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?

Mmm do you have proof it wasn't a every day food or just takin mumsnet as verbatim?

Yes I was just about to say that I don’t think I’d even heard of it until at least the 90s. My family were fairly comfortable and definitely couldn’t have claimed poverty.

Logically an everyday food needs to be available en masse. Google will tell you when it was introduced into supermarkets.

What proof do you have that it was an everyday food?

OMG OP, same!! Not a veg in sight.

Hopefully it won't have any lasting damage on long term health, but who knows.

That was a typical kids diet in the 80’s,I did eat fruit also though,im not overweight ,we actually played out as kids,im fine,don’t get ill,I did have a lot of fillings though.

we always had vegetables and probably apples and seasonal fruit

We also used to get toys in the cereal,loved that.

So for thousands of years its eaten but its not recognised until supermarkets put it on shelves 🤣

I am out of this thread due to the absolutely none two way thinking 🤪

Same as you op. I would also get an apple in my lunchbox though. Only the occasional child would have ‘posh’ lunch, such as a chicken leg and veg sticks. Didn’t get a pudding every night but if I did it would be processed- Angel Delight. Remember also getting Findus Crispy Pancakes for dinner. I think it got worse as time went on and more processed stuff came on the market.

We were very active though, especially pre teen years, out all day playing.

I agree OP. And exercise doesn’t offset the detriment to health that ultra-processed food has. I wonder if this is why there is a much higher prevalence of cancer etc in people in their 30s/40s now.
Having said that, I’m no angel with my own kids diet and they have their fair share of processed food. I kid myself that my choices are slightly better than the properly fake food they could have, but tbh the food environment is so bad these days with additives in basically everything that it’s hard to do the right thing! That’s a separate topic though!

Not my 80s diet (born mid 70s). Loads of veg, home cooked meals, proper sandwiches- in fact by the mid 80s I was in my vegetarian phase, only allowed sugary cereals on holiday and sweets on a Friday. Though school lunches had a full dessert everyday - didn’t have them routinely at home. I was a fat child though - because I enjoyed it all. We were definitely more active and you really couldn’t get a takeaway on a whim.

We used to have Buttered weetabix for breakfast and Banana sandwich as an after school snack. No one else I know has ever had buttered weetabix but it was just always the way mum made them, had to make sure you had nice softened butter though.

This is so irrelevant 🙄 we are reading all the time about the dangers of UPF. Of course the OP might start looking back and thinking about their own childhood diet.

OP. Sorry about yet another thread full of unnecessarily rude responses. My mum was always super strict with my diet and loved to cook but I remember being jealous of alot of friends who ate the way you did! We all seemed to get through life the same and hopefully eating a bit more wholesome now 😅

So for thousands of years its eaten but its not recognised until supermarkets put it on shelves

You claimed it was an everyday food? I have not said no one ate it, just that the masses didn't. What are you struggling to comprehend?

I am out of this thread due to the absolutely none two way thinking

It's not a biggie to be wrong but you can have a tantrum if you prefer. It's a shame you couldn't add some more valuable insights!

Middle class parents and my diet was not dissimilar - Coco pops for breakfast, chocolate biscuit and crisps in the lunch box. Apple came home every day. Thankfully had 'good' dinners. I do remember it seemed I was constantly starving compared to everyone else, and my tummy rumbling in French just before morning break time was so embarrassing.

We were a low ish income 80s household who had a microwave, they were common by the 90s.
I ate a lot of the junk food the OP had mentioned (haven’t thought about Um Bongos for years but I loved them!) It wasn’t necessarily regularly or in large quantities though. I think I had toast with marmite or peanut butter most days for breakfast which is still a regular in my household to this day. I did love coco pops though, as does my daughter, but they were not an every day breakfast. I had school dinners
I remember chocolate concrete and pink custard being the absolute highlight.

I ate some junk, I ate plenty of good stuff. Probably like my kids now and I wouldn’t say I was more active than them. I did loads of sporty stuff but also loved to read and watch tv as a child, my kids do loads of sporty stuff but also love PlayStation and YouTube.

We used to have Buttered weetabix for breakfast and Banana sandwich as an after school snack.

My mums childhood snack was a sugar & banana sandwich, too sweet for me.

i had buttered weetabix as a snack, and often with syrup on it, started that in the 1960s!
i stopped though because I put on weight!

In the 80’s I would have egg on toast / bacon and eggs for breakfast, school dinner which was ham and beetroot salad, fish and chips or pork, chicken beef, followed by semolina, chocolate pudding or jelly and ice cream. Tea which was salad with thick real bread and butter, ploughman’s if hot or pork chops, chicken, sausages or beef and two or three vegetables for tea / dinner, cake or pudding. I was skinny on this and cycled and ran a lot. I still eat same now without all the puddings and eat things like pasta, rice noodles. Still have a jam sandwich. I ate mainly unprocessed food and the veg was usually from the garden, milk & eggs from the farm, meat from the butcher. Bread from the bakery. There wasn’t really a near supermarket. Supermarkets have given us all easy processed food. The ‘we ate awful in the 80’s’ thing is not true for everyone same as now. I ate like a king then, my kids eat well now but I don’t have access to a bakery so less lovely bread.

I preferred some of the chocolate & sweets from my childhood vs today as they have removed E numbers etc. How good were orange smarties!

Our packed lunches always included an apple.

But a sandwich, bag of crisps, a chocolate bar (penguins or club were the best, but mostly some Fine Fare Yellow Label wannabe) and a can of pop were very much required.

My mum was a whole earth, Cranks Cookbook, Fan of The Good Life and dreamed of getting a smallholding in Wales kind of woman, so we had brown bread. Which brought shame on our heads.

We did know about hummus because of the whole Cranks/smallholding deal, but there was no way in hell I’d have been seen dead taking it into school.

Most kids seemed to live off of fish fingers and over chips for dinner. We did always have a veg, even if it was (Yellow Label ) baked beans.

Late 80s into the 90s things got better as the economy improved. But late 70s through the mid-80s was pretty dire as I recall.

I know our parents didn’t know much better and had a tough situation to deal with, and I look back with humor. But we are the generation that really started to get obese in large numbers as we got older. It wasn’t good at all.

We are constantly bombarded with big companies trying to get us to spend money. Ages ago, they'd tell us cigarettes were good for us. In the 60s and 70s they plugged sugary cereals, white bread, sweets, convenience foods, etc. Remember Sunny Delight?! Now it's things that are supposed to be healthy but aren't: 'free from' stuff, things with sugar substitutes, protein and cereal bars, energy drinks... We try to do our best with the information we have but we have powerful enemies!

we did start having occasional boil in the bag fish, findus crispy pancakes, angel delight
and i agree, there were no supermarkets

What on earth? I don’t think the mumsnet clientele are generally starving.

It is perfectly reasonable to be horrified by the masses of ultra processed food we used to eat. It really is shocking that nutrition etc was just not a thing.

What’s with the first few comments on any post being grumpy and argumentative as fuck?

All the sugar ruined our teeth. But I think much worse was the lack of sun protection as a child.
That’s for another thread though.