To ask what did your granny eat?

[PassTheCordialCordelia]

I hear a lot of noise concerning how we ought to eat how our grandparent's/great grandparents did, or something of that description. We know that modern, ultra processed foods are crap, unhealthy and usually very cheap, although many foods from long ago were pretty awful too!

So just in a lighthearted frame of mind - what did yours scoff down on?

Mine were fond of home baking, scones, biscuits, etc. Most meals cooked from scratch, although grandmother was a full time housewife, with a space to grow some fruit/veg. I think the large supermarket chains were still extremely tiny when my GP's were alive, so I have no idea if they might have enjoyed more processed stuff if they had lived to see it.

Sounds a lot like my 80s childhood!

No, West Country.

Yeah, parents ate tripe and tried to get us to eat it. I'll eat most things but not that.

Lots of home cooked traditional Britsh food - pies, roasts, stews. Lots of veg. In the summer lots of salads with cold meats. Also a lot of homemade cakes and fruit crumbles. Everythig was made with full fats - lard and butter. As people who lived through the war, they did have an affection for certain modern processed foods - things like white sliced bread, Mr Kipling french fancies, ready made blancmanges and crisps.

I remember lots of chocolates as ell - Terry's Chocolate Orange and Black Magic were favourites.

They didn't drink it there were always a lot of soft drinks - they were particularly fond of bitter lemon and Lilt.

Both lived to thier nineties with few health issues (although my granny had arthritis in her knees and hands most of her life).

Ha yes cake very slimming!
Everyone seemed to eat a lot of cake when I was growing up in the sixties. But the portion sizes were very small, typically a Victoria sponge would be made from 2eggs and 4oz everything else, it would cut into 16 slices.
We walked though, everyone walked, cycled, swam. I was just working it out and even in her late 80s mg nana walked around four miles every single day, usually carrying bags of heavy shopping.

Tripe and onions
Cow heel stew
Potato Pie
Corned beef hash
Beef tea
Liver and onions
Oxtail

They all lived to great ages - late 80s and 90s.

Lots of entertainment type cooking for other people - cakes, pies, roasts. Big fan of a "high tea". Lots of booze, dispensed from named decanters by my grandpa. Grandpa could only make tomato soup so if he was (very occasionally) in charge, that was what we had. However, fruit juice was a luxury and had to be watered down. Tripe. Liver and onions. Bleurgh.

Tbh if I ate their diet I'd be short and cuddly as were they!

My grandparents ate salt, with food added.
They also smoked yet lived to 87 and 92.

Mine lived off B&H, cups of tea and Teacakes. 😆

Bread from the bakers, meat from the butchers, veg from the grocers, milk from the milkman. Bread and butter dipped in her tea which she’d pour into the saucer to cool. The best roast dinner in the world, tinned fruit and custard and bread and butter. Rice pudding baked in the oven with the skin on. Tinned Salmon salad with malt vinegar and sugar on the lettuce for Sunday tea. Two biscuits with the morning cup of tea. Strawberries from the garden with “a bit of sugar on”. Chops and veg, cottage pie, bubble and squeak everything home cooked traditional English fare. Vegetables that were overcooked yet still managed to taste delicious.

Freshly caught fish , eggs from the Croft .
toast rack , tea and coffee and marmalade etc
Even after they moved to somewhere smaller .
They ate the same.
Fish cakes, home made soups . Stews.
All home made food

And the square of dark chocolate at bed .

Traditional English food in 50s and 60s cooked from scratch
chicken rarely as expensive always turkey at Christmas
Mostly meat or fish with potatoes and vegetables.
I do remember loving what she gave me if I went to stay- bacon and fried bread for breakfast maybe cooked in lard and Cadburys chocolate fingers!

Yes, my mum's standard 1980s cake was a Victoria sandwich, with homemade strawberry jam in the middle and icing sugar sprinkled on top. No buttercream. I still remember going to a friend's house and being served a tall slice of passion cake with cream cheese icing on the top, middle AND sides, and crushed almonds coating the sides to boot! It rocked my world, but that sort of indulgent cake was very much the exception in those days. Now, I think there'd be a riot of I were to present my DC with a cake that didn't have icing. And going to my local garden centre always makes me feel like I'm Alice in Wonderland after she's imbibed from the "drink me" bottle. The scones, brownies and cake slices are enormous - so much taller and longer than anything I'd make at home. Their cake tins must resemble hub caps. So yes, a slice of cake today is very different to what my granny or even my mum would have enjoyed at my age.

Traditional English. They were farmers, so everything very fresh and home cooked. Lots of game. They loved very fatty meat, huge portions. Three proper meals a day. GF died in his eighties, I was a baby, from a heart attack, GM died at 103. She was small, stout, lived alone, and still rode her bicycle to the shops. Amazing.

One grandmother lived an extremely basic and quite rural existence and grew all her own vegetables in her garden, and the food she made herself was very simple (potato soup, fresh fish, bread and butter). Nothing preserved, almost nothing purchased, everything made from scratch. My other grandmother was very well travelled and had lived in Africa and Asia for parts of her life - she made authentic curries, as well as the most amazing chicken soup. Again, everything from scratch and she insisted that fruit was never refrigerated - and particularly tomatoes! She had the same chicken salad sandwich for lunch every day her entire life. Neither one was overweight, both very healthy.

My american medical friend told me 15 years ago that dementia was being called diabetes 3 by a lot of medics, such was the perceived damage it did to the brain.
She ate protein, veg, low glycemix carbs like sweet potatoes, was obsessed with fermented foods and ate hard cheese and red wine.
In her 60's now she is a picture of health and so fit.

I have in the last year dramatically reduced my sugar because of the link to inflammation and autoimmune issues and I can feel the benefit.

Wondering which one of my cousins you are 😆

This is my aim too. I always feel clearer headed when I’m avoiding processed sugar , which I have a tendency to binge on.

I keep telling myself I have to avoid these foods for my long term health and my figure. I do eat a healthy range of foods , greek yogurt berries nuts instead of that high sugar fix,

I need to lose weight , again , but don’t qualify for GLP1’s , probably for the best . I’m surrounded by many on it and they are all doing really well.

I keep reminding myself of the risk of having excess sugar and I have saved your comments to reread if I am thinking of a binge.

I’m determined to get this weight off and keep it off this last time. I also think portion size is everything. We now eat much smaller portions and don’t automatically have a carb potato or pasta or rice with our meal , mostly it’s mixed salads or vegetables.

From reading this fascinating thread , most of our grandparents did eat smaller portions and didn’t snack !!

Am away at the moment in the Uk and there are a lot of overweight people here , myself included !!

Maternal GM, meat, fish, seasonal U.K. veg, so potatoes and lots of cabbage and carrots, probably turnips too, salad and runner beans from the garden in summer, homemade puddings with e.g. rhubarb/plums/gooseberries from the garden (she had a big garden), bottled plums and pies from stored garden apples in winter.

Everything cooked from scratch, and if fried, probably in lard!

She was never overweight and lived well into her 80s.

Paternal GM, similar, except no big garden for fruit and veg. But also not overweight and died at IIRC 89.

Paternal GM just old enough to remember the death of Queen Victoria. She was six, and when she heard the church bells tolling and her father saying, ‘ The Queen is dead!’ she thought the world was coming to an end!

I have lost a stone the past year through reducing butter, wine, cheese, chocolate. Slow and steady.
Added lots of vegetables in olive oil, nut butters like cashew on sour dough.
Really reduced gluten too.
A PMR auto immune diagnosis a month ago and the link with sugar, the shit steroids have meant that I have dropped 10 lbs in weeks.

There is nothing like being told that the agony you are in could be helped by reducing sugar to make it toxic.

Now definitely my mood was shite as I detoxed as I gave up coffee too, which was as hard!

But my health and mobility are 100% my priority.
I am usually a very active person so that being taken from me has focused me like never before.

I am drinking Lions Mane mushroom coffee substitute and its going well.....this is a great drink for menopausal women who feel brain fog and lower energy levels, so I will stick with it.

Magnesium glycerate and vitamins D have helped my sleep and sugar cravings too.

I'm mixed race so one side it would be cottage pie, fish pie, pork chops, typical meat and 2 veg type food. She drank tea but didn't have a sweet tooth so while she baked for everyone else would only maybe have a tiny sliver of cake or what not for herself.

On the other side rice, mainly veg curries but chicken and lamb a couple of times a week, lentils. She had a massive sweet tooth and loved cakes, biscuits, puddings etc but was also diabetic so was constantly being reigned in by my mum and aunts.

I swear 90% of my granny's diet was trifle with birds dream topping, victoria sponge and chips. Washed down with brandy, about half a bottle a day.

She'd have been 90 this year, but sadly - and unsurprisingly - she died of a stroke...

Did we share the same Grandmother?? My Mum always used to have to ask the butcher for the trotters for her!

She was also very partial to home made french fries which were deep fried in oil and slathered in salt and maggi seasoning.

There was also lots of Eastern European style stews and broths.

On the other side, my other grandmother was a very traditional meat and two veg cook. Dry pork chops, plain boiled potates and runner beans. You might have got gravy if you went on a lucky day. She made the most amazing cakes and desserts though.

Being elderly myself now, I'm privileged to have heard from both my grandmothers about what they ate as children and it was always meals cooked from scratch. From my paternal grandmother came a recipe my father loved (I always found it disgusting) called meat and potato pie. Popular in Yorkshire/Lancashire, I think. It's sounds quite nice, but - it's made in a pudding dish (like you'd make a rice pudding in). Diced beef and sliced potatoes are laid in the dish, water poured over (not even a stock cube!) and a pastry crust over the top. Bake in the oven until cooked. Absolutely tasteless! Yorkshire puddings was a Sunday staple - eaten with thick, meaty gravy and sliced raw onion, seasoned and a splash of malt vinegar, as a starter. "Them that eats most Yorkshire's gets most meat" means that you can feed quite a large family with a small joint of meat.

My maternal grandmother was one of 8 children, living in rural Wales. Their daily breakfast, they called it soak, was yesterday's bread broken into pieces and added to a bowl of hot, sweetened milky tea. Eaten with a spoon. She continued to eat this intermittently until she died. They also had an old Welsh dish called cawl (translates to soup, but it's much more like a chunky stew), which I love and often make myself. This is traditionally made with lamb neck and bacon, but anything will do. I even make a vegetarian version with a good veggie stock cube. Boil the meat until cooked, remove from saucepan and add vegetables - leeks and potatoes are traditional, but I use carrots, Swedish turnips, anything mouldering in the fridge (including lettuce!) and white cabbage if there are no leeks. Cabbage is best added about 20 minutes before eating. It is traditional to thicken the 'juice' with flour but I never do. I cut some very small pieces of potato and that does the job nicely. Serve with bread and cheese. After eating the juice, mash the vegetables with a fork and add a generous knob of butter. Yum! Any leftovers can be reheated (taste even better) or frozen (I always have some in the freezer).

My nan made a brilliant beef stew! I miss it - she wasn't even a fantastic cook (didn't really enjoy it) but she did do a great stew! Oh and she could do a great roast dinner :) I remember her being addicted to cherry cake, too. But only shop bought ones. She loved fish and chips - I'd always go over to the local chip shop on a Monday lunch time as that was my day off and we'd split a fish and chip meal and serve it with pickled beetroot! Yum! Oh, I miss my nan. I lived with her from the age of 14 until I was 19.
I've just remembered her and my gramp buying a microwave in the early 1980s when they were a new thing and her attempting to make cakes in it - they came out like biscuits - the kind of biscuits you could break a tooth on!!