was mostly frozen oven stuff with the occasional pasta dish and a roast most Sundays

Honestly it's much the same for my kids, which I know isn't great but I don't know how to change it as we are all quite fussy and don't have the budget to buy lots of food we probably won't like! (Considering getting an air fryer so I can at least make healthier nuggets and chips from scratch)

UK, 80s/90s.

My mum was a SAHM and like others a really fantastic cook. We ate a lot of lasagne, bolognese and chilli - lots of beef mince variations! - as we all liked it. We also had egg and chips and stuff like that, but that was a once a week thing. I used to dance 5 nights a week, my sister and brother also had lots of extra curriculars but we still had a very good meal most nights.

I wouldn't say my mum was especially adventurous - sign of the times though probably. She would give anything a go, but the recipes available would have been mostly French or Italian. She did cook quite a lot of Greek food actually; my dad is Greek Cypriot and she learned through osmosis as my yia yia definitely didn't deliberately teach her!

I try and emulate the same (although I draw the line at a different vegetable per child!) but I'm much more adventurous and try lots of different cuisines. I'm quite into Jamaican at the moment but I noticed an Ethiopian cafe opened near me and I've heard their food (Ethiopian food, rather than the specific cafe!) is to die for.

Husband and I both cook, I'm better though so probably 80/20 split. I can literally remember the times my dad cooked at home it was so few and he made such palaver out of it!

Born in the early 80's and my mum is a good cook. So it would be a roast on Sunday, shephards pie, stews, soups, pasta dishes and this incredible coconutty curry that even she has forgotten how to recreate. Fish and proper chips on a Friday after the fish van had visited. Lots of salads in the summer.

Stir fried chicken and rice was also a staple.

Puddings on Sunday, and we were only allowed sweets on a Sunday afternoon as well.

We did have a few convince foods like fish fingers, baked beans and we always had those crappytiny pizzas in!

In the 90's we would eat out about once a month, twice a week on holiday and a Chinese or Indian takeaway every so often.

Soviet Union. Food was always fresh and home cooked in 80s, more processed western foods arriving in 90s. Often meat-2veg type, toad in the hole, meatballs, stews, soups etc. Spices and herbs except very basic ones not used.

We eat a very healthy and varied diet in comparison. Lots of greens, salads. Asian cuisines. Often vegetarian/vegan, also all kinds of seafood, I try new recipes all the time and my spice drawer is impressive.

Balkans, so lots of Turkish and Mediterranean influence. Both my parents worked full time, but genuinely enjoyed cooking.

Diet consisted of barbecued and dry cured meats, fish, cheeses, salads, stuffed vegetables, sarma etc. Lots of olive oil, and herbs and spices used liberally. Carbs didn’t feature heavily, usually a flatbread or rice in small portions. I have the same type of diet now.

70s/80s UK.
B: Ready Brek. Sausage sandwich or full English at the weekend.
L: School dinners of stew, shepherd's pie, cheese pie, with chocolate concrete and mint custard, jelly or fruit crumble for pudding. OR, packed lunch of cheese or fish/meat paste or luncheon meat sandwich on white bread, crisps, penguin bar or kit kat and apple.
D: Pork chops mash and peas, belly pork with chips and peas, stew, pie, shepherd's pie. Egg and chips. Beef roast on Sundays. Later years, findus crispy pancakes with chips and beans, vesta boil in the bag curry or French bread pizza. In summer, salad with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and either boiled egg or tinned salmon. Always with bread and butter on the table. Tinned fruit with condensed milk.
Supper (for men, manual workers): buttered toast, cheese sandwich.
Am now a whole food vegan and cook everything from scratch.

My Mum is an awful cook and she worked FT too so we very rarely ate fresh food. I grew up in the 90s/00s so it was a lot of freezer food like Turkey dinosaurs, potato smiles, crispy pancakes, chicken nuggets etc with beans. Only meals I remember her actually cooking were spag bol but it was dolmio sauce so nothing too taxing and occasionally a Sunday roast which was always with horrendous leathery beef. Sometimes she’d make corned beef hash too which was utterly vile, I always had a pot of dread wash over me when I smelt that cooking.

Always had dessert which was also junk food, usually biscuits or chocolate. Drank full sugar fizzy drinks all of the time, so much so I always had cavities. Amazingly never overweight though, I guess because I was so active. I mostly cook from scratch now for my own DC, we never have freezer foods.

Born late 60's and not a lot of money.

Sunday roast with cold meat and salad next day for dinner in the summer or jacket potato and veg in the winter. Possibly a stew or shepherd pie with the last of the leftovers the next day. I remember chops, fish on Fridays (poached or fried (no batter)) with mash or boiled potatoes, mince either just fired off or cottage pie. Liver and bacon 😱with mash. Homemade pies with left over roast chicken or rabbit from the butchers.
The only pasta we had was macaroni cheese (spaghetti bolognese didn't arrive until the 80's in our house). I don't remember ever having rice until I introduced it following my cooking revelation that was a shared house at uni!
Fruit and veg was seasonal - roast potatoes only in the winter, new potatoes in the summer, proper salad in the summer, homemade coleslaw in the winter.
Puddings were made for Sunday and lasted several days - crumbles, fruit pies, trifle, bread pudding with stale bread.
We didn't have a freezer until the 80s so convenience food didn't really happen for us. Never had chips (a deep fat fryer was common apparently 😆).
Never had takeaways either.

I grew up eating potatoes. Lots and lots of potatoes!

Lots of vegetables, soups, stews. Only really ate apples , oranges and bananas. Grapes were for sick people in hospital.
Breads and cheese with tomatoes
Stewed rhubarb from the garden with plain bread.
Homemade broth- you bought leeks, celery and parsley wrapped in newspaper from the shop.
Roast beef every Sunday. Trifle or apple tart for pudding.
Sunday evening meal was a salad in summer. Lettuce, tomato, boiled egg, slice of ham, scallions, beetroot….
Herrings in season
Treats were homemade tray bakes- mars bar squares, fifteens, caramel squares.
Sweets twice a week. Tuesday and sat . Small packet of chewitts or a cream egg at Easter.
We didn’t eat crisps until I was about p7 and the new headmaster opened a tuck shop.

BSE beef 🙄