To be slightly horrified now by what I ate as a kid in the 80s?

[NotWantingToBeRude]

Breakfast was a bowl of either Coco Pops, Frosties or Sugar Puffs. (At least they didn't sell Froot Loops over here I suppose).

Packed lunch in my My Little Pony or Care Bears lunchbox was a sandwich (usually some form of processed meat, occasionally even jam), a pack of crisps, a chocolate bar and a juice box (Ribena or Um Bongo). Never any fruit.

Snack on arriving home from school would be not crisps and chocolate, possibly a Pepperami. Sometimes we’d stop off for pic ‘n’ mix.

Dinner included a full dessert every single night, usually with custard or cream.

Is it just me or would this not be considered so acceptable now?

I think we are all (those brought up on convenience food) overall less healthy than our parents. In terms of longevity- so this may come out as diseases/inflammation/poor gut health.

I’m hoping healthy eating as an adult and exercise can offset any damage that was done. But we have seen an increase in many diseases…

My 80s childhood diet
Cereal with milk/ yoghurt or dry. I have always hated milk (turns out milk hates me and triggers IBS) or toast.

Traditional school lunch with mash/ plain boiled potatoes and two-veg with a small dessert and small cup of water.

Dinner: spaghetti bolognese if DM was feeling motivated (using schwarz packet mix). More likely to be Fray Bentos pie/ faggots/ Dalepak "steaks" with tinned potatoes and two-veg. Probably tinned. If she really CBA, a tin on toast. Worse case scenario tinned tomatoes on toast which meant a long night until breakfast because plain tinned tomatoes are gross and they ruined the toast making it too acidic and soggy to eat.

The only vegetables I ate were carrots and mushrooms. Mainly because I hadn't met a vegetable that hadn't been boiled into oblivion.

Very few snack options avaliable. Certainly not a routine between meals. I wasn't allowed to take "tuck" to school or have 10p for the tuck shop. Some access to apples/ oranges/ bananas. Strawberries if they were in season. We grew grapes so again, if they were in season. One house had fruit bushes/trees from the the previous owner so there were seasonal fruit pies on Sundays. Triffle was another Sunday treat.

I was always the smallest in the class and very slightly built. But generally pretty healthy.

I wasn't particularly active- hated sports and running, but did a bit of gymnastics and dancing. I did a lot of pottering around though, so there was a lot of gentle movement rather than "exercise:

DM had been a war child so spent the majority of her youth with rationing and her mum was no great cook/ food enthusiast either. In the 60s, Twiggy had the aspirational look so food had always been an uninspiring necessity to be done a few times a day and wasn't a pleasure. In her credit, her mother made it into her 90s and she's well into her 80s, not without niggles, but the essentials for survival are all functioning fine. Where their diets and lifestyles have likely been negatively influential is on osteoarthritis.

I've come out of my childhood with a healthy attitude to nutrition and exercise and am on good form for my age range. I loved getting to university and getting more experimental with food with the widened choice of the late 90s.

I suspect there is a difference between 80s processing of food and current processing. Bread certainly lasts longer without going mouldy now so those kinds of basics have increased in levels of processing. Some ingredients like food colourings have been removed in the UK, but there are more additives such as preservatives and emulsifuers. More foods are modified to be low fat/ sugar which means added additives to make them behave the same way. The range of food/ drink containing artificial sweeteners has also increased significantly. Supermarkets are bigger, but it's not the staple, fresh foods that have increased.

Children were leaner and more active with a better balance of nutrition to their activity then. What has improved is a greater range of fresh veg/ fruit year round (great for more selective eaters like I was), but good quality basics are dearer and it's easier (and cheaper) to have a lot more ultra-processed foods as staples. Snacking culture, eating out and takeaways have increased and it is much easier to eat a surplus of appealling foods now.

There were still a lot of children having traditional diets in the 80s and living healthily on it.

My diet was similar OP. I remember stuff like frybentos meatballs in a can, Finders crispy pancakes, instant mash and for your 'vegetable' you'd have tinned spaghetti hoops.
I would never have fed my own kids shit like this every night. But, my mum is in her mid 80s, no dementia after eating this stuff her whole life and smoking like a chimney.

Oh and sweets every single day on the way home from school. Every one of my back teeth was filled before I finished school (tooth brushing wasn't a thing in my house) and this was after my baby teeth being removed by the dentist because they were all rotten.

I don't understand why your post caused such consternation, OP? I loved reading about your lunch boxes, took me right back. There are often threads about what we ate in the 70s/80s/90s and they're usually nostalgic.

I didn't have lunch packed for me, we didn't have much money and it was all a bit chaotic but that was then, not now.

Sorry that your thread has been derailed by so many. Just wanted to post in support.

I was born in 1983. Breakfast was usually Cornflakes (supermarket own brand) or Weetabix, which we of course added sugar to 😅. Ready Brek in winter. Weetos for a special treat (anyone remember those? Do they still exist?). I hated Sugar Puffs. I loved visiting my cousins because they had all the good cereals: Start, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Pops, Frosties.

Packed lunch: a sandwich, usually ham or cheese with the cheapest white bread (all we could afford). Packet of crisps, small chocolate biscuit (cheap version of a Penguin or similar), yoghurt. Squash in my flask, even though the school dinners kids were only allowed water. We had to take a piece of fruit for morning break, so that was usually an apple or an orange.

After school snack: Maybe a biscuit or crisps if we begged (usual response was"those are for your lunches"). A choc ice if it was warm. Otherwise we could help ourselves to fruit from the bowl.

Dinner: Sausages, chips and beans. Fish fingers chips and beans. Golden Drummers, chips and beans. Crispy Pancakes, chips and beans. Or replace chips with potato waffles and baked beans with peas. Golden Drummers and super noodles. Or a microwave meal - and in those days they were not nice. For years I thought I didn't like macaroni cheese because of the revolting ready meal version. But the particular low point was Micro Chips - literally frozen chips in a box that you stuck in the microwave on high. If my step dad was in charge it was always tuna omelette. My mum ate separately later on, usually salad and a sandwich. On weekends we all ate together then there would be something like "Chicken Tonight", mash and frozen mixed veg or Chicken Tonight with rice, a roast dinner, homemade lasagne, some kind of hot pot or stew, Spaghetti Bolognese, chilli con carne.

Not great food but at least we ate lots of fruit.

I think this too. Sugary cereal or pop tarts for breakfast, or cheap white bread with loads of syrup. Unlimited chocolate, crisps, pepperoni as snacks, jam sandwiches or paste sandwiches or cheap processed plasticky ham for lunch. Deep fat fried processed foods or microwave pizzas or curries for dinner. I think there’s a reason me and so many of my friends have stomach issues/IBS/diverticulosis/crohns etc.
We weren't short of money either, and my grandparents fed my parents completely differently - all home cooked food, veg and fruits grown in the garden, puddings home made. Limited treats.

There seems to be a lot of criticism of convenience foods here and how Mums were sucked in by advertising based upon convenience and 'goodness'.

What are posters' opinions on the Mumsnet branded microwave meals range in Iceland?

Agree. That is my point. It’s not about obesity - it’s about disease development such as bowel cancer. Rates have rocketed in the under 50s.

Sugar sandwiches for lunch, chip pan chips for tea. We "couldn't afford" fruit, cooked meats were a waste if the children wanted them but fine for parents, and Mars bars were readily available.

I think this is why I'm obsessed with fruit now!

You'd probably hate my kids packed lunch then(she's 11) as all she will have is a sandwich a pack of crisps a small chocolate bar and a yoghurt aswell as her bottle of squash. She won't touch any fruit or vegetables at all. My 9 year old has all of the above along with a piece of fruit a cheese string and a pepperami

Why do you think we're less healthy than our parents? I don't see that at all.

I think they grew up on the whole eating healthier foods. Rates of cancer in young people is rising dramatically. Not all of us but as a general trend.

We don't know why exactly rates of cancer in young people is rising dramatically though, do we? And what does 'young' mean there. The generation we're talking about is middle-aged now.
And could it be that it's easier to detect cancer now?

there are many factors that increase bowel cancer risks. Diet, obesity, sedentary lifestyle, pollutants, genetics, drinking and smoking.
Also there is improved screening.

Nothing finer than a ‘mince’ findus crispy pancake and chips for tea! We seemed to have loads of angel delight too! My mum used to do a proper curry night in the 80s too, or cheese board with that massive garlic sausage that looked like a tube of that dog food you can still get! Lots of it was processed yes, but also, a lot of it wasn’t and for all the ‘shit’ we ate there was a lot that wasn’t and I actually don’t think we ate as bigger portions as what people do now! We played out all the time wandering for miles on foot or our bikes, we didn’t have magnums, instead we had ice poles - everything now is based on how ‘opulent’ it is. I think our childhoods were a lot healthier than they are now despite not being concerned about every minute nutrient we put in our bodies because we moved more. Kids weren't sedentary. Give me my 80s childhood, food included and very single time.

Yes, reading about it - the rates cannot be explained by increased screening. I’m talking about the under 50s. So the generations since convenience food was invented. Something is going on!

Most likely - diet, activity levels, environmental factors..

How do you think it’s going to impact your health? How old are you now?

Its not very much a minority though, that is the point. Its not just 5% of people. I agree every post being made then hit with inequality and poverty context is unnecessary though. This one may be didn't need it. Ones where they moan they only have 2 massive vanity cars and a 5 bed house but can't afford more than 1 massive abroad holiday a year do deserve it though. Re: the OP post - I wouldn't worry about those lunch boxes unless you are now really stunted or have no teeth or something.

At least you had some Cereal at home
Alot of kids eat crisps on the way to school.

Totally get what you are saying. I had a bowl of rice crispies for breakfast, a cheese sandwich for lunch and something like corned beef , potatoes and beans for dinner or a ready meal. Usually a yogurt for pudding. Always a roast on a Sunday . Only fruit i had rarely was an apple or orange. Hundreds of sweets at the weekend. Always been perfectly healthy physically...so far, but we were always outside playing. My child will have weetabix and banana for breakfast, homemade soups all the time, veg pasta bakes , salmon, loads of different fruit blueberries , strawberries etc and usually gets ill alot , tummy aches , tired, coughs , colds etc. But they don't play out like we did back then

Did you have a happy childhood and food on the table? Yes. Everyone did the best with the knowledge they had at the time. I wish we could rewind the clock to be honest so mothers didn’t have the constant pressure on them to be perfect whilst juggling work.

The thing is a lot of what was sold to
us then had healthy messages attached.
Ready Brek porridge kept you warm all day.
A Mars (bar) a day helps you work rest and play.
We trusted advertising a lot more, too.
My mum and dad were both children during rationing and loved being able to go into a supermarket. They didn’t have a lot to spend, but it was a whole new world to them, just as a colour TV was, and a second hand car.
I think things changed when more and more people went abroad in the 70’s and 80’s on cheap package holidays. I can remember having lasagne in Italy and thought I’d discovered heaven. I can remember when pasta was almost considered a diet/healthy food.
When I went to the U.S. for the first time in the 90’s I couldn’t get over the size of the meals, I’d never seen anything like it.

But a lot of the age group growing up in the 70s and 80s are late 40s/over 50. To look at the generation truly before convenience food, e numbers and rubbish snacks, you are looking at those who were children pre: 1970.

And even then it's not like there wasn't crap in foods. An awful lot of the 'fake food' revolution happened post war when rationing was still a thing.

'Real' ice cream is a relatively recent thing, for example, in post war terms. The stuff I grew up with certainly wasn't Ben & Jerry's. I remember reading somewhere that the 'ice cream' we had, Wall's and the like, which was full of weird additives, was developed to give the taste but not use precious cream and eggs and the people liked it, so manufacturers just kept on making it.

There used to be paraffin in sweets like fruit pastilles and fruit gums and that had been the case since Rowntrees first made them. It was a cheap way to get that chewy texture that the masses could afford.

It's really mass production of cheap food mimicking what the wealthy had and you have to back a lot further than the 70s and 80s to trace that. Convenience food isn't a recent as you think. Store-bought bread is convenience food and that's been doctored to make it cheaper and last longer since the 1900s. You don't want to know what they put in it to make it whiter.

Margarine was invented as a cheap war substitute for butter. God knows what else was in powdered eggs, camp coffee and numerous other 'fake foods' my parents remember.

Yes that’s my point, it’s getting progressively worse. Scientists have been mentioning cancer rates increasing in the under 50s for the last 5 years or so. That fits in with when convenience food came in - these people are hitting late 40s. Not the only reason obviously but something has led to the increase in specifically bowel cancer in younger people. This is continuing. I think convenience food and UPFs (which impact gut bacteria) is part of this.

I do believe our parents who are now in their 70s had a healthier diet growing up. There were less convenience foods, additives in foods etc.

I eat very healthily now to try and offset whatever damage my 80s childhood diet did.