why were people so skinny in the 70s?
Replies
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janejellyroll wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »ThereAreManyNames wrote: »It's all pretty much been covered, but literal syrup wasn't being pumped into everything everyone ate, people cooked normal meals at home out of raw ingredients instead of eating out every day and ideas of portion sizes weren't as wildly skewed. More activity, especially for children who were encouraged to actually play outside (and it was considered safe enough to do so), and food lobbyists not yet pushing out the food pyramid with its bogus emphasis on grain.
People also did not drink thousands of calories of sugar a day because 32-44 oz of liquid candy with every meal and more in between was not something everyone just casually did or allowed for their kids.
Speaking as someone who was in my 20's during the 70's, you have no idea what you're talking about.
1) Syrup in all the food?? Where did you get that from?
2) The fantasy of people cooking "normal meals at home out of raw ingredients" is a 50's fantasy. Get your eras straight. The 70's saw a significant rise of families with all adults working, and the use of convenience foods, at least in my social circle, was definitely routine. Nobody ate out every day or lived on fast food - we were all working our *love* off to give our kids some of the extras we didn't have growing up (this is another generalization but true among the people I interacted with.)
3) All our kids were involved in organized sports of one kind or another - they were plenty active.
4) Do you seriously think the government food standards had much if any influence on what people eat, then and now? And yes there were food guidelines when we were in school (in the 60s!) that were similar to the infamous pyramid. We learned about them in cooking class - they had no impact on what most people ate at home.
5) Good grief, who was eating thousands of calories of sugar a day during any period of human history?? Where did you even see that? There was plenty of soda around in the 70's (and kool-ade all the way back to the 60's). There was also diet soda and of course water and milk. Nobody I ever met was all sugar all the time, and most people limited sugary drinks for their kids.
heads up - kittens are now love. Happy Valentine's day :drinker:
1) I believe the syrup in food was referring to today, not the 70's, since the post says "syrup wasn't being pumped into everything ". I assume this refers to HFCS
3) Not the case where I lived. Most of the boys played little league baseball. Probably only about 1/4 - 1/3 of kids were involved in school sports. We were very active, much more so than most kids today. But most of the activity where I grew up was play, not organized sports.
4) actually that post is correct about the food pyramid. After the 70's the recommendation from the USDA for grains more than doubled. https://www.choosemyplate.gov/brief-history-usda-food-guides
If it's referring to HFCS, then it's just wrong. HFCS isn't pumped into everything. It's in a wide variety of products, but it's also very simple to find things in the average grocery store that don't have it.
Agree, and it wasn't my post so I could be wrong. But IDK what else it could be. Unfortunately not many foods are pumped full of maple syrup.
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Packerjohn wrote: »
I grew up in the 70's, so I have great input. We ate candy like all kids did. I ate McDonald's at 10 year old up to now.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?
But I also rode my bike everywhere, skateboarded, and play street football almost everyday. We ate 3 meals a day, but the PORTIONS were much smaller. Even at all fast food restaurants. A medium fry today was a large back in the 70's. Oh and we also HAD to do PE or get an F.
A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
And they actually made you move. I see the kids at the local jr high outside for "PE" strolling around the track, chatting with each other and looking at their phones.
So it's not just me who's noticed that. PE doesn't look very "physical" or very "educational" anymore.
This television ad (even though it's about bone density rather than obesity per se) is very telling - and also makes me want to smack that fat kid right out of the chair and through the nearest wall at the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UntdGA7gH3Q 5 -
JerSchmare wrote: »BrianSharpe wrote: »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.
Yes. In addition, snacking was not yet invented. In the 70’s, if you wanted a snack, you ate a banana, grapes, or an apple. Not a giant pack of chips and a 20oz Coke.
Interesting. I was growing up in the 70s and I remember all kinds of snacks... Little Debbie's, Twinkies, candy bars, Hunt's Snack Pack puddings in the little can...incidentally the new ones that are in the plastic cups do not taste anywhere near as good as the ones in the can. There are all kinds of cookies and sugar sweetened cereals available. And those cereals proudly proclaimed that they were sugary. Super sugar crisp Sugar Pops... Those are just two that come to mind I know there were many more.
Your parents were probably like my poor cousin's parents who would not let them have any kinds of sweets and a big treat to them were those honey sesame "candy" pieces of sadness from the health food store LOL.
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Must have been jazzercise1
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Need2Exerc1se wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »ThereAreManyNames wrote: »It's all pretty much been covered, but literal syrup wasn't being pumped into everything everyone ate, people cooked normal meals at home out of raw ingredients instead of eating out every day and ideas of portion sizes weren't as wildly skewed. More activity, especially for children who were encouraged to actually play outside (and it was considered safe enough to do so), and food lobbyists not yet pushing out the food pyramid with its bogus emphasis on grain.
People also did not drink thousands of calories of sugar a day because 32-44 oz of liquid candy with every meal and more in between was not something everyone just casually did or allowed for their kids.
Speaking as someone who was in my 20's during the 70's, you have no idea what you're talking about.
1) Syrup in all the food?? Where did you get that from?
2) The fantasy of people cooking "normal meals at home out of raw ingredients" is a 50's fantasy. Get your eras straight. The 70's saw a significant rise of families with all adults working, and the use of convenience foods, at least in my social circle, was definitely routine. Nobody ate out every day or lived on fast food - we were all working our *love* off to give our kids some of the extras we didn't have growing up (this is another generalization but true among the people I interacted with.)
3) All our kids were involved in organized sports of one kind or another - they were plenty active.
4) Do you seriously think the government food standards had much if any influence on what people eat, then and now? And yes there were food guidelines when we were in school (in the 60s!) that were similar to the infamous pyramid. We learned about them in cooking class - they had no impact on what most people ate at home.
5) Good grief, who was eating thousands of calories of sugar a day during any period of human history?? Where did you even see that? There was plenty of soda around in the 70's (and kool-ade all the way back to the 60's). There was also diet soda and of course water and milk. Nobody I ever met was all sugar all the time, and most people limited sugary drinks for their kids.
heads up - kittens are now love. Happy Valentine's day :drinker:
1) I believe the syrup in food was referring to today, not the 70's, since the post says "syrup wasn't being pumped into everything ". I assume this refers to HFCS
3) Not the case where I lived. Most of the boys played little league baseball. Probably only about 1/4 - 1/3 of kids were involved in school sports. We were very active, much more so than most kids today. But most of the activity where I grew up was play, not organized sports.
4) actually that post is correct about the food pyramid. After the 70's the recommendation from the USDA for grains more than doubled. https://www.choosemyplate.gov/brief-history-usda-food-guides
If it's referring to HFCS, then it's just wrong. HFCS isn't pumped into everything. It's in a wide variety of products, but it's also very simple to find things in the average grocery store that don't have it.
Agree, and it wasn't my post so I could be wrong. But IDK what else it could be. Unfortunately not many foods are pumped full of maple syrup.
Probably good for my waistline. I love the stuff!
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Tacklewasher wrote: »GiddyupTim wrote: »My son can finish an entire small pizza. I could probably get pretty close myself, on a good day. In the 1970s, you had three slices, if you were really hungry!....
Again, doesn't match how the '70s went for me. We would go to Shakey's Pizza Parlor for their all-you-can-eat lunch of pizza, salad, fried chicken and mojo (fried/seasoned) potatoes. My record was 22 slices of pizza, along with a few chicken drumsticks and a dozen or so mojo potato slices. I was around 15-16 at the time. A small pizza wouldn't even have counted as a warm-up for me at that time.
This makes me nostalgic. I remember we went to Shakeys once and, for whatever reason they couldn't make medium pizza's so all 6 teenaged boys (we went with my parents and their friends) ended up with a large pizza each. We had no issue eating them.
Does Shakey's still exit? Time for google.
Me too! We had a Shakey's and it was where we always went after our middle school dances. So fun to think about that stuff.1 -
JerSchmare wrote: »BrianSharpe wrote: »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.
Yes. In addition, snacking was not yet invented. In the 70’s, if you wanted a snack, you ate a banana, grapes, or an apple. Not a giant pack of chips and a 20oz Coke.
I hope you were being humorous/ironic there.
Off the top of my head: Hostess Fruit Pies, Twinkies, Cupcakes, Ding Dongs, Sno-Balls, Donettes, Fritos, Doritos, Lay's potato chips, Pringles.....the list goes on and on.7 -
Also, adjusting for inflation, the average household had much less in the way of discretionary income; treats were just that; an occasional thing.
Speaking for myself and my family, though we were probably a little better than median income, we rarely had soda, candy, or snack cake type items in the house and we almost never ate fast food (though obviously these things were all available). I remember it was kinda a big deal to order a pizza... *one* pizza... for five people.
My n=1 FWIW...3 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »Need2Exerc1se wrote: »ThereAreManyNames wrote: »It's all pretty much been covered, but literal syrup wasn't being pumped into everything everyone ate, people cooked normal meals at home out of raw ingredients instead of eating out every day and ideas of portion sizes weren't as wildly skewed. More activity, especially for children who were encouraged to actually play outside (and it was considered safe enough to do so), and food lobbyists not yet pushing out the food pyramid with its bogus emphasis on grain.
People also did not drink thousands of calories of sugar a day because 32-44 oz of liquid candy with every meal and more in between was not something everyone just casually did or allowed for their kids.
Speaking as someone who was in my 20's during the 70's, you have no idea what you're talking about.
1) Syrup in all the food?? Where did you get that from?
2) The fantasy of people cooking "normal meals at home out of raw ingredients" is a 50's fantasy. Get your eras straight. The 70's saw a significant rise of families with all adults working, and the use of convenience foods, at least in my social circle, was definitely routine. Nobody ate out every day or lived on fast food - we were all working our *love* off to give our kids some of the extras we didn't have growing up (this is another generalization but true among the people I interacted with.)
3) All our kids were involved in organized sports of one kind or another - they were plenty active.
4) Do you seriously think the government food standards had much if any influence on what people eat, then and now? And yes there were food guidelines when we were in school (in the 60s!) that were similar to the infamous pyramid. We learned about them in cooking class - they had no impact on what most people ate at home.
5) Good grief, who was eating thousands of calories of sugar a day during any period of human history?? Where did you even see that? There was plenty of soda around in the 70's (and kool-ade all the way back to the 60's). There was also diet soda and of course water and milk. Nobody I ever met was all sugar all the time, and most people limited sugary drinks for their kids.
heads up - kittens are now love. Happy Valentine's day :drinker:
1) I believe the syrup in food was referring to today, not the 70's, since the post says "syrup wasn't being pumped into everything ". I assume this refers to HFCS
3) Not the case where I lived. Most of the boys played little league baseball. Probably only about 1/4 - 1/3 of kids were involved in school sports. We were very active, much more so than most kids today. But most of the activity where I grew up was play, not organized sports.
4) actually that post is correct about the food pyramid. After the 70's the recommendation from the USDA for grains more than doubled. https://www.choosemyplate.gov/brief-history-usda-food-guides
If it's referring to HFCS, then it's just wrong. HFCS isn't pumped into everything. It's in a wide variety of products, but it's also very simple to find things in the average grocery store that don't have it.
Agree, and it wasn't my post so I could be wrong. But IDK what else it could be. Unfortunately not many foods are pumped full of maple syrup.
I JUST had a Nestle Greek Yogurt Maple frozen yogurt bar!3 -
I agree with the whole more active, ate less junk, but I seem to remember when I was a kid in the 70's almost every adult I knew smoked. I know my mother smoked for several years to keep her weight down. It didn't work for everyone, but a lot of people would smoke instead of eat. Not a healthy trade off.4
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I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.3 -
bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
I didn't have time for TV. That would have cut into my time I could have been out riding my bicycle, playing street football, skateboarding, etc. Saturday morning cartoons were fine enough while eating breakfast, but then it was out the door to go have some fun.7 -
bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
And, even if you did watch some TV, dad was always making you get up to change the channel for him. I swear I got more steps in being dad's remote than walking to school.
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I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.2
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crabbybrianna wrote: »I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.
I got yelled at if I sat too close
But now I think we are getting into a Monty Python sketch "our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife"7 -
Tacklewasher wrote: »crabbybrianna wrote: »I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.
I got yelled at if I sat too close
“You’ll go blind!!!”5 -
Tacklewasher wrote: »crabbybrianna wrote: »I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.
I got yelled at if I sat too close
“You’ll go blind!!!”
Ahh.
I wasn't going there.....
Oh. You mean from the TV screen.6 -
Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it. It's dirt cheap because of government subsidies for corn farmers and gets put into literally everything, even things such as bread are ridiculously sweet by international standards. Wikipedia spells out the time frame pretty clearly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup)
"From 1970 to 2000, there was a 25% increase in "added sugars" in the U.S.[26] After being classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1976,[27] HFCS began to replace sucrose as the main sweetener of soft drinks in the United States. At the same time, rates of obesity rose. That correlation, in combination with laboratory research and epidemiological studies that suggested a link between consuming large amounts of fructose and changes to various proxy health measures, including elevated blood triglycerides, size and type of low-density lipoproteins, uric acid levels, and weight, raised concerns about health effects of HFCS itself."
Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.9 -
I totally forgot about Koolaid, one packet of tasty powder, 1 cup of sugar in a pitcher of water...the standard beverage for many years because soda was too expensive to drink all the time. The thought of it gags me now.
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ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it. It's dirt cheap because of government subsidies for corn farmers and gets put into literally everything, even things such as bread are ridiculously sweet by international standards. Wikipedia spells out the time frame pretty clearly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup)
"From 1970 to 2000, there was a 25% increase in "added sugars" in the U.S.[26] After being classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1976,[27] HFCS began to replace sucrose as the main sweetener of soft drinks in the United States. At the same time, rates of obesity rose. That correlation, in combination with laboratory research and epidemiological studies that suggested a link between consuming large amounts of fructose and changes to various proxy health measures, including elevated blood triglycerides, size and type of low-density lipoproteins, uric acid levels, and weight, raised concerns about health effects of HFCS itself."
Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.
Go ahead, stand by it. Science says otherwise: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5133084/
Excerpt:There are well established risk factors for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease and considerable overlap amongst these entities when it comes to nutritional practices. For now, we would agree with the assertion in the Dietary Guidelines for American (2010) [136] that overconsumption of calories represents the single greatest health threat to individuals in the United States and elsewhere. This may, in part, be linked to the overall consumption patterns in what has been called the “Western” diet. Certainly, added sugars may be considered as components of this overall diet and, therefore, targets for reduction as are other energy dense components of this nutrition pattern. Singling out added sugars as major or unique culprits for metabolically based diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease appears inconsistent with modern high quality evidence and is very unlikely to yield health benefits. The reduction of these components of the diet without other reductions seems very unlikely to achieve any meaningful results. Perhaps in this situation, we should remember a favorite quotation of President John F. Kennedy who quoted Winston Churchill who, in turn, had paraphrased the philosopher George Santayana by saying “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.9 -
And as far as the scaremongering using HFCS as a bogeyman, HFCS is essentially bio-identical to sucrose as far as the body is concerned:
https://bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/straight-talk-about-high-fructose-corn-syrup-what-it-is-and-what-it-aint-research-review.html/
https://examine.com/nutrition/difference-between-hfcs-and-sugar/
https://examine.com/nutrition/is-hfcs-worse-than-sugar/5 -
ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it.
It's easy. I don't generally consume HFCS, and yet I consume packaged foods.
I'm assuming you don't mean meat, which comes in packages, or vegetables and fruit, which even fresh often do these days. I will also exclude frozen fruit and veg, which make up a good chunk of what I buy in the winter), even though they too are packaged foods, and nuts, which come in packages.
Things I have purchased (just a sampling) that are packaged foods without HFCS
soy milk (milk, of course, and various other non sweetened milk substitutes won't have HFCS)
non sweetened dairy products in general: cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt (flavored yogurts may have HFCS, I suppose, but you can very easily find even those without -- low cal uses artificial sweeteners and the higher quality ones use sugar)
tofu (also tempeh)
note: I didn't get any, but I've looked at packaged non-meat meatballs and so on, and you can definitely find versions easily that don't have HFCS
protein powder (also plenty of protein bars, although I generally don't buy them, and some other not sure how to classify them things like Kind bars)
canned and dry beans
oats
dried pasta (any good dried pasta won't have an added sweetener)
plenty of breads (I don't buy bread, but someone claimed this before and I looked and easily found plain old cheap bread without HFCS, although some have a bit of it)
rice, quinoa, barley, etc.
I don't usually buy but know you can easily find rice pilafs and rice and bean mixes and seasoned rice and quinoa and various grains and so on that do not have HFCS too
canned tomatoes in various forms (you can find pasta sauce without it too, but I never buy that, I make my own pasta sauce as we did in the '80s! (and probably the '70s, I just don't recall))
lots of good quality chocolates and ice cream (sugar in these)
I'm sure various frozen meals, although I don't buy those either. I checked a random Amy's one, and no HFCS. As an aside, the options for frozen meals for someone who cares about calories and nutrition are many, many times better now than they were in the '70s and '80s.
nut butter (some have them, but I like mine to be basically just nuts and never have trouble finding them, certainly no sweeteners in the ones I buy)
coffee and tea
There are many more, of course. I just went through the things I buy regularly with some thoughts for the most commonly mentioned other examples.6 -
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ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
This has 0 to do with HFCS. Soda is not cheaper now; it's actually still quite expensive due to how much is spent on things like marketing, vs. the cost to make it.
It's also not common in MOST families for kids to drink soda with meals, I'd bet (none of my friends would serve soda regularly with meals). But it varies in different subcultures or social circles or whatever. Even now MOST people don't drink huge amounts of soda, but the thing is that the smaller portion who drink a lot of soda drink a whole lot.
The idea that drinking those amounts would be fine if they just drank coke with sugar makes no sense.As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.
I recall it being an occasional treat too, and most of my friends with kids still treat it that way. Are there people who do not? Sure -- cultural change, again, but nothing to do with fast food not being available back then, it was.0 -
bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
This was my experience too. During the day all that was on were soap operas, news and talk shows. And IDK if this was true in cities, but in the rural area where I lived most families watched only one channel regularly because one one would come in clearly without climbing up on the roof to rearrange the antenna.2 -
ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it. It's dirt cheap because of government subsidies for corn farmers and gets put into literally everything, even things such as bread are ridiculously sweet by international standards. Wikipedia spells out the time frame pretty clearly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup)
"From 1970 to 2000, there was a 25% increase in "added sugars" in the U.S.[26] After being classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1976,[27] HFCS began to replace sucrose as the main sweetener of soft drinks in the United States. At the same time, rates of obesity rose. That correlation, in combination with laboratory research and epidemiological studies that suggested a link between consuming large amounts of fructose and changes to various proxy health measures, including elevated blood triglycerides, size and type of low-density lipoproteins, uric acid levels, and weight, raised concerns about health effects of HFCS itself."
Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.
Off the top of my head, I buy bread, salsa, canned beans, soy sauce, mustard, mayo, chutney, miso, rice, canned tomatoes, pasta, frozen vegetables, hummus, guacamole, potato chips, nuts, chocolate chip cookies, soup, and vegan butter that is all HFCS-free. I don't even make an effort to avoid it -- I do buy some foods with it.
Literally any packaged food? No. That's just not true. It's not in literally everything.7 -
Calorie consumption has risen.
Activity levels have fallen - mass car ownership in particular.
the rest is just conservation of energy equations.8 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
This was my experience too. During the day all that was on were soap operas, news and talk shows. And IDK if this was true in cities, but in the rural area where I lived most families watched only one channel regularly because one one would come in clearly without climbing up on the roof to rearrange the antenna.
I don't recall our reception being bad (although I'm sure my standards were different), but the 3-4 channels, most of it being boring most of the time, was indeed my experience. The well-known PBS shows and Saturday cartoons in the morning.2 -
I actually watched a lot of TV when I was a kid in the 70s because we were able to get a channel out of New York City - WNYW, which had a great variety of interesting programs on that were not on the 3 local channels we could get.
There were no soap operas on this channel. It was all syndicated old sit coms and stuff - a non stop barrage of things like: Gilligan's Island, the Ghost & Mrs Muir, Love American Style, The Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch, Lost in Space, The Flying Nun, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith Show, The Flintstones, Looney Tunes, Yogi Bear. - and my favorite favorite, LOST IN SPACE.
I was an only child, lived in the country, no neighbors my age...I had nobody to play with. I did play outside a good deal sometimes, but never doing anything too active except ride my Big Wheel when I was little - and some sledding in the winter till I got too cold and wanted to come in.
So I watched TV. And ate junk food - but I was never overweight until in my late 20's early 30's (post pregnancy). Interesting.0
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