Enid Blyton (FF & SS) - obsessed with food. Discuss.

[justkeepswimming]

I have been rereading all the Famous Five & Secret Seven books (my DH kept them from when he was a kid & his parents have been clearing out their loft, lol).
Have been chatting to DH about the level of detail she goes into about food.
I mean did people actually normally eat 4 meals a day (bfast, 'dinner', tea and 'supper') ?
Or was she just obsessed with food?
He thought that maybe it was almost like propaganda, given that they started just after WW2, so most people would have been on rations, so it made people feel better to read about lots of food?

What does anyone think?

(leaving aside all sexist crap references for now!)

I just (re)read Five on a Hike Together (the one mentioned above where they get tea at a farmhouse and Julian pays for it)- they ask a woman in a shop to make sandwiches for them, 8 rounds each! which as one of them quickly calculates, requires 64 slices of bread! They eat 5 each at lunchtime and save 3 rounds for "tea".
But the drinking tea and coffee - well, children did. I was born in 54 and was drinking both well before I reached double figures.

I too drank tea and coffee from an early age (around 5) "and it never did me any harm". The alternative was squash (full of sugar) rather than real fruit juice (which only came in tins in the 50s and 60s) or "pop" - something not encouraged in my middle class home except as a very special treat.
I love all the food descriptions in Famous five, but not the bit about Anne doing the washing up afterwards.

Just resurrecting this 12 year old thread I found from a Google search.

Those of you currently watching Malory Towers on the BBC - can you imagine your children getting excited about cold chicken and pickles? I love it - it portrays a much simpler time.

DD is reading all my old EB books at the moment so I get to relive all this :D

The girls at St Clare's certainly didn't suffer from food shortages even though the books were written during the war. They send to have fabulous midnight feasts, and on their birthdays their parents wou send them amazing cakes.

I think some things would have been smaller, eg slices of bread.