When did junk food/sweets/fast food stop being just an occasional treat?

24

Replies

  • Lounmoun
    Lounmoun Posts: 8,423 Member
    I am 42 years and when I was growing up we went to restaurants for birthdays or anniversaries. We didn't eat fast food often just occasionally. My mom was a sahm until I was a teenager.
    We did not eat or drink in our car ever. We did not pack snacks when we went places. We just did not expect to snack when we left the house.
    We had plenty of processed packaged foods regularly. Chips. Spam. Cheese product. Sugary cereals. Snack cakes. Cookies. Snacks were dry cereal or popcorn mostly.
    Homemade desserts were for special occasions.
    We didn't drink much pop or seafood because a family member couldn't have those things. Drank water often.
    When I was a teenager we got more things like frozen pizzas, pop, and so on. Much more eating out.
    We had one tv, no cable, no game systems, no computer. My mom told me to go play outside a lot.
    I walked to school until I was a teenager.
    I don't really feel emotional about food. I was not a binge eater. I didn't have a weight problem although my parents were overweight.
    My parents never really made me eat things I didn't like much. I don't consider myself a picky eater. I liked salty foods more than sweets. I loved cheese, fresh cherries and mushrooms. I liked tomatoes, brussel sprouts and lima beans.
    I'd say the food I ate changed as a teenager and young adult. My weight problems started in my mid twenties when I became much more sedentary and sleep deprived.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    edited March 2017
    @KassLea22 Since you mention a wide span of time including your childhood, I'll present the possibility that as the cost of calories has fallen throughout our lifetimes, an ever greater percentage of the population has the wherewithal to purchase calories which have been arranged in seductively attractive forms.

    With that said, German's Chocolate Cake was a recipe for a treat introduced many decades ago. It became popular in many areas of the USA because most of the ingredients were commonly available everywhere, and only 2 of the ingredients, coconut and the chocolate, were exotic enough that the time and cost of acquiring them rendered the final arrangement of calories a seductively attractive treat. This in a way resembles the way music was spread before the phonograph. Music was sold as sheet music and people had to learn to play it for themselves.

    I distinctly remember a sweet peanut-buttery bar that my sisters learned in the mid 1960's from my father's aunt who was born in 1878. My mother, born 1927, told a story of her father making the treat of hoe cakes when her mother was out of the house.

    In the time of Andrew Jackson, an early American President, his wealth allowed him to supply his kitchen with sugar bought in 100-lb sacks. Once in his great house, it was stored in a large safe under lock and key.
  • KassLea22
    KassLea22 Posts: 112 Member
    @KassLea22 Since you mention a wide span of time including your childhood, I'll present the possibility that as the cost of calories has fallen throughout our lifetimes, an ever greater percentage of the population has the wherewithal to purchase calories which have been arranged in seductively attractive forms.

    Thanks for the reply. I'm not entirely sure I understand what you were trying to say. would you care to elaborate?
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    edited March 2017
    Rarely when I grew up, in fact cake and pie were reserved for birthdays and holidays! Granted, thats a long time ago. We never had snacks and pop tarts and twinkies weren't invented yet.

    edited to be more descriptive of my era.
  • TR0berts
    TR0berts Posts: 7,739 Member
    I'm 44, about to turn 45. We had Little Debbie, ice cream, and other so-called "junk" food in the house all the time when I was a kid. And we ate it almost daily, along with cereal/Pop-Tarts for most breakfasts, sandwiches usually for lunch, and usually a home cooked meal for dinner. I never had any weight or health issues (other than being maybe a little underweight until I was in my late 20s, early 30s. And that was basically because I - for a handful of reasons - became less active and didn't adjust my eating accordingly.

    Looking back on your OP, you seemed to have these same opportunities, but simply chose otherwise. I don't think there's truly been a big shift in the treatment of "junk" foods - just a slight change in choices. Additionally, I'd bet the simple explosion of the internet and social media has just made you more aware of it.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    I grew up in the 70s. Cake, candy, soda, and chips were special occasion foods, but I had a Hostess cupcake or 3 Chips Ahoy cookies pretty much every day of my first 15 years or so.

    We hardly ever went to restaurants or fast food places, but got Chinese take out and pizza once a week each.

    My mom made a mean roasted chicken and her own tomato sauce, but we would sometimes have fishsticks & tater tots, or hot dogs and canned baked beans instead. Also most of our veggies were canned, but we always had fresh fruit. I did eat an inordinate amount of Oscar Meyer bologna and Kraft singles.

    I don't buy packaged snack cakes anymore, but there is always a package of Oreos on my counter. I probably cook a little more whole food type meals than my mom did, but I still get Chinese and pizza once a week each. And I went from drinking regular soda on special occasions to drinking Coke Zero every damn day.

    I have no idea what any of that means, but it is what it is :drinker:
  • KassLea22
    KassLea22 Posts: 112 Member
    TR0berts wrote: »
    I'm 44, about to turn 45. We had Little Debbie, ice cream, and other so-called "junk" food in the house all the time when I was a kid. And we ate it almost daily, along with cereal/Pop-Tarts for most breakfasts, sandwiches usually for lunch, and usually a home cooked meal for dinner. I never had any weight or health issues (other than being maybe a little underweight until I was in my late 20s, early 30s. And that was basically because I - for a handful of reasons - became less active and didn't adjust my eating accordingly.

    Looking back on your OP, you seemed to have these same opportunities, but simply chose otherwise. I don't think there's truly been a big shift in the treatment of "junk" foods - just a slight change in choices. Additionally, I'd bet the simple explosion of the internet and social media has just made you more aware of it.

    That's a very good point
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    edited March 2017
    dupe post, whoops
  • zyxst
    zyxst Posts: 9,149 Member
    KassLea22 wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    Why do these items have to be occasional treats? How often is occasional? What's wrong with having them daily?

    I didn't have a lot of fast food growing up because I lived in a small town that didn't/couldn't support fast food places. My parents were working and raising 5 kids. I generally had free time on my hands and my folks didn't give much care about what I ate as long as I was quiet while Mom was sleeping and came home when it got dark out. I ate plenty of junk food, probably 90% of my diet was candy bars, beef jerky, soda pop, and potato chips.

    Eating dessert twice a day keeps me from getting stabby. Apologies that that doesn't fit in your world.

    To be honest, I'm a little surprised by the hostility. I don't think that I'm being rude or judgmental, in fact I have said that I am not advocating towards any persons diet. And I never said my way was the right way. I just think it's interesting that while one person can view cookies as a treat, another person can view cookies as something that is needed every day. And maybe it was the culture of the neighborhood I grew up in, or my state, or just the people I was around but those things were always considered treats so when I realize people didn't consider them treats it was just interesting to me.

    It's also interesting that one person can view food as such an emotional personal issue, while someone else just views it as a non-issue.

    You read hostility in interesting places.

    I'd like to hear your answers to my questions since we seem to have opposing views on what is a treat and how often is occasionally.
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,393 Member
    edited March 2017
    I think often what we think is a change is society is actually just us becoming more aware of a broader range of society. When we were kids we didn't have the internet, and the people we knew were generally people like us - same location, same demographic etc etc. Now, as adults, we have access to the whole world and instead of recognising that we now see a hugely broader cross section of society, we interpret it as a change in the society we knew as kids.

    On the topic at hand, in my experience my grandparent's generation always followed dinner with dessert. There were always baked goods in the house, an empty cake/cookie tin was an embarrassment for my grandma. They may not have had store bought treats around as much, but there were certainly "treats" in abundance.
  • KassLea22
    KassLea22 Posts: 112 Member
    edited March 2017
    zyxst wrote: »
    KassLea22 wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    Why do these items have to be occasional treats? How often is occasional? What's wrong with having them daily?

    I didn't have a lot of fast food growing up because I lived in a small town that didn't/couldn't support fast food places. My parents were working and raising 5 kids. I generally had free time on my hands and my folks didn't give much care about what I ate as long as I was quiet while Mom was sleeping and came home when it got dark out. I ate plenty of junk food, probably 90% of my diet was candy bars, beef jerky, soda pop, and potato chips.

    Eating dessert twice a day keeps me from getting stabby. Apologies that that doesn't fit in your world.

    To be honest, I'm a little surprised by the hostility. I don't think that I'm being rude or judgmental, in fact I have said that I am not advocating towards any persons diet. And I never said my way was the right way. I just think it's interesting that while one person can view cookies as a treat, another person can view cookies as something that is needed every day. And maybe it was the culture of the neighborhood I grew up in, or my state, or just the people I was around but those things were always considered treats so when I realize people didn't consider them treats it was just interesting to me.

    It's also interesting that one person can view food as such an emotional personal issue, while someone else just views it as a non-issue.

    You read hostility in interesting places.

    I'd like to hear your answers to my questions since we seem to have opposing views on what is a treat and how often is occasionally.

    Well your last little comment on your post was unnecessarily rude, but that's kind of beside the point at this juncture of the conversation.

    To answer your questions, I don't really have any answers because I don't think one way of living is better or worse than another way for everyone. That's why asked this question; to see other peoples opinions on the subject. And I certainly don't believe that people have to live their life the way I do, so my personal answers to the those questions would only apply to me in my life. I just view them as treats because I do, and I have them when I feel like I want a treat are my answers. And for me the definition of treat is something that special that you don't have all the time.
  • saralukies
    saralukies Posts: 24 Member
    I grew up in the 80s, and my mom was a great cook, and we definitely only had sweet things for special occasions. She never bought sugar cereals or Poptarts or anything like that, although she would make a dessert maybe once a week. Now, she did encourage us to eat large portions, and she herself had to have weight loss surgery when I was a teenager, so this didn't necessarily work out to healthy eating practices. You can overeat on roast chicken, veggies, and potatoes just as easily as you can on sweets. (Well, maybe not just as easily, but it is not impossible) I think that might be why some are getting ruffled feathers. The access to sweets alone is not the cause of obesity, and the eating of sweets everyday is not automatically overeating.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    saralukies wrote: »
    I grew up in the 80s, and my mom was a great cook, and we definitely only had sweet things for special occasions. She never bought sugar cereals or Poptarts or anything like that, although she would make a dessert maybe once a week. Now, she did encourage us to eat large portions, and she herself had to have weight loss surgery when I was a teenager, so this didn't necessarily work out to healthy eating practices. You can overeat on roast chicken, veggies, and potatoes just as easily as you can on sweets. (Well, maybe not just as easily, but it is not impossible) I think that might be why some are getting ruffled feathers. The access to sweets alone is not the cause of obesity, and the eating of sweets everyday is not automatically overeating.

    Yes, I myself have overeaten potatoes, even salads, but rarely sweets.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    KassLea22 wrote: »
    @KassLea22 Since you mention a wide span of time including your childhood, I'll present the possibility that as the cost of calories has fallen throughout our lifetimes, an ever greater percentage of the population has the wherewithal to purchase calories which have been arranged in seductively attractive forms.

    Thanks for the reply. I'm not entirely sure I understand what you were trying to say. would you care to elaborate?

    Your opening post mentioned something from your childhood, something from your several years on mfp, and something at the present time. I don't know how many years you've lived, but I've lived over 50. In both our lives, the cost of food, as well as the percentage of income spent on food, has been falling for the average citizen. Since the tasty treats (I preferred to use flowery words initially) are cheaper than ever, we buy them more than ever.
  • KassLea22
    KassLea22 Posts: 112 Member
    newmeadow wrote: »
    KassLea22 wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    KassLea22 wrote: »
    zyxst wrote: »
    Why do these items have to be occasional treats? How often is occasional? What's wrong with having them daily?

    I didn't have a lot of fast food growing up because I lived in a small town that didn't/couldn't support fast food places. My parents were working and raising 5 kids. I generally had free time on my hands and my folks didn't give much care about what I ate as long as I was quiet while Mom was sleeping and came home when it got dark out. I ate plenty of junk food, probably 90% of my diet was candy bars, beef jerky, soda pop, and potato chips.

    Eating dessert twice a day keeps me from getting stabby. Apologies that that doesn't fit in your world.

    To be honest, I'm a little surprised by the hostility. I don't think that I'm being rude or judgmental, in fact I have said that I am not advocating towards any persons diet. And I never said my way was the right way. I just think it's interesting that while one person can view cookies as a treat, another person can view cookies as something that is needed every day. And maybe it was the culture of the neighborhood I grew up in, or my state, or just the people I was around but those things were always considered treats so when I realize people didn't consider them treats it was just interesting to me.

    It's also interesting that one person can view food as such an emotional personal issue, while someone else just views it as a non-issue.

    You read hostility in interesting places.

    I'd like to hear your answers to my questions since we seem to have opposing views on what is a treat and how often is occasionally.

    Well your last little comment on your post was unnecessarily rude, but that's kind of beside the point at this juncture of the conversation.

    To answer your questions, I don't really have any answers because I don't think one way of living is better or worse than another way for everyone. That's why asked this question; to see other peoples opinions on the subject. And I certainly don't believe that people have to live their life the way I do, so my personal answers to the those questions would only apply to me in my life. I just view them as treats because I do, and I have them when I feel like I want a treat are my answers. And for me the definition of treat is something that special that you don't have all the time.

    There was this kid who grew up across the street from us who was an only child. We'd go over there and her whole house was full of Twinkies, Devil Dogs, Pepsi, Ruffles potato chips, Pop Tarts, Hershey Bars, Hawaian Punch, Keebler Fudge crème filled cookies, Peppermint Patties, Yoo Hoos, and left over Kentucky Fried Chicken and pizza from the night before with Strawberry parfaits.

    And she'd open the fridge and look in the cupboards and say "Oh. Let's have a peach and some ice water." Me and my sisters almost fainted but what could we say? Or it was "Let's have one cookie and some plain milk." She did this every time we went over there. It was mindboggling to us.

    Ha ha I wonder if that's how my and my sisters friends felt. I mean we would eat ice cream and stuff when they would come over but I guess I've always just liked healthy food. I genuinely enjoy eating all my vegetables and I don't have a huge sweet tooth most of the time. When I do get a sweet tooth I give into my craving without thinking about it because I also know I don't eat a lot of sugar and I don't eat it very much. When I'm sitting watching TV on a lazy Saturday I love making a nice bowl of roasted Brussels sprouts to eat!
  • KassLea22
    KassLea22 Posts: 112 Member
    edited March 2017
    saralukies wrote: »
    I grew up in the 80s, and my mom was a great cook, and we definitely only had sweet things for special occasions. She never bought sugar cereals or Poptarts or anything like that, although she would make a dessert maybe once a week. Now, she did encourage us to eat large portions, and she herself had to have weight loss surgery when I was a teenager, so this didn't necessarily work out to healthy eating practices. You can overeat on roast chicken, veggies, and potatoes just as easily as you can on sweets. (Well, maybe not just as easily, but it is not impossible) I think that might be why some are getting ruffled feathers. The access to sweets alone is not the cause of obesity, and the eating of sweets everyday is not automatically overeating.

    Oh of course you can, totally. I just recently commented on another thread that same thing, that even if you eat healthy if you were eating a large portion you're still eating unhealthily. I mean I never mentioned over eating once in this post. I actually wasn't even thinking about that.

    As I've tried to say my question was why do some people consider chips and soda and ice cream a treat while other people consider them just an average part of their diet. I don't think I mentioned or alluded to the concept over eating, unless people just misunderstood what I was saying or reading between the lines something that I never was intending to say if that makes sense.

    I guess I don't understand why people are getting their feathers ruffled because I don't see food as an emotional issue, and it's kind of interesting for me to see that for some people it is because I'm learning a perspective that I didn't think about before which I think is good. It's actually good for everyone to understand that people don't think exactly like them, and I mean that for the people who disagree with me as well.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    edited March 2017
    A lot of people eat more than they need. Thats why mfp exists.

    edited 4 spell mistake
  • KassLea22
    KassLea22 Posts: 112 Member
    Gamliela wrote: »
    A lot of peole eat more than they need. Thats why mfp exists.

    Of course they do, but that's not what I was saying in my post and I'm not sure what that has to do with anything on this particular thread.

    Mfp is not just for people who are dieting or for people who are overweight, it's for people who are already active/healthy/whatever or are trying to gain weight as well. That's why I am on mfp, to track my calories/macros because I am very thin with a high metabolism, but I also lift and need to eat a decent amount of calories to gain the muscle I want to. I've been on this site since 2011.
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    KassLea22 wrote: »
    Gamliela wrote: »
    A lot of peole eat more than they need. Thats why mfp exists.

    Of course they do, but that's not what I was saying in my post and I'm not sure what that has to do with anything on this particular thread.

    Mfp is not just for people who are dieting or for people who are overweight, it's for people who are already active/healthy/whatever or are trying to gain weight as well. That's why I am on mfp, to track my calories/macros because I am very thin with a high metabolism, but I also lift and need to eat a decent amount of calories to gain the muscle I want to. I've been on this site since 2011.

    U R being a wee bit oversensitive about my comment. best wishes on ur goals

  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    Oh gosh I'm old, I know you all knew that already :)

    I grew up in post war, poor, working class, Manchester UK in the fifties. I had a ration book!

    My dad was a bus conductor then driver, and drank most of his income. My mum scrubbed floors and worked in a factory to make ends meet.

    Our food was very basic and structured around mealtimes. My mum was a good cook and made awesome, though plain, meals from what she had available. Cake and salad on Sunday made my week. There was fruit available for after tea (dinner) all the time.

    Toast and tea for breakfast.
    School dinner- meat potatoes and 2 veg for 5/- a week for lunch.
    Smaller meat potatoes and veg type meal for dinner.
    Cocoa, milk tea, or milk coffee, with a buscuit (cookie) or 2 before bed.

    Every other Friday we would get fish and chips as take out. A big treat.

    About once a week we would go visit a set of cousins, or they would visit us and the visitors would provide a chocolate bar or some change so we could go to the corner store and shop for our selves.

    I never thought I had gone without or gone hungry. It was only years later I realized just how poor we had been and how many foods I had never experienced.

    Hop forward to now. I still base my food around meals, though I have a much broader and adventurous palette, and have coffee and biscuits before bed.

    I have never aquired a taste for fast/chain restaurant food, or snacking between meals.

    That is just me- a creature of habit.

    Cheers, h.

    I've retained a three meals a day habit, and have added a bedtime snack in my older years. Treats snd snacks remain for special occassions. The thing that has changed is the variety of foods I eat. There are so many new foods available now.

  • Derpy_Hooves
    Derpy_Hooves Posts: 234 Member
    Same when I grew up, we didn't really get any sweets/biscuits during the week and in the weekend we all got a small bowl with crisps. Cakes only on birthdays and no take-aways or fizzy drinks. McD didn't even exist back then where I lived.

    That's 40 years ago though, there just wasn't that much around then.
    My children now get a treat every day after school like a small chocolate bar and I would have something every day too. Could be more than once a day as well. Crazy really, it's just become such a habit. We don't really do take-aways though, maybe 3 times a year. It's not cheap and usually not even that nice anyway. We cook from scratch pretty much every day so I'm hoping that on the whole we're reasonably okay in our diet.
  • Stockholm_Andy
    Stockholm_Andy Posts: 803 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    I was a child in the 1950s-70s (I'm 61.) There's not the slightest question in my mind that the availability, variety, marketing, and portion size of fast food, take out, prepared food products in grocery stores, and sweet/salty/fat-focused snack foods have increased dramatically since then.

    Agreed and my frame of reference is the 70s/80s.

    However, availability is not the main reason, in my opinion, it is cost. In relative terms the cost of food, especially junk food, is dramatically lower now than what it was in the past.

    In 1960 the average person spent a little under 20% of their income on food. Now it's under 10%.

    Eating out, ice cream and sweets were very much treats when I grew up.

This discussion has been closed.