why were people so skinny in the 70s?
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I was born in 1960 and grew up in what was a very typical UK household for the time - Dad worked, Mum stayed at home, three kids, one car.
There certainly was convenience food and as my Dad worked for Birdseye we probably had more than most - but it was all home cooked and therefore portion controlled. Most of our food though was cooked from scratch. Eating out was much less frequent and takeaways were very rare. Blaming sugar is frankly ludicrous - it was almost a given that tea and coffee had sugar added and few people used artificial sweeteners as they tasted so bad at that time.
Hard to know if we really ate less but certainly ate differently, three square meals a day and less snacking.
The kids were all expected to get themselves to school - none of this being ferried everywhere by car. If you wanted to see your friends you walked or cycled there. Far more outside play than happens now - the stereotypical "jumpers for goalposts"! It seems far too common now that kids need to have everything organised for them and taken here and there by their parents.
For me the biggest difference is the activity levels - hours and hours are now routinely spent sitting down staring at a screen (TV, gaming, online...).2 -
I was born in the 70s. To be honest I'm glad I was born when I was and grew up with a mother who was very nutrition conscious. Even though we didn't have a lot of money she was very resourceful and always made sure our meals were balanced. Eating out or fast food was a rarity and a luxury.
We did have some sugary and processed food, but as a family we were really into sports. We did have video games but my parents were pretty good about kicking us off and making us go outside. Kids that were teased for being "fat" would probably just be considered "a little chubby" now.
It's not just the food alone, it's a perfect storm of things that have caused obesity to rise. We stress about our jobs to maintain a certain standard of living, many of us deal with grueling commutes and taking time out to exercise can be an uphill battle, plus ready made food at first glance seems like an easy solution. Just seems like life has become so much more complicated and stressful. Living healthy and well can be done, just takes more effort and planning now, I think. Sigh.0 -
I was born in the 60s so remember growing up in the 70s. In my case, living in a small rural village, there were no takeaways other than the local chip shop and that was a special, special treat. The economy in the early part of the 70s was screwed in the UK - inflation through the roof and blackouts common so money was very tight. We also had a period of a 3-day working week. What I remember is that my Mother grew and foraged as much as possible. We didn't eat a huge amount of meat (expensive!) and what we did eat tended to be game we or friends hunted and even roadkill - she used to go out on her bicycle early in the morning looking for any pheasants or rabbits that'd been hit and were fresh.
TV - well we didn't have one at all until I was around 8yrs old and when we did, there were 3 channels. Weekends and holidays it was a case of going out to play with friends and coming back for dinner in the evening. Everyone walked or bicycled to school on their own as well. There were obviously fewer time-saving gadgets as well.
So for us it was a combination of mostly home-cooked food that was portioned, very low availability of fast food and much, MUCH more active lifestyles.0 -
I'm guessing it's the cocaine.0
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They were more active and less being on a computer. They had a Mother at home to see to their activities and their food in take. They didn't eat fast food as much.2
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I was born in 1970 so the 70s are my childhood years. These are the main differences as I perceive them...
- As children we were a lot more active. We spent most of our free time roaming the local countryside and woodlands, and as long as you were home before it got dark, or you rang if you were staying for dinner at a friend's house, those were the only rules. In a group of children aged anywhere from 6 to 14 we would be miles away from our houses and without adult supervision and no one bat an eyelid about it. Children now are ferried to an hour of structured activity here or there (music lesson, ballet, swim club, football etc) but largely spend their time sitting around at home in front of some screen. I have a vague collection of my friend getting "pacman" in the 80s, but there was no internet.
- We were expected to make our own way to school. In my case this was a combination of walking, using a bus and walking again... a journey of about 75 mins. Today most get driven to school.
- We were expected to do some chores. Nothing much but just stuff like cleaning our own rooms, laying a table, doing some dusting, clean a car. I see very few friends of ours ask their kids to do anything.
- I couldn't just help myself to food or sweets whenever I liked. It just wasn't acceptable. Now I see kids wordlessly entering the kitchen, open a cupboard, take a bag of crisps, and stroll back to their room. No questions asked.
- Mum cooked from fresh ingredients. There wasn't that culture around delivery meals yet, I was raised in Germany and the first McDonalds opened in Munich in 1971, and soon they were in every large city. But we lived in a small town and the nearest McD is about 45 mins drive away. To this day still the small town where I went to school still doesn't have a McDonalds, but it's now awash with other burger and kebab places where kids eat after school.
- We didn't think we were particularly "skinny". I can't remember as a girl even thinking about my weight. Out of a class of 30 there were only 2 overweight girls in my class, who by todays standards would be considered normal.
That's about it I think...0 -
I am from the German Black Forest where we truly walked a couple of kms to school, in winter on skis.....
:laugh: Yes I remember growing up in Germany, walking half an hour to the bus stop in knee-deep snow and somehow the school buses still always used to run. Now in the UK, the whole country comes to a grinding half over a couple of flakes and schools are closed for "health & safety". :huh:1 -
So I'm trying to figure out why people were so skinny about 40 years ago vs today....here are some reasons i can think of and i want to know yours:
1. little to none high fructose corn syrup
2. more activity.....people didnt sit on their computers and smart phones all day
these are just two main ones i can think of, anyone else have any ideas?
Well, my mom was not really skinnier than my sisters in the 70's and 80's. She was around 110-120 and the sister most like her in height was around 115-120 at the same age, so I don't think there is necessarily much of a difference between them. Though, I am the bigger sister and weighted significantly more. I wore a bodymediafit device and found that I am actually more active than I thought just having a little boy, taking care of the house and shopping. Quite a few days I get up to 8000 steps just doing those activities.
Unless you don't really do anything at all and sit on your butt all day you are probably more active than you think.
Documentaries like Forks Over Knives say it has a lot to do with the food we eat because you can eat a little oil for the same calories as a lot of vegetables and you will still feel hungry but if you eat the vegetables you will not. So, now we are getting a lot of calories from different foods and not realizing what we are eating because the full signals in the stomach are not being signaled.
The other problem is that people just like to eat and eat too much. It is a pleasure and makes you feel good. 100 years ago people had to ration what they ate or they would starve. Today, we do not have to ration our food so we just eat what we want. It really does not cost that much every month to eat what you want during the month, definitely within a normal budget.2 -
I was born in 1970 so the 70s are my childhood years. These are the main differences as I perceive them...
- As children we were a lot more active. We spent most of our free time roaming the local countryside and woodlands, and as long as you were home before it got dark, or you rang if you were staying for dinner at a friend's house, those were the only rules. In a group of children aged anywhere from 6 to 14 we would be miles away from our houses and without adult supervision and no one bat an eyelid about it. Children now are ferried to an hour of structured activity here or there (music lesson, ballet, swim club, football etc) but largely spend their time sitting around at home in front of some screen. I have a vague collection of my friend getting "pacman" in the 80s, but there was no internet.
- We were expected to make our own way to school. In my case this was a combination of walking, using a bus and walking again... a journey of about 75 mins. Today most get driven to school.
- We were expected to do some chores. Nothing much but just stuff like cleaning our own rooms, laying a table, doing some dusting, clean a car. I see very few friends of ours ask their kids to do anything.
- I couldn't just help myself to food or sweets whenever I liked. It just wasn't acceptable. Now I see kids wordlessly entering the kitchen, open a cupboard, take a bag of crisps, and stroll back to their room. No questions asked.
- Mum cooked from fresh ingredients. There wasn't that culture around delivery meals yet, I was raised in Germany and the first McDonalds opened in Munich in 1971, and soon they were in every large city. But we lived in a small town and the nearest McD is about 45 mins drive away. To this day still the small town where I went to school still doesn't have a McDonalds, but it's now awash with other burger and kebab places where kids eat after school.
- We didn't think we were particularly "skinny". I can't remember as a girl even thinking about my weight. Out of a class of 30 there were only 2 overweight girls in my class, who by todays standards would be considered normal.
That's about it I think...
I agree with you about not just going out for activities with the neighborhood kids. Some neighborhood kids will do that but the one I grew up in did not. My mom noticed that was a major change from her childhood. She used to play a lot with the neighborhood kids and says she had an idealic childhood.
As far as eating out, I find I can actually gain just as much weight just eating normal healthy food around the house if it is not strictly regulated in quanitity, so fast food is not necessarily the enemy as far as weight goes. I can actually gain more weight eating normal foods.
I grew up doing chores and walking to school and I was still overweight by about 30-40 lbs. on average. We lived in the country during my teenage years, so I had quite a few chores and I was still about the same amount overweight.
For me, I have just always had a problem with wanting to eat too much. I am not sure how you learn to not eat so much consistently. I have lost weight multiple times only to gain it back.0 -
Tapeworm expermiments kept me skinny in the 70s...
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Am I the only one that thinks fast food doesn't taste good?
I think so. I just made a very basic chili at home, and was asking my mom and husband why it tastes so much better than something you get at a fast food place.
I find that fast food and frozen food makes me feel nasty. It leaves me with a sicky feeling and not from eating too much, just from eating it at all.3 -
Less stuff to do inside as a kid.
I grew up in a rural area. Bus got to school at 7:25 am but school didn't start until 8. We were out playing on the school yard until then. Recess was 25 minutes long and twice day. Lunch was 50 minutes and we scarfed the food down so we had about 40 mins to play. All the kids came in red faced and sweaty. Everyone had to go and participate in gym class.
Lunch at school was all prepared from scratch. Mmmm, I can still remember the rolls the lunch ladies made!
Mom fried a lot of stuff. She was born in '30 on a farm and that's just the way she was taught to cook.
Chores around the farm, after school activities that were sponsored AND paid for by the school and riding the bikes everywhere to play with friends.
We had 3 tv stations and at that time most all the programming was geared toward adults. Saturday morning was cartoon time (and special) that ended at 11am. If you had a baseball game or swimming lessons on Saturday morning it was a bummer.
I have to tell my boys to turn off the tv/xbox/computer and go out side with them to get them to do physical activities.
One of my irritations is that schools have shortened recess down to 15 minutes and the kids get a whopping 10 mins for play after lunch. Plus everything costs! Schools used to sponsor all athletic activities (confirmed with friends from other states but not saying they all did back then) with only a small 'activity fee', which when I graduated high school was $60 for the year.
Now I'm spending well over four numbers for my boys just to play sports, even through the county.
Personal opinion is that we were much more physically active in the 70's than now.
I think children at schools are not allowed to be active enough. They should have one or two recesses a day but often they will only get like 2 per week. That just is not enough activity and teaches kids to be sedentary.0 -
I really think the overweight kids thing is seriously exaggerated. My daughter's school bus stop has about 15 kids, and only 1 of them is overweight. I work in retail, and I see very few overweight kids. Obesity is a problem, but it's actually been declining for a couple years now, the media just continues to sensationalize it.It's worth a mention that diet pills were far less regulated and far more common, too, as were crash diets, self-medicating with booze and prescriptions (yes, they can make you eat too, but a lot depends on user mindset), smoking like chimneys, etc. My mom also said bulimia was eeeeverywhere when she was in high school in the 60s and that when Twiggy came in with a super-thin body ideal it got worse.
What about kids? I don't think diet pills & crash diets were a major factor for kids..
look around.... so many over weight kids today !!
look at pics from the 70's - kids were more average weight, or even on the thin side.
70's kids = More exercise calories burned. Less calories consumed.
Childhood obesity is still on the rise and you see it more in certain areas. It is also more common in lower income families. There are 2020 goals to reduce this.
My family is low income, and I am quite overweight, but my five year old son is actually a pretty normal weight. I really think obesity is a personal problem that some people struggle with and others don't. My aunt has several adult children and she and her husband have been bigger but all of her children are pretty normal in weight.
For me, moving far away from family, not being able to make friends easily, and not having a lot of kids to play with in the neighborhood and not having as much activity with family and other kids, caused me to gain weight, but that did even out when I was around 13 or 14 but then I gained weight again in my later teens and young adult years, 25-30 lbs or so. Going through pregnancy and learning different ways of eating also caused me to gain a lot of weight. I gained a lot after I had my son, about 30 lbs. I gained 20 extra pounds during pregnancy.
Weight is a very holistic issue. It involves body, mind, and spirit all working together. Life purpose, healthy living, and spiritual fulfillment seem to help with weight problems. I can't see many people who are very content with their lives, feel like they are fulfilling their purpose, and living pretty healthy having significant weight problems.2 -
Cigarettes and diet soda.0
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I've heard a lot about Genetically Modified food. Even four and wheat has been altered to be higher yield which means less nutritious than it was in the 70. GM foods really took off in the 80s.
Another point is the use of Plastic. It only was figured out in the 90s that the plastic can mimic hormones and cause weight gain and early puberty. So through the 80s everyone started buying more packaged and processed foods. Even today when you go to buy fresh produce at the store you put the food into a plastic bag to get it home.
The other two you hit upon with the corn syrup - but also corn is a filler in a lot of products. Corn starch and other corn products like Dextrose really only started being used in the 80s when corn (GM corn, by the way) became so cheap and plentiful that it made sense to use it.
Then there's a sedentary lifestyle that new technology brings. In the 70s every house had only one phone and one TV that only showed a few channels (and you could only watch so much Brady Bunch before you were dying to head outside). So the lifestyle changed radically in the past decade as everyone communicates electronically and is entertained by screens (movies, games, computers, tablets, phones and TV).
HOWEVER - there is no going back. Only die-hards would give up their cellphones, not watch all the great entertainment on TV that's available to us, give up on nicely-paying white-collar jobs that have us sitting and using computers all day, and bringing our own paper bags to the store to put the fruit in, which then goes into large cloth bags at the check-out and then goes into glass bowls, and is cooked on the stove in metal pans. It's a lot to ask these days!2 -
That's such a good question. Fast food simply wasn't as prolific. More home-cooked meals. I feel like portions have gotten bigger, too.
Based on what I have seen from cookbooks, people now eat much more sweets than they did even in the 60's. My mom said her dad ate toast with jelly as a snack and my grandma did not like sweets. She was more of a salt eater. Both were a little overweight but not obese. My mom's dad died in his 50's though because he had a weakened heart from polio.
My mom on the other hand loved to bake and made treats like once a week. We probably ate out once or twice a week too. She was a stay at home mom and home-cooked most of her meals from scratch during my pre-teen and teenage years. She studied nutrition in college and has always said my problem is not nutrition but portion sizes.0 -
We were much more active. Being a 'child' in the 70's, I rode my bike all the time and walked everywhere.
We had a tv but it only had 3 channels...
Nothing was super-sized.
We didn't snack, nor did we have our moms bring cookies, granola bars and juice boxes to our sporting events. We drank water.
We spent money on weed instead of junk food. LOL
Mom cooked real food. Fried chicken, fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, vegetables... It wasn't perfect but it wasn't processed!0 -
I notice they sell much bigger cups and bowls than they used to when I was a child. It is easier to eat more if you have a larger bowl to fill and drink more coke or juice if you have a large cup to fill.0 -
Clothes were different too. Jeans didn't stretch and came up to your waist. Skirts and pants didn't have waistbands that stretched. If you put on a pound or two you took it off quickly as your clothes became less comfortable. Clothes were expensive to replace. You grew out of them by becoming taller, not wider.
That is a very good point.0 -
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I'd say a lot more people didn't realize the dangers and smoked cigarettes. They grabbed a Zero calorie cigarette instead of a snack.0
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The other problem is that people just like to eat and eat too much. It is a pleasure and makes you feel good.
Hmmm...
The things people usually like eating an awful lot of are usually the sort of things that aren't great for them in large quantities.
I certainly enjoy certain flavours but I wouldn't say eating makes me feel particularly "good"... it doesn't make me feel bad either. It doesn't make me "feel" anything, it's just nourishment of which some tastes better than others. But then I've never been the type to resort to food to cope with depression, anxiety or stress like some folk do these days.
Strikes me that the whole drama about "emotional eating" is a pretty recent thing (e.g. last 20-odd years).0 -
Clothes were different too. Jeans didn't stretch and came up to your waist. Skirts and pants didn't have waistbands that stretched. If you put on a pound or two you took it off quickly as your clothes became less comfortable. Clothes were expensive to replace. You grew out of them by becoming taller, not wider.
Indeed. Clothes used to be a lot more expensive than they are now.0 -
1. No Internet.
2. No video games.
3. Home cooked meals (from scratch)
4. Kids played outside after school.
5. Parents didn't drive kids everywhere, we rode our bikes or walked.
This!!!0 -
home cooked meals from scratch? People seem to forget when TV dinners came out........1
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I was born 1964, so 70's were my childhood. My grandparents were overweight and my cousin across the street was HUGE for his age, but his mother fed him Swanson dinners every night because he wouldn't eat anything else. There were plenty of FAT people running around then, but there are a few things I perceive have changed.
1) There were more mothers & grandmothers at home cooking from gardens out back.
2) Eating fast food was a once a month treat for us.
3) The kitchen was off limits unless an adult was in there saying "come get your dinner".
4) As kids, we rode our bikes everywhere! Can't do that anymore. (Too much traffic and and too many pervs!)
5) Schools had "physical education" and you were expected to break a sweat.
6) Drugs thinning some people out during that time.
7) It seemed everyone smoked cigarettes back then, which kills your appetite.
8) Possibly less processed foods on the shelves back then.
9) Roller skating and skateboarding were popular.
10) Dancing was the "thing to do" on the weekends. EVERYONE danced, or tried to. LOL
11) No cable or internet, so people in general got more sleep I think.0 -
Fascinating website & video
HBO's Weight of the Nation
http://theweightofthenation.hbo.com/themes/the-food-system0 -
I was born in 1974 and barely remember the 70s, but one thing would be in the invention of the remote control.
As kids in 70s/80s, we would have to get up to change the channel, and we didn't complain.
Always hated remote controls, it was here for the people who were too lazy to get up, you had to point it directly at the TV to change a channel, you had to look for it all the time (between the cushions is one common spot), and it was annoying while watch TVing when someone else next to you is channel surfing, and we had no rechargable batteries and had to buy complete new ones when they go flat.
Now almost every imagination device as a remote control, from blow fans to garage doors, batteries last forever, and with bluetooth technology, no more need to point them at their devices anymore, but I still hate them...
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I think children at schools are not allowed to be active enough. They should have one or two recesses a day but often they will only get like 2 per week. That just is not enough activity and teaches kids to be sedentary.
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- Again I am quite surprised by this statement! where do you live? I have experience with 2 different school boards in Toronto and another one in Ottawa (Canada). Until the age of 14 (grade 8) they all have 3 recesses - 1 at midmorning, 1 at mid afternoon (both for 15-20 mins) and another after lunch for 40 minutes. I assume that this must be a provincial requirement. They also all have gym several times per week. In addition they all have various activities throughout the year that encourage movement such as dance-a-thons, "run/jump" for heart, etc. These are all fundraising events.
The last school my kids were in was in a low-income area but they had the same standards as every other school in the city when it came to recesses. And children are not allowed to sit indoors for recess unless the weather conditions are EXTREME (for Canada). In other words we are told that if our kids are not able to go outdoors for recess they are not well enough to come to school and should stay home. The teachers also have a positive attitude to play and movement and none of my kids have been turned off physical activities (very different from my own experience with gym class in the 70's)
As far as I can see the schools that I have been exposed to are all doing a great job.0 -
I was born in 1961 and I can tell you there certainly was junk food and sugary treats. We ate them all the time.
We also worked hard outside and were always walking and running everywhere.
Activity level is the key.
This. People ate lots of sodium, sugar and fat back then. More so than now with all these low cal and low fat options. They just moved more!3
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