Interesting thread
When I grew up in the 60's and 70's, food was very expensive, a chicken was a rare treat. As a PP said, we would eat offal lots, and yes I still love tongue , hearts and liver. Most food was stored in the larder, with a marble shelf and air brick and milk would be placed in a pail of water to keep from turning, but then the milkman would deliver daily so you only bought for that day.
Because food was expensive, it was kind of rationed within the house. Food was for meals, not snacking. Breakfast was porridge, lunch was school dinners for us kids and supper would be something on toast.
Biscuits , crisps and chocolates were weekend treats and yes its true, a mars bar would be cut and shared :)
Then fridges became the norm, then freezers, and the range of foods grew and our shopping habits changed, we bought weekly now we had safe storage. That led to the use of stabilisers and emulsifiers and E numbers, things us skinnies from pre 70's had never eaten before
Pre 80's every meal was cooked from scratch from basic raw ingredients - fresh meat, fish and vegetables and it was all seasonal. I hate marrow, we lived on marrow in the summer - courgettes were not a thing :)
During the 90's my weight started to creep up. We were both working long and hard with long travel times, cash rich, time poor, so ready meals and take away became part and parcel of life , the only "real meal" I cooked would be a Sunday roast, mid week was always something pre prepared , Friday and Saturday - eat out or take out. It was the end of the 90's that I went on my first diet.
Now we are time rich and cash poor and what goes around comes back around. I have the time to cook, from scratch and finances mean I have to do so as economically as possible so meat once again is scarce but then so is offal and the "cheaper cuts" are no longer cheap so its very easy to make carb heavy meals and fill up on bread, and once again the weight came back
So now meals in my home have changed again, protein rich - lots of beans and lentils to bulk out small meat portions, loads of veg and cut back the carbs. The weight is back to normal , we no longer snack, we are filled.
The PP who said her Lasagne was more calorific then a shop bought one was probably correct, mine is, but with mine I only need a tiny portion, I could eat a family sized shop bought one with a whole garlic baguette :)
I truly do believe there is a link between UPF and obesity and of course the royals are shovelling ready meals and take aways down their necks, they want a burger and French fries, of course its being made for them using fresh ingredients. Same here, only mines bog standard 5% mince and not the finest Kobe and my spuds are from the shop, not the veggie patch