can you help me? re- childrens diets now as opposed to fifty years ago???

[tiredemma]

currently doing an essay on adolescents in uk, on nutrition and obesity part at mo.
want to compare the diet of teenagers 50 yrs ago compared to now.
any takers?....

Cor, blimey, shall I phone my MIL for you? LOL.

They didn't have packets of crisps or cans of coke (in this country, I mean), did they? For a start...

Exactly 50 years ago? So we're talking around 1955?

yes, still rationing etc.

Television advertising came in that year - throw that in and mention lack of television advertising pressure compared to today (just to show off).

1954 end of rationing

Article on children's diets in the 1950's here

Breakfast - probably cooked, bacon, egg,etc. toast (pop-up toaster if you had money) Tea to drink.
Lunch - school lunches would have been meat and two veg type of thing with cooked pudding - apple pie, semolina etc.
Tea - Bread and jam with, perhaps, home-made cake. Cup of tea.
Ovaltine, bournvita or Milo at bedtime.
Also eaten - bread and lard with sugar on it. Bread and dripping. Crisps - plain with a twist of salt in packet. Rock salmon or cod and chips from chip shop. Sliced bread had just come in.

thanks morningpaper, the advertising bit is very interesting.

thanks aswell knockingon....

I think 50 years ago children/teens still went home for hot dinners at noon, much of the time, too. DH did, and that was only 15 years ago!

knocking that sounds like my early childhood diet, perhaps without the jam sandwiches though.
My father was still a teenager (19) in 1954 but he was the son of a farmer so he had lots of meat and dairy in his diet. Although he did National Service in the RAF from 1952-54 so I wonder what they fed him? I expect it was traditional stuff like meat pies and veg etc. I think the diet of townies and country folk would have been a bit different in those days due to the lack of supermarkets. My mother says that rationing meant that sweets and sweet products were thin on the ground, thereby explaining how good my parents teeth are! Lack of fast foods, we didn't experience things like coca-cola, hamburgers etc till my father was posted to Singapore in 1964.

My mum ate a lot of dripping!
Maybe the book Toast by Nigel Slater would help?