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?

’even jam’ 😱

my FIL had buttered weetabix in the 60s too! Would anyone who had this @InfoSecInTheCity@HelenWheels mind sharing what part of country this is? My FIL was Suffolk

Horrified? that seems extreme

I do think that pre-prepared foods were heavily pushed on the convenience angle from the late 60s onwards when home freezers became more common and lots of women did embrace them as a liberation from the kitchen.

I remember when I was small and I'd go food shopping with my mother, pre the advent of large supermarkets and we'd go to the butchers, the health food shop, the fishmongers, the greengrocers and the grocers, then schlep to an Asian grocers for such exotics as fresh coriander, mangoes and ground spices, and then on to the tea and coffee shop. It's similar to how I shop now, but I can buy ingredients online at the press of a button.

It was a full-time job eating well in the 70's, so I understand that the advent of convenience foods felt like a revolution, and one that people rushed to embrace.

I don't think you can blame your parents too much.

On a population level, people absolutely have been harmed. Bowel cancer rates are soaring because of crap diets like this. The harm isn’t immediate, that’s all

I had it in East Anglia in the 1960s and 70s.

We were still eating dripping and salt sandwiches. Now that was really bad. (Heart attack sandwiches!) We did have an apple and no chocolate or crisps.

Yes, I drank the milk. I remember how warm it was in summer too, definitely not nice to drink. Drinking it wasn’t optional though, I think you had to have a letter from home to be excused. Same with the school dinners, we had to at least eat a small bit of everything. I can remember trying to use my water to wash down the slimy stewing beef. I was almost sick.

I think in the 80s a few things were better and many worse. I had quite a lot of fish fingers, added sugar to stuff (strawberries, cornflakes etc) but still probs had less processed food. I don’t think I would have EVER drank water the way kids do today. For me water was a last resort if I was super thirsty and no squash available. Also remember my primary school banning unhealthy breaktime snacks (weirdly forward looking) which had effect of all kids basically eating nothing at break times rather than eat fruit! 😂 and secondary school I had pizza for breakfast and chips & gravy for lunch every day….I also watched tv when I came home after school for hours each night. No after school sports for me at secondary. Most girls at ny school by about yr9 did absolutely anything to get out of PE, often succeeding, and loads of them were hooked on smoking….

I was brought up in the 80s in Australia. My standard breakfast was white toast with butter. Lunch was a white bread sandwich with ham, a pack of chickadees (like chicken flavoured wotsists) and a wagon wheel.

My parents were both very good cooks though and dinner was usually curries made from scratch (with sliced banana and desiccated coconut on the side) and casseroles, roasts and winter we always had a Sunday lunch of pumpkin soup of French onion soup with lost of crusty bread and cheese.

In terms of exercise neither of my parents were interested which I regret now as I never had the idea of exercise as a normal part of life. My mother might do those jane Fonda tapes. But there was never any swimming, or running or anything. I really wanted to go to Little Athletics on a Saturday but was not allowed to. Finally when i was 14 I got myself a job in a supermarket and bought a horse and that was my only exercise.

I’m 66F and when I was a child most meals were rustled up in a frying pan and cooked with lard! Both parents worked hard and this was a quick way for my Mother to put hot food on the table. But once a week we had a Sunday roast with all the veg. She continued to cook this way and use lard right up into her 90’s. She is now 94 and living in a nursing home and still going strong. When I left home I vowed never to eat fried food again. I won’t even have a frying pan in my house. I’m sure that you will survive , and I think I would have preferred your diet. 😄

My Mum tried to do this when I was 10 in 1990. She gave me an orange tupperware bowl of carrots and celery. I hadn't heard of hummus.

I hid it was acutely embarrassed and played it off. A few kids laughed at me. I also told my Mam I was still hungry without my crisps and yogurt and I was so embarrassed and picked on. She never did it again. Bless her.

OT but I misread this as have you suffered lasting Ham!

I grew up similarly and as an adult gained weight, and had to do some work on changing my attitudes towards food. It is what it is.

I reckon I tried hummus along with tzatziki and taramasalata from supermarket in about 1991 when we were doing the ancient Greeks at school. Definitely more of a curiosity/world food then in an English surburban town at that point

It was compulsory, but in practice it depended who was on duty!

I’ve worked with children for many years in different roles but what many mumsnetters won’t acknowledge is that actually many kids still eat like that now: cereal for breakfast, some still have sugar in breakfast. Many have a Greggs sausage roll when out and about for Kids will still be eating chocolate and crisps, i see it daily. Many eat very little in the way of veg/fruit and much more freezer dinners than we had. My mum had more time to cook from scratch as she wasn’t working till we were older.

I do work in more deprived areas but children aren’t regularly eating hummus and carrots when i see them. They’ve got bags of crisps, biscuits and so on. Teens go out and get mcdonald’s or chips while mooching about or even now order it in. Even those whose parents pay themselves on a back and their healthy strapping teen would never…..

Judging by the amount of overweight kids I would say no. Foods are more processed now and have extra ingredients in them too.

And children were largely way healthier back then, spent way more time outdoors and ate more calories due to their increased activity levels.

TBH what’s more worrying is the over-anxiety around food that is absolutely fine. Cereal for breakfast - so what. A sandwich - it’s hardly arsenic.

MN seems to be full of people who seem to want their eating disorders validated

Exactly. Kids are so much fatter now. You can see it with your own eyes. We’re doing something wrong.

I remember there was approximately one DC in each year group who was overweight, so 1% of DC.

I follow a homestead blogger in the US (on youtube) and she cooks like this. They raise and butcher a couple of cows a year and she cooks everything in the lard. Everything- even the home made granola she makes she uses lard. Plus she never washes the frying pan because the lard apparently seasons the pan and to wash it ruins that. It makes me shudder. All her (many many) kids are slim because they are working so hard every day on the farm but I do wonder about their arteries.

Kids also don’t go outside anymore and schools seem to think 45 minutes of physical exercise a week will suffice. Exercise is practically non existent with some parents for their children

It’s mostly an old persons disease.
The peak cancer age is 85 to 89 years old.

However, there is a trend of cancers increasing in incidence in the 0 - 24 age group which means that it’s not just bad diet.
Something is going on possibly environmental.