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?

Our tastes would also have changed, more people going abroad on holiday. eating in different restaurants means people were exposed to different options.

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

Some probably fed their dc similar so are a tad defensive 😆

My sons now in their mid 30s, had toast / cereal, packed lunch, sandwich, crisps, choc bar biscuit, and normally water, home made dinners, not puds tho
Seemed normal then

No Supermarkets? In the 80s? We always used to do the Asda shop on a Friday evening and got home to watch Knight Rider.

Interesting isn’t it. I had a similar diet, but I think I worry less about the impact of the specific foods on my health, and more about how they influence me behaviorally (found it very hard to break the sugar = reward connection for example).

my son has a super varied and much healthier diet than I did- with a decent amount of sausage rolls, Nutella pancakes, biscuits, ice cream etc in the mix too- and I’m sorry to say he had desert every day (usually an ice lolly, or a biscuit rather than a full on pudding) … I don’t feel guilty about that. He’s healthy. He’s a healthy weight. The greatest food treats in the world to him are sushi or a seafood bbq. He’s fine. If he’s wringing his hands in 20 years time about the Nutella so be it

I grew up inthe north in the eighties. Same breakfasts I loved sugar puffs and coco pops. Remember the gift inside? Like literally in the cereal usually somewhere near the bottom.
I had school dinners, I remember mutton pie, spam, cottage pie, and chocolate concrete, lemon meringue or semolina for pudding. In my teens it was the chip shop or sandwich shop for lunch with crisps, chocolate bar and a can of pop.
Biscuits for snack after schooleither two choc digestives or one Kit Kat, or blue ribbon.
My mum would cook tea it would be some form of meat, veg, potatoes so meat pie, cottage pie, grilled chicken, Sunday dinner, pork or lamb chops all with roast or baked potatoes and carrots , peas or broccoli. When we got a bit older she would buy packet flavours (the type you add water too to make a sauce) and make spag bol, chicken chop suey, beef bourginion or chicken chasseur.
I dont really remember drinking water but I assume we had water with dinner at school. I remember warm cartons of milk 🤢 at break. And I remember drinking pop at home - cherryade , cola, orangeade, lemon and lime, dandelion and burdock. Or a milky tea.
We had thick slabs of cheese on toast for breakfast at a weekend and I remember having sugar sandwiches as a treat and Yorkshire pudding before the dinner with sugar on. Picknmix from the shop once a week, everything was a penny except the little teddies were 2 for a penny and black jacks and fruit salads were 2p each.

I was so skinny and full of energy when I was young, now I eat healthily, drink loads of water , exercise and yet I struggle with weight and have an ongoing aches and pains.

I think I had hummus in my first year at university in 1998 for the first time. Other things I tried having never eaten before were avocado and sweet potato. I remember laughing with my sister as this was all stuff my niece was weaned on.

true, yes there was a key markets, i worked there in 1984

Oh yes I didn't have an avocado from a shop (as opposed to in a restaurant meal) until the 00s. I just remember them being so hard & often bland.

My diet wasn't so bad. There was more sugar in everything & agreed that breakfasts were bad - we had a sugar bowl on the table and added it to cereal!

But my mum didn't feed us junk. We were fed plenty of fruit & veg & freshly cooked food. Lunches were sandwiches, fruit, yoghurt . My children eat more salad than i ever did.

I always tell my dc how lucky they are to have seedless grapes! I loved grapes as a dc but that initial deliciousness was ruined by the seeds.

I think it depends on the family. How much time the parents had and if they could cook? I was a child in the 80’s. My parents had no money but my mum cooked home made meals every day. As a kid I just wanted egg and chips like my friends but we’d have vegetables every day with some sort of home made suet pudding (leek or steak)/chicken breasts or something like that. She also baked all our treats (biscuits, fairy cakes, scones etc, I think this could be cheaper than having chocolate bars and unhealthy snacks). We also ate a lot of fruit which my mum got from the market. Packed lunch would have been similar to yours OP, I think they were just easier foods for a lunchbox.

@NotWantingToBeRude my mum was ahead of the curve and it was actually horrifying as a six year old to turn up to school with a glass Tupperware - plastic leaching fears- full of organic chicken and salad sandwiches on seeded bread, a piece of fruit and water 😂 I’m pretty similar with my kids ironically but at least it’s more socially acceptable, I’m amazed I wasn’t a pariah

I’d say that was fairly typical of that time. It sounds the same as I had, more or less.
Kids were more active then though, so childhood obesity wasn’t as much as a thing as now. I was a scrawny little thing.

Very similar diet OP when we were young and set meals on certain days was a real thing. Beef burgers and chips on a Monday & salad and luncheon meat on a Thursday (we did eat other things but I can’t remember them). Except the cereal we didn’t eat anything else sugary and on the whole no crisps or
biscuits. Those were strictly a Christmas luxury in the food shop 😊.

it did change in later teens as me and all my siblings became vegetarian because none of us liked meat - but think that was more to do with the disgusting beef burgers and things we were eating.

i discovered avocado in the 1980s, loved it

Yep, we used to go to Sainsbury’s which shared space with Children’s World and had a slide in the front entrance, and mum would pick up extras in Kwik Save for the items that she thought were good from the blue and white striped value range.

Oh how we wish we were all lucky enough to be brought up by today's parents, who know everything about everything and are so confident theirs is The Right Way.

I remember eating pasta for the first time in the eighties and felt positively exotic 😂

It’s not great, but it was commonplace then. A lot of cooking and knowledge of nutrition went out of the window from the 1970s when frozen food became common place.

My DM always made sure we didn’t have slushie drinks or those freezer pop lolly things in plastic, but we had pepperami’s, Dairylea snack pots, Angel Delight and Coco Pops. I wouldn’t feed this stuff to my DS now (or at least not regularly) but knowledge of nutrition has improved again since then.

Proper pudding and custard cannot be beaten.

i became a vegetarian at the age of 14, in 1980!
so i guess all those beans and lentils were pretty healthy , as well as Sosmix

One thing I was not allowed were fizzy drinks & I don't like them as an adult. I don't let my dc have them either, that's the only rule I really have.

OP, what’s your diet like now? Are you overweight and do you have all your own teeth?

I also grew up on the 80s/90s and was similar, maybe a little better. I always had an Apple for first break though and I felt like a leper, everyone else had crisps. We didn’t have dessert during the week and there was always veg/ salad with dinner, we always had bread and butter on a side plate with our meals and sometimes triple carbs - lasagne and salad with baked potatoe and bread anyone? I don’t think I had a glass of water until I was about 15 - always squash. Not allowed fizzy drinks though unless a special occasion.

Times change, awareness changes, science develops. The 80s was 40 years ago now.

I ate much the same as you @NotWantingToBeRude though I did have access to apples and bananas at least and would eat those after school. Were you also a latchkey kid? So many of us were in that era.

I know my parents did their best at the time but I do harbour a little resentment that I was not given a better start in life nutritionally and in my relationship with food. My mother still eats like crap, lots of ultra processed food, but has by some miracle not become ill or obese from it which is sheer luck.

I grew up in the 80s, we did have cereal but it was weetabix, porridge or cornflakes. It was all cooked from scratch, proper food at home and I remember being envious of mates who got to have fizzy pop and Turkey Drummers 😂