How did you eat as a child?

CynthiasChoice

1960's!

Breakfast: Cereal with milk and toast with butter. Weekends: bacon and eggs or pancakes and sausage
Lunch: Sandwich, fruit, cookies. Always.
Dinner: Meat, potato/rice, green veggies, green salad.
Mom and Dad's date night: TV dinner or Mac and Cheese or Campbell's Soup and Grilled Cheese

Hamburgers, Pizza and Donuts were rare.

In the 1970's, Mom stopped making fried chicken, or anything fried. And no more gravy Tab and Diet Iced Tea replaced milk

Thanks for inspiring the trip down memory lane!!

JeromeBarry1

The earliest I remember, mom served burned pancakes every day. Later years I'd get up early to have my dad fix bacon, over easy eggs and toast with coffee before he left early for work. Somewhere in there also I ate a lot of Frosted Flakes with milk.

k8eekins

lthames0810 wrote: »

Just curious about what you were typically fed as a child and were you over weight back then.

lthames0810 - Awesome@Three Stooges Lunchbox ... A great chunk of my childhood was spent enjoying those

Born: Mid-70s in a Sikh dominated State in Northern India as the surviving eldest.

Description: Location 1: Oceania-Pacific (Toddlerhood - Childhood)

Family of 5, with full-time working parents and 3 children (me, my sister and our brother).

Breakfast norms in the City:

Mum's selection:

• Pawpaw (Papaya) w. squeezed lemon juice
• Orange juice
• Yoghurt (Plain) or Hot milk
• Oatmeal or Sago or Tapioca/Breadfruit grated warm/hot breakfast porridge or Cream of wheat

Dad's selection:

• Pikelets/Crepes w. seasonal fruit toppings or store bought or homemade jam and cream
• Milo (hot) or Hot cocoa
• Continental style: Eggs, 2 bangers, toast (or fried hash from yucca or taro or sweet potato), orange juice, (wild) lemongrass tea
• Southwestern omelette

School lunch (Packed in those stackable stainless steel round lunch containers). * This was exclusively our late father's domain/responsibility by preference.

• Chicken quiche
• Sausage rolls
• Roti parcels (w. lamb curry or potato/bhindi/saag paneer/ matar aloo)
• Meat pies
• Samosas w. tamarind chutney, raita or chinese parsley (cilantro) dip.
• Burritos *
• Quesadillas *
• Fresh fruit
• Fresh fruit juice or smoothies - iced overnight, so it'll be sloshy and drinkable throughout our school hours
• Hot milo (in a thermos) throughout wet/rainy/cold seasons.

After-school snacks (My sister and I would assist each other in the kitchen).

• Jaffles (w. cheese, sometimes we'd add pineapple chunks)
• Milkshake
• Fruits

Mum's

• Melting moments (Cookies)
• Cheesecake (Traditional)
• Chocolate flavoured milk (Anchor from Australia lol) YUM
• Creamsicles (Always strawberries or mangoes)

Dad's

• Farm-fresh cow's milk, fresh off the stove - hot and creamy - YUM
• Beignets - no sugar but a lemon with cane sugar syrup, heavy on the lemon - Awww

Mon-Fri School Days Dinner Menu: Vegan/Vegetarian 5 days a week with our father - mainly; Our Mum cheated - always the salads with her fish.

• Main course (Mum's): What is recognisably similar to California Asian Salad w. tuna and cashew nuts or peanuts or fish/meat stuffed spinach cooked in coconut cream
• Main course (Dad's): Dhaal/Chickpeas with a medley of fresh/frozen vegetables (loaded)
• Side (Dad's): Accompaniment always was a tribal choice. Usually a boil-up of either taro or kumara or wild yams or cassava; The odd day would be rice. The native rootcrops always were suncooked.
• (Dad's): The assortment of what looked like Israeli salad was our salsa to go with the main dish and assorted chutneys
• (Dad's): We'd always have what looked like parantha/soft tortilla but it was made out of a pulse flour (2 each)
• (Dad's): Pakora made from pulse flour with spinach or eggplant or pumpkin leaves (Mini ice cream scooped balls@3 each)
• Beverages: Lemon flavoured water/Chilled fresh coconut water
• Dessert (Dad's): Jelly with homemade ice-cream and fresh fruit salad

Before bedtime snacks:

• Banana each
• Horlick's (Hot)

Description: Location 2: Oceania-Pacific (Tweens - Teens)

Boarding School - NZ Breakfast (We both sang in our Choirs so we weren't encouraged/permitted to eat anything oily or is dairy or sugarloaded)

• Dried toast
• Cold water

Boarding School Lunch, NZ

• Summer - Cold meat or cheese sandwiches
• Winter - Hot meat or cheese sandwiches with a cup of soup
• Fruit
• A snack like a Nougat Roll or a Fruit Roll-up

Boarding School, NZ After-school

• One fresh fruit (Seasonal)

Boarding School, NZ Dinner

• Traditional British Dinners
• Atypical Homestead British Feeds
• Water
• No dessert

Boarding School - Before bedtime ritual after Preptime

• Daily international call from parent(s): Spent complaining that they'd paid a whole lot for us to eat like Oliver Twist ROFL

We were never obese. I was an atypical vegan looking child. Not emasciated and not fat.

RodaRose

60s and 70s
Parents had a little farm so sometimes we ate our own meat from the freezer: pork, beef, sometimes chicken, and lots of eggs.
We had home picked strawberries and grapes and blackberries and watermelon in the summer.
Also home grown zucchini, tomatoes, asparagus, pumpkin, black eyed peas, blackberries, and cantelope and . . . . .We froze lots to eat in the winter
Father was away in the military 75% of the time.
Mother was home.
Breakfast: cold cereal & milk & toast Sometimes oatmeal or pancakes or eggs.
Lunch carried to school: Sandwich with fruit. Sometimes peanut butter and jelly, sometimes bacon sandwich
Snacks after school: homemade cookies or cake or fruit. Kool aid. Some milk.

My siblings were involved in sports by middle school so they were thin.
When we were twelve or thirteen, sister and I took over some of the cooking jobs: baked chicken, baked potatoes, big salads, homemade pizza, . . . sometimes desserts like store bought ice creams or home made baked goods. I put on weight when I left home for college.

Noreenmarie1234

Wow I find this very interesting to see how the meal have evolved over the years. Growing up I was very thin (only gained when I went away to college), but never ate very healthy. Very nutrient poor meals lol.

Breakfast was a cream cheese filled giant donut or giant cinnamon roll with cream cheese frosting or waffles with powdered sugar/canned strawberry sauce, or sugary cereal and milk with a small carton of OJ

Lunch was usually pb&J with a hoho/snack cake, water, canned fruit cup or sliced apples, bag of chips, and pack of gummies (my favorite were scooby do or gushers)

Snack when I got home was usually poptart/more chips/corn dogs/gummy fruit snacks of some kind, sometimes the ice cream man would come by so I would have ice cream

Dinner was usually tacos or spaghetti or 13 chicken nuggets (I liked a specific number) or a whole dinner plate of french fries or pizza or chili. Mom usually made me eat some baby carrots as my veg. I never grew up eating the "starch meat veg" family dinners. Never ate plain chunks of meat, veg and potato as a kid. Very interesting to see how most born before the 90s had this staple dinner.

Snack before bed was usually ice cream sundae or poptarts or cheese/crackers or pita bread with peanut butter

I ate like crap but was always very thin until after puberty it started to catch up with me.

WanderingRivers

We were pretty bad off so it was a lot of stuff out of a box, beans and rice, ground turkey (it was cheap back I. the day), and times when we just didn't have enough so we'd head to bed hungry.

quebot

I was not overweight until I had my 3rd child, and after my 4th, I was doomed. I was a latch-key kid as a child and my brother fed me most dinners. I hardly ever ate breakfast, but if I did, it was cold cereal. Usually corn flakes or rice crispies. I ate whatever was served at school. Dinners were usually fish sticks and french fries, frozen pizza, or grilled cheese. Sometimes he made spaghetti. I hardly ever snacked. But I do remember having cheese and crackers or pnut butter crackers sometimes.

LAT1963

lthames0810 wrote: »

Just curious about what you were typically fed as a child and we're you over weight back then.

For me this was in the US in the 1960's, a family of four: stay at home mom, my dad worked days so was home in the evening and I had a younger sister.

Breakfast was cold cereal with banana and milk in the summer, or oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar and milk in the winter.

Lunch was either a peanut butter and jelly or a bologna sandwich with an apple. (In my Three Stooges lunchbox on school days.). Milk to drink. Always whole milk.

After school was a snack to tide us over until Daddy got home of one cookie and a little milk. Don't want to spoil you supper!

Supper would vary much more than the other meals, but typically included a meat, a cooked vegetable, potatoes or rice and a salad. Milk or water to drink. Not usually a dessert, but if we had one it was something like canned fruit and a cookie. My dad insisted that we clean our plates (never a problem for me but a constant battle for my sister who hated vegetables and still does to this day), but I learned that if I ate too quickly, he would pile more food on whether I wanted it or not and he would insist that I eat all of that as well.

Both my sister and I were skinny little kids, but as was typical in that era, we were sent outside to play after school and on weekend mornings and not allowed back in the house until we were called in for a meal or if there was bad weather.

I still have this way of eating in my head as the model for good health.

Ditto both for the era and the menu. Occasionally an egg salad sandwich. More tuna-salad than bologna sandwiches in my mom's repertoire. Vitamin D milk (which was new at the time). Iodized salt. No afternoon snack.

If you wanted to go somewhere you either walked or rode your bike. Mom was not a taxi service. As a consequence my grade-school world was a little over a mile across, bounded at its edges by major roads with speed limits over 30 mph. Within that world was a 7-11 at the far edge next to an antiques (junk) store, and a creek with its easement, the elementary school half a mile away, a swath of orchard, a railroad with its easement. The rest was suburb. It was a daring adventure to follow roughly a mile along the 35 mph road at the edge of my 'turf' to go to the major grocery store (Safeway), which was not only a mile trek but required crossing the fast road and walking an additional ~2 blocks to reach it.

Christine_72

Everything was healthy, healthy, healthy when i was a kid. I used to get teased at school for having my pumpernickel bread with ham and bean sprouts, all i ever wanted was a damn peanut butter sandwich lol My mum used to make us fruit and veggie smoothies all the time, and there were veggies at every meal (She still loads me up on them when i visit her).
We had take away maybe once a month, we could have dessert if we wanted, but i can't remember ever having it unless guests were over for dinner..
We could spend our pocket money at the shop on the way home from school if we wanted on whatever we wanted. So it wasn't a strict only healthy food thing, but the vast majority of our meals were healthy and home cooked, no ready meals or anything like that.

My mum worked full time, did all the grocery shopping and cooking. I have apologised to her a hundred times over the years for not helping her more. She was/is certainly wonder woman in my eyes

ETA: None of us were ever overweight. We all played a lot of sport too.

emilylittle5494

When I was in Primary school we used to have wheatbix for breakfast, with sugar and whole milk. Milk as a drink. Our school lunches were usually a piece of cake or a biscuit, a piece of fruit, and either a jam sandwich, or a ham sandwich with lots of tomato sauce and margarine. Afternoon tea was usually custard and some kind of pudding. Mum used to cook sausages and vegetables, rissoles and vegetables, meatloaf and vegetables or Bolognaisse for tea usually. We were usually made to eat everything on our plate, even if we were full, so it didn't get wasted. Meanwhile, my mother wouldnt eat the food she had cooked. She was always on a diet. Cabbage soup,diet, cottage cheese diet, Atkins diet, blood type diet, weight watchers etc etc.

I didn't eat alot when I was very young, so,I wasn't an overweight child. It wasn't until grade 6 or 7 I started to gain weight and got a bit chubby. When I entered highschool I was unhappy with my weight. Ended up researching how to lose weight and that was when my eating disorders also developed. I was diagnosed with anorexia and bulimia, after hiding it for a long time. Since then, I have always struggled with my weight, going through periods of restriction, bingeing or overeating.

ja20102004

I was fed pretty good. Mac and cheese, milk, hamburgers, hotdogs, veggies. My mom made a lot of homemade stuff. I didn't start getting over weight til around my 20's especially after my 5 pregnancies. Plus with depression with losing 2 of my daughters in the hospital due to being preemies.

cerise_noir

Mostly Croatian foods such as sarma, pasul, fileki, paprikas, gulas, kisela juha, zgance, kobasice, burek, cevape, mlinci, krpice, and many other dishes as well as roast meats with potato and salad made with lettuce dressed with oil and vinegar. A few sweets, too, smoked meats and cheeses, breads. I only started gaining weight after puberty.

For snacks there would be oil popped popcorn, pretzels, dried meats, grapes and various fruits.

whatlunasaid

I grew up eating everything. My parents have always been big on dining out, and my stepfather is Vietnamese, so we were always out at Asian restaurants, and brought a lot of snacks home from Asian markets. There was tex-mex food and regular fast food occasionally. Family dinners at home usually involved grilled meat and seafood, lots of fresh fruit and veggies, and rice or potatoes. (My favorite memory is opening up fresh young coconuts with an old meat cleaver.) We also ate crusty breads, cheese, cured meats, rich pastries, and wine. I experimented with cooking a lot, and often cooked for the whole family starting at age 12. Lots of roasted chicken, stir fries, sauteed veggies, and pasta. I was also big on smoothies (and milkshakes, haha). Blessedly, my mother didn't keep soda, sugary cereals, or candy around the house. But I knew how to bake sweets, so I knew if I wanted desserts I could have them.

I took an interest in nutrition at a young age. It was hard to reconcile that with the fact that my family would spend entire weekends just gorging on international cuisine. But I was lucky that most of it was reasonably nutritious, even though we were eating too much of it.

Edit: Also lots of Mediterranean and Persian foods, come to think of it. Hawaiian foods when my brother got married, since his wife's mother is from Hawaii. Did I mention I ate everything??

samasam799

When I was a kid I wasn't a big eater. But I was a picky eater I didn't like any veggies sep corn. I ate what ever there was i had healthy or unhealthy food. I was very skinny and healthy.as i left high school my appite change and now im a big eater and of course my weight went up

brenn24179

I could care less about food as a kid, sent me to school and I didn't eat lunch, not breakfast either, ate snack when I got home and some dinner, Mom was a good cook. I just didn't get into food as a child, I was into having fun, being active, loved outside playing. No fast foods back there but maybe 1 Kenny Burger. Yep, fast food was probably my downfall later now I think about it. I was skinny until 16.

Things changed for some reason, my metabolism, growing up stress, boys, peer pressure. I turned to food about 16 years old and now 63 and same struggle. My Mom used prescription drugs a lot. I turned to food. She seem to fall apart all the time and always took pills. This made me nervous. She is 90 and still going and lives in so much drama, still drives me crazy. She has a 63 year old caretaker she calls her boyfriend and 2 other caretakers that I am sure she drives nuts, amazing what they will do for her for money. Anyway when life gets hard I want to eat, I guess I need to go play more like I did when I was a child.

Noreenmarie1234

cut out drinking my calories, not worth it

ccsernica

I ate more or less like OP, except my father was never so cruel as to force-feed us if we happened to finish sooner than the rest of the table. Not that ever did. I was an extremely picky eater and disliked anything with the wrong texture or too strong a flavor I didn't favor.

We sometimes had soda, but only for an occasional treat and never with dinner unless it was a party of some kind, like a barbecue with the extended family. Snacks were also available in limited quantities: Fritos were my favorite. Candy almost never. If I wanted any, I had to find some money and then walk or ride my bike a mile each way to the nearest general store. (And after it closed, it was 3 miles to the next nearest one.)

For most of my elementary school career, I was underweight for my height according to the growth charts of the time.

amandaeve

Grew up in the 80's in Oregon. My family has a history of heart disease, so we avoided red meat, eggs, salt, and high fat foods as was the recommendation at the time. I was "chunky" from 2nd-6th grade (mirroring the years my family was the most financially strained). At age 13 I dieted and was of normal weight until a took a stressful sedentary job at age 24.

Breakfast: milk, cereal, fruit. Sometimes oatmeal.

Lunch: throughout all of my school years my dad lovingly packed my lunches. Sandwich (pb&j or cold cuts, veg, sprouts, cheese), apple or carrots (something healthy), fruit rollup or pudding cup (something fun), juice box.

After-school snack: quesadilla or bagel or snap peas

Dinner: My parents alternated between working nights and days so it varied whether one, both, or neither was home. TV dinners or pot pies (the aluminum kind because we had no microwave), chicken and veg* wok stir fry, or baked chicken or fish with veg* or salad and potato or rice.

*veg= brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, peas, carrots, corn, etc. When my family was doing better they'd garden and/or shop at farmer's markets. The TV dinners were heavy during the hard years. But no matter what, my dad always packed that awesome lunch. For the record, I started out with a Snoopy lunch box, then a He-Man lunch box (both metal). When I got older I had an insulated nylon one with straps and zippers.

nowine4me

Grew up in the70's & 80"s. I have zero recollection what, if anything! I had for breakfast as a kid. Ate school lunches, usually burgers and fries. Pretty much everything my mom made for dinner was terrible and started with cream of mushroom soup and hamburger. But when I was home alone after school I made the most delicious snacks. Like popcorn with a stick of butter, or broiled wonder bread with butter and sugar, or -- well, you get it......Then when I got chubby, and my parents locked up the food, I got really crafty.