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

@Moreholidaysthanjudithchalmers Your childhood diet sounds just like mine.

Did you have prunes and custard?😂

We might not have snacked in 70s but we did go to the sweet shop for penny sweets and had crisps in the pub garden. Also had chocolates at Easter and Christmas. But yes, more 3 meals a day, fry up on weekend, seasonal fruit, snacking would be apple, biscuit, ice cream from the van, baked goods from bakery (usually for tea, treat time). We were out loads in the street and parks. Less obesity. I was 6 to 6.5 stone when I was 12 towards, 7 stone at 17. Not underweight just skinny.

Minimum calorific value. If the mixture of indeterminate origin mince, soya protein and tinned peas/carrot didn't meet the level when taking into account the sugar and fat added to the pudding, they would melt lard into the gravy. If they were feeling generous, watery boiled cabbage to go with it. Often followed by Shepherd's Pie with strange tasting lumps of potato cut out with an ice cream scoop dropped on top of it about 2 days later.

A plate of ravoli with a grating of cheese on top, followed by a piece of sponge cake swimming in custard/rice pudding or semolina pudding with jam.

If it was the last half term of summer, possibly two days where there was salad. A lettuce leaf, tiny wedge of rock hard tomato, a bit of dry cucumber and dusty tasting beetroot cubes.

Once a term there was a slice of pork with two mini roast potatoes underneath a whole ladle of the lard enhanced gravy.

The non pork/vegetarian option was a plate of grated cheese. Sadly, that was more appealing than the standard option.

The most popular dessert was Gypsy Tart with something like Dream Topping on it, followed by a single block of practically liquid vanilla ice cream with the paper embedded into it, again only on one day in the second half of the summer term.

Secondary school was far better - chips (sausages and beans if you wanted them), jacket potatoes with a pat of butter or beans and cheese if you asked really nicely, salad that hadn't been sat in a hot kitchen for hours with identifiable items in it, freshly made cheese or ham rolls with butter and a fair amount of the filling, lasagne made from scratch, fresh fruit, yoghurts, crisps, drinks.

The argument for the minimum calories in primary was that for some children, that would be the only food they got all day. I always thought that if that were the case, they should at least have made it vaguely palatable.

If you bought coffee when you were out, it would come in a small cup, with no optional extras except milk/sugar. Or you could get vending machines that dispensed 'Max Pax' coffee in a thin plastic cup that burned your fingers.

There were probably specialist coffee places in cities that offered something more exciting but most cafes only had bog standard coffee, take it or leave it.

As you say, thermos flasks were popular for coffee on the go - the ubiquitous tartan-patterned thermos with a cup on the top, the smell of plastic and stewed milky coffee still takes me back to windswept beaches!

My parents had a coffee percolator at home but it was time consuming and faffy so only got used for after-dinner coffee, the rest of the time it was instant coffee.

Its not just the content - we didnt constantly eat. I camt remember eating between my school dinner at teatime. We just didnt, once in a while we would have a slice of bread and jam if we got peckish but very rare.

kids these days have something constantly going in their mouths, usuallt processed junk

Its literally so hard to get an instant coffee anywhere these days. Like you say full of calories imv syruppy coffees

when watching tales of the u expected i always marvel at the size of the glasses and plates so much healthier

we are going way too usa - family size bags of crisps are where their sizes start - 150g plus

i agree that ration books was the best diet and why that generation live longer

The decade of delicious, healthy trans fats 😋

3 meals a day, no snacking in between meals. "It will ruin your appetite".
Typical day was cereal for breakfast, school dinner, and then meat and two veg for tea. Sunday, we would get a pudding as well.
Potatoes with every meal. Chips, boiled, mashed, roast.
Veg was usually carrots or peas. Brussels and cabbage when it was in season
Common meals my mum did:

Sausage, mash and onion gravy
Chops, peas and chips
Egg and chips
Spam, egg and chips
Shepherd's pie.
Corned beef hash with baked beans
Gammon and chips
Liver and bacon casserole (bleurgh)
Sausage, beans and chips
Mince and gravy with boiled potatoes
Bacon ribs and cabbage, boiled potatoes
Roast lamb shoulder on a Sunday or roast stuffed lamb's heart with roast potatoes, carrots or peas, or cabbage in the winter.

If you were hungry of an evening you could have a jam sandwich or a piece of toast, water if you were thirsty.

Of a Friday we got pocket money and that was spent on sweets and comics.

Everything changed when processed freezer meals appeared. My mum embraced them because it was so much easier and she hated cooking.

It’s really interesting that even back in the 70s things were very varied. Some posters talk about homemade meals with no snacks, but others talk about crispy pancakes, sugar sandwiches, angel delight (love it) and UPFs before anyone knew what a UPF was. Sounds a bit like today with the spectrum between organic lovers and UPF….

yep.

pre weaning even. My mum was told breastfeeding was “unhygienic” and formula was “scientific” - you knew how much you gave, you could strictly regulate every 4 hours, and it was better nutritionally than breastmilk.

but as a kid yes I do remember boiled soggy veg, meat, oxo for flavour. That boil in the bag fish as well. Spaghetti bolognese was boiled mince with onions and an oxo, with a tin of tomatoes. that was considered “foreign” food. I didn’t have a Chinese takeaway until I was 19, Indian in my 20’s.

things like peppers, red onion, garlic, anything other than peas, sweetcorn, carrots, cauliflower etc again I didn’t have til an adult.

as we got older and got a freezer we had stuff like the findus french bread pizza, boil in the bag curries. Then Marks and Sparks started doing ready meals and we lived on those for a while.

I remember being hungry a lot. Despite being reasonably well off, we were very active - I swam and danced, training around 20 hours a week, plus walking to school etc. but I was only allowed portions deemed fit for a female, seconds were frowned upon, as were snacks, and there was definitely an undercurrent of horror that I might become plump. I was made to give up my sport at 12 for fear I may become “muscly” and not dainty and ladylike.

My mum didn't work so had the time to cook & bake & things like Findus pancakes would be a a very occasional thing as too expensive.

Maybe for a quick tea after a day out for example.

Snacks & shop bought cakes were just too expensive when mum would batch bake.

Bonus for moray cup or American ice-cream soda a vvv rare treat

At the turn of the 70s there were 1.7 million annual prescriptions for amphetamines, they only stopped being massively prescribed to housewives after the 1971 legislation. Everyone smoked. The food was terrible. Fewer cars and housework like washing was still close to manual labour. I’d have been skinny too under those circumstances!

Not prunes but stewed fruit and custard or rice pudding definitely did feature.

Oh me forgot about the prunes and custard
I liked it then..don't if I could eat it now.

i might’ve been your friend 😂

@user1471538275we weren’t allowed sliced bread or margarine. Definitely no Findus Crispy Pancakes. I wouldn’t say we were especially middle class but my Mum would buy local & seasonal food. They did used to have tinned faggots but I hated them.

It’s interesting that nobody had snacks. Kids nowadays are unsettled in school if they can’t keep going to fill up their water bottle during lessons. I swear that all I had all day to drink was a Holly Hobby flask of squash.

It’s no wonder we were generally skinnier (than nowadays).

Oh we had a sweet/treat cupboard (80s not 70s though!) it was the only cupboard that really squeaked so dm knew if we tried to sneak anything 😆

Zero UPF… Pop man delivered

Born in the 60s. I remember on a Sunday we used to have roast for lunch and banana sandwiches for tea.

Angel delight and Dream Topping or tinned fruit and Carnation milk for pudding. Lots of Ski yoghurt.

Mostly Mum cooked from scratch but as a treat we might have had Vesta curry.

Breakfast was usually porridge or cereal.

Not a food thing but I remember being given a spoonful of cod liver oil and Dad having it too so that we didn't object so much. Also rose hip syrup.

Actually now you have said this - I e the sugar sarnie with sliced bananas

Not a food thing but I remember being given a spoonful of cod liver oil and Dad having it too so that we didn't object so much. Also rose hip syrup.
We used to have makt and cod liver oil. It was a big sweet, sticky gloop we'd have on a teaspoon. It was delicious!

My mum is Indian so we'd have Indian food every day. Me and my brother would beg for a cod in butter sauce or a shepherd's pie with plain mince!

We used to have a lot of home made from scratch meals but the odd tinned steak pie (loved those) or Findus crispy pancake. We’d have fish and chips once a month and when KFC came in , we’d have it very occasionally 2-3 x a year for special occasions ).

Desserts were sugar sprinkled on buttered white bread, angel delight, home made shortbread, tinned fruit with carnation milk. The pop man used to come around on Saturday and mum would get 6 bottles of different flavours; dandelion and burdock and limeade were my favourites. Not many snacks really in between meals.

Also had cod liver oil capsules (yuk) and a laxative once a week that was horrible- like dark chocolate- Brooklax?

No ultra processed foods in the 70's.

Pretty much every country's obesity rates shot up in the years following the introduction of UPFs.

Whole foods, home cooked meals, no freezer/convenience foods, a more active lifestyle - hardly surprising less people were fat back then.