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?

Not for me. I grew up in the 80’s and was always outside playing, extremely active. My diet wasn’t bad either. Lots of fruit, veg and home cooked main meals but also yeah, some processed stuff as well. Everything in moderation though.

Why are you horrified. It's just how things were then. Everyone was the same

Yes my diet was similar in the 80s and no I wasn't out being active in the fields, I was home watching TV or playing my zx spectrum!

Spent my 20s and 30s overweight but on it now.

Lol at the hummus debate - flippin' OLIVE OIL was only available in pharmacies back then (for clearing earwax) never mind hummus.
Might depend if you lived in an area with any immigration... I hadn't had a curry till i left home for uni

I was born in the late eighties and don’t recognise any of the food you describe as part of a normal diet. For me, it was more like:

Breakfast - weetabix or shredded wheat with skimmed milk, porridge or wholemeal toast with jam. Plus fruit.

Lunch - wholemeal sandwich with cheese and tomato or similar (no processed meat), an apple or a satsuma, box of raisins and maybe carrot sticks or a little fruit cereal bar thing.

No snacks after school unless it was summer and the ice cream van was around.

Dinner was always fresh and homemade. Thins like Shepherds Pie, fish pie etc. with veggies. Puddings were a once a week treat.

My DM occasionally sent me to school with KFC chicken that she’d bought the day before. There was no cool pack in it either!

We did have fruit and veg but it was very seasonal. There's no way we'd have strawberries if it wasn't June for example. Clementines were only for Christmas. Apples and bananas I think were the only fruit we had year round.

We had very little money and so we ate very cheap food. Homemade chips at least twice a week, often more. Nothing with them , just chips. We never had dessert except cake on birthdays.

Snacks were chocolate and biscuits because they were cheap. I remember asking my mum if we could have some fruit once and was told no it was too expensive. We did get a little fruit at Christmas or occasionally as a treat in the school holidays.
Vegetables were tinned peas. That was it. These days I try very hard to get my five a day but we didn't even come close to five a week then.

it was tough. But it was what I knew and my parents tried their best with what they had. At the time, I didn't realise how badly we ate. These days I eat a world away from how I ate then, and I'm probably healthier for it, and can really appreciate food now.

We were not well off but I was one of those kids who showed up with health food.

My mum and her friends set up a whole foods cooperative between themselves, so everything was from there. Belive me, in the 80s wholemeal pasta had a long way to go and tasted like cardboard!

Heinz, Kellogs, Mars, Walkers, coca cola, Cadbury - all of these were massive treats only for Christmas Day (or nanna's house!)

People did snigger and I felt left out without 5p for the tuck shop.

But i am really grateful now mum did all this on her small budget and now I see she was ahead of her time. I hate how health food has become new and is remarketed at us in supermarkets with ridiculous prices, when it's such simple ingredients and cheap to them.

Sounds more or less what we ate. We never had water to drink, only squash. On Sunday a fizzy drink. We weren't allowed out without a parent so never had any exercise. I'd never eaten a pizza or pasta or before secondary school. I've never seen garlic in my parents kitchen, it too exotic for them! Our main meal was always meat + two veg + potatoes or occasionally rice. Other meal was jam sandwich and cake.

My family still eat like this and constantly bombard my DC with the message that they're unnatural eaters because they eat salads, fruit and vaguely healthy food.

The only 'curry' I'd ever had prior to university was school dinner curry. I thought I didn't like curry, trying actual curry was a revelation!

My parents grew the veg and what fruit they could.

Also, fruit and veg markets (the kind that's moves around towns) were pretty cheap in the 80s - supermarket veg and fruit was probably £££ idk

i had egg curry in primary school in the 1970s, it was green!

My mother was terribly old fashioned. We never had the fancy branded foods like coco pops or pop tarts. We had porridge with brown sugar or whole meal toast with butter and marmalade. No margarine or semi-slimmed milk either. School lunch. Supper was usually a stew or chops followed by stewed fruit and custard.

I relate to this and lots of my friends do too. There’s a reason bowel cancer in under 50s is at an all time high and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s related to all the rubbish our generation ate as children.

For most of primary school I had to have free school meals, I was so jealous of the sandwich kids with lunches like yours OP. I was such a picky eater that I mainly just ate the pudding, unless it was a chips day. No breakfast at home but at DGP on the way to school I’d have a glass of Alpine lemonade and a KitKat. There was the small bottle of milk at school, probably the healthiest part of my day. Evening meal would’ve been along the lines of crispy pancakes, potato waffles and Heinz spaghetti. Or one of those tiny frozen pizzas which went under the grill, I’d almost forgotten about those! A Frey Bentos pie was a big treat. I wouldn’t eat any fruit or veg until I got into my later teens. I don’t remember many snacks, pudding at home was a treat and portions were not big. I was slim as a child, and so far, into my fifties, haven’t had any major health problems. My diet as an adult has been much better!
What shocks me looking back is how little we drank. At school, after Thatcher the milk snatcher had her way, the only drink was water with lunch. I would just have a sip as I hated water! Even as an older kid finally taking a packed lunch, that juice carton or can of pop was the only hydration all day. How did we survive and thrive on so little liquid?

Sadly we lived in a new style village where there was a supermarket and lots of promises of other things that never arrived, so getting tona market wasn't possible. I don't think it even occurred to my parents to grow fruit and veg, although I do remember my grandad grew runner beans (but they lived too far away for us to take advantage of that)

Did you drink the milk? I hated it. It sat in crates outside on the playground, so in summer it was warm, congealed and a bit sour. Sometimes there were lumps of cream that wouldn’t go through the very thin straw.

At my village primary we had a kitchen (now a classroom) so all cooking was done onsite and the village butcher provided the meat. It wasn’t bad. His shop is a house now and they bring food in.

My dad is 72 and still hasn't gotten over that he can't get "proper" sugar puffs anymore 🤣

I know someone who works as a school lunchtime controller and she says more than half of pupils have processed crap in their lunch boxes, and plenty of sugary items too (despite the school policy on chocolate etc parents still add it to their lunches). For those that have school meals the vegetables are invariably left but the puddings are always eaten. Probably not much has changed from generation to generation.

I grew up in another country where from memory it was a a bit late to the party with being able to buy processed junk food in the 80’s. I always had sandwiches with Vegemite, cheese or ham, my DF would make me tinned salmon & cucumber sandwiches which I hated because they stank! A treat was Vegemite and crisp sandwiches. Then always a yoghurt and in winter I often had a Thermos of homemade soup (lots of kids did too). No such thing as mid-morning snacks at school either, and having a snack after school wasn’t a thing either.

Mine was similar except cheese spread was on the menu as well. We did get satsumas sometimes or apples. We got Trio’s often with our Um Bongo - both heavily advertised though again much of the time we got squash in a flask not a carton

Bowel cancer is indeed soaring in our generation and inflammatory bowel disease also as well as obesity. The diet Britons had between 1970 ish and 2000 ish is responsible for so much ill health imo (and I work in the field). Thank god attitudes are changing now. We don’t need to eat exotic foods, just apples and porridge and potatoes would do!

-edited for typo in date

The 80s was the start of the packed lunches - all my schooling was in the 60s and 70s and nobody had a packed lunch until 6th form, and then it was called "bring your own dinner" rather than packed lunch! We could also drink tea or coffee with it as we had a boiling water urn, and ate it in the common room and played records 😁 It was usually a sandwich and a biscuit or a cake slice, nothing that was messy or spillable. I certainly had a home cooked meal in the evening with lots of veg as it was cheaper than meat, and fruit too - as did most of us. Very rarely as a weekend treat we had Findus crispy pancakes or a Vesta ready meal!

@faerietales

you were born much later than the period we are discussing here. I’m early 70’s so started school during dire economic times. We are pretty badly

Re the hummus, my mother was making it in the 70s, so it was definitely around then in the UK, although not commercially available (and she had to buy dried chickpeas and tahini from the hippyish health food store).

I had the opposite as a child, my mother was an excellent and adventurous cook, and my lunchbox was always filled with wholesome homemade food, and I got water to drink. Born in '73.

I would have killed for a juice carton and a wagon wheel!

It wasn't a great diet. However, the ingredients in those foods wouldn't have been anywhere near as bad as they are in those same foods now. Yes, there was a lot of sugar there but I bet none of you were overweight. That sugar has now been replaced with high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweeteners. Manufacturers keep swapping out ingredients for cheaper and cheaper alternatives.