THE 1970’s DIET - sun ch5 9pm

[Blondeshavemorefun]

A social experiment with Josie Gibson

who eats and drinks and exercises in the way they did in 1970’s

what can we learn from their diet

I was 9 years old in 1970. We had a roast dinner on Sunday - that was the only day we had vegetables. We had curried meat on Monday, and egg and chips for the rest of the week. Sometimes, if Mum had a day off work, we had scrag end of lamb, which we all hated. We would have rice pudding on Sundays, and a homemade cake on our birthdays. Satsumas at Christmas and too many apples from the garden in the autumn. I was allowed to buy penny sweets with the change, when I bought Mum's fags for her.

At that time, we were not allowed to take a packed lunch to school, so it was either school dinners or homes. I was home dinners until I was about 9 or 10.

I was born in 1970 and we didn’t snack, ran around and cycled a lot more outside. We had a small breakfast of toast, ready break or cereal, disgusting school dinners unless it was fish fingers but puddings were nice till packed lunch was a thing around 1979 ish . Dinner was our only hot meal which my DM always made from scratch. puddings were just an apple, yoghurt, ice cream or crème caramel. Sweets once a week from the corner shop from our 20p pocket money usually a pic n mix selection or bag of lemon sherbet powder or a dub dab. Crisps and fizzy pop were just at birthday parties, pub or occasionally from the corner shop with pocket money if we fancied it. No pizza ever back then. We were all slim for the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s no one was overweight it just wasn’t a thing.

I should mention roast potatoes. For some reason it was my dad's job to do roast potatoes on Sunday. He used this method:

Melt some lard
Coat raw, cut potatoes with lard
Coat larded potatoes with flour
Roast potatoes in the oven

The resulting potatoes were nice and soft inside but the outside was like leather!

No UPF?

From the moment we were weaned on a combination of Heinz chocolate pudding and Farley's rusks, UPFs with all of the colourings and flavourings were available.

I remember having sugar sandwiches after school- white bread, butter and sugar. I told my kids this and they made one. It was disgusting but we had them all the time!

The boiled to death mince 2hr cook time
Silverside as above (dry and very chewy)yum
Chicken dry af
Findus pancakes grilled and singed yuk
Was glad when I was old enough to cook for myself.

Mmm arctic roll...

Food was far simpler and rarely did you eat out. There was no snack obsession; it was breakfast, lunch and dinner and perhaps a piece of toast or couple of crackers for supper. Breakfast was cereal and milk, lunch school dinner/packed lunch with sandwich, fruit and biscuit and dinner was a typical meat, potatoes and veg. I ate a lot of minced beef and boiled potatoes 😅My Mum did make delicious soup from meat bones and lentils though. Hardly any takeaways or pub dinners (they just served drinks really). And I don't remember many people, especially young people, being overweight. My old school photos are proof of that!

I wasn't born in the 70s but I imagine the difference between then and now is largely snacking and takeaways culture as well as portion sizes being so much bigger. People think nothing of buying a coffee or frappe style drink which have large amounts of calories too whereas then I imagine a flask of coffee was what most took out with them or had an instant coffee at work.

Even in the 90s I liked a golden syrup sandwich 😂

Carnation milk and dream topping loved those.
We used to get lemonade each week Bon accord lorry came round.
We would disappear out all day from dawn to dusk playing.

I'm sure tins of fruit were much cheaper then, even the ones in juice/water not syrup?
That was our pudding at least half the week with custard/evap milk or as a treat cream or condensed milk

My DC are fruit monsters so thought let's get some tinned fruit to eke out the fresh fruit
I was shocked to see the tinned so expensive!

Mum's rice pudding was lush but Nan's semolina/sago & my fave tapioca were sublime.
We also had angel delight, artic roll, home made glazed fruit flan as well as home made trifle & bread & butter pudding.
Remember Ski yogurts in the plastic mini milk churn design?
In the summer it was strawberries until you got fed up of them as people would go to pick your own farms & it was so much cheaper.

Fridges back then used to be full of odds & ends to use up in other meals that doesn't seem to happen now, not that I'm a fridge inspector just when me or friends are getting something out of each other's fridges.
But older family & friends definitely have the odds & ends saved. Me too a little bit.

Born 1966, so a child of the 70s. All our family photos of ourselves and random strangers depict slim people. Yet we ate some unhealthy stuff (I loved arctic rolls!!). How come?
I reckon it’s the regularity of ‘treats’ these days. I’m still slim but find myself sometimes falling into the trap.

I was 5 in 1970, I know I was undernourished as a child but I was also a picky eater. Remember having ‘roast cheese’ for tea very often, which was slices of cheese on a green Pyrex plate and put under the grill…that was the whole meal. Sliced white mother’s pride bread and butter at every meal.
I Remember these tiny square packets of chicken noodle soup you’d have to add to boiling water.
I had lots of butterscotch and lemon and lime Angel delight as it was the only way my mum could get me to have milk.
I remember the corona fizzy drink lorry coming round and being a real treat if we had enough money to buy a bottle and get some pennies back by returning the empties.
I was allowed a galaxy ripple watching Its a Knockout on a Friday night.
Always sugar in tea, and sprinkled on my (dry) Rice Krispies and if we ever went to a cafe, eating the sugar cubes.
A salad was limp green lettuce, this was the only lettuce available, spring onion, maybe a radish, grated cheese and salad cream.
There were no snacks and everything in the fridge and cupboard was accounted for.
I had a spoonful of Virol every morning which was delicious!

My Gran and Granda got the Bon Accord ale Mannie every Saturday.😋

My mum cooked from scratch and I had maybe one bag of crisps a week, plus one chocolate bar and otherwise it was a homemade biscuit or piece of fruit loaf (which was very nice!).

Fruit salad or yoghurt for dessert every night.
No endless snacking.

On weekend DM would make something like apple crumble. She’d do homemade chips and fried eggs as well.

She wasn’t the greatest cook (better at baking soup and desserts)but it was all very healthy!

I was born in 73. I don’t rem what I ate tbh

tho I do rem findus crispy pancakes and butterscotch angel delight

What were 70s school dinners like? I was at school in the 80s, vegetables were boiled to death, but not too bad otherwise. The only pudding I remember liking was chocolate sponge. They weren’t as much making the food be healthy, there was a sticker thing if you made the healthy choice rather than chips by the time I was at middle school.

Same it was my nana and granda that got it for us. The lorry came round and we’d return the empties.

Agree with others about the scarcity of snacks between meals. If you were at home during the school holidays, you'd get elevenses of a glass of milk or weak squash and one biscuit, usually a Rich Tea or similar. A snack after school would be an apple and maybe once a week you could have a Milky Way.

Any other requests for food were met with "No, it will spoil your tea".

I never went to school dinners always went home …the few times I did they were not good!!

Not many overweight people in the 70s that I can remember.

My mum refused to cook anything that wasn't frozen or didn't come out of a tin in the 70s. We ate cakes and sweets every day and mostly lived on fried food. We were given fizzy drinks regularly. Maybe it was just my family.

I can still remember the chip pan sitting on the stove, with its blackened reused oil within.

I was born in 70s.
Portions were much smaller, plates were smaller.
We had something like weetabix for breakfast, Milk at break. I had school dinners in infants. They were served in the classroom and everyone had to eat main before we got pudding (I have a memory of class getting cross at two petite girls who ate too slowly)
My mum cooked meat and veg meals like chops or cottage pie. We didn’t have pudding at home usually. We had high tea sliced meat and salad with trifle or cake Saturday tea with grandparents and always a Sunday roast. Sunday tea was something like meat paste on toast.
Very little snacking. Sunday school we might get a plain biscuit and squash. I remember supper so a cream cracker or crumpet before bed. Not many sweets. You might get a few penny sweets in a paper bag at weekend. Fizzy pop was an occasional treat from a pop man that came around.
I can remember occasionally having things like fish fingers or findus crispy pancakes. Some friends had chip pans we didn’t.
Lunch at home would be a sandwich, tinned soup, beans on toast.
We walked a lot.
Virtually no meals out. Occasionally fish and chips. No other takeaway food. If we had a day out must mum would take sandwiches and a flask and we’d have an ice cream. Very rare to buy food on go and eat food out of house.
Lots of sharing eg if we got a gingerbread man in shop she’d break in half for 2 of us to share.

It has to be soft brown sugar, usually left over from making the christmas cake.

I had school dinners in the 70s & thought that they were great!

Fish & chips on a Friday, navarin of lamb, corned beef pie, cottage pie, steak and kidney pie (bit of a theme there!), beef stew, goulash, chicken "curry", chicken fricassee.

Jam roly poly, pink custard over sponge cake, rice pudding, semolina.

Lovely!