why were people so skinny in the 70s?
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If you wanted to go to your friends house, you walked, rode your bike or roller skated. My mom was constantly shoo-ing us out of the house. "Go get the stink blown off you", she'd say.
My dad was the same, except he would say “Go play in traffic.” That makes him sound like a horrible person, lol!6 -
Because the "low fat" craze wasn't around then. Fat became the enemy in the 80s--sugar became king.9
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janejellyroll wrote: »ZombieKillaPrincess wrote: »More active (no internet/smartphones/video games), less sugar/processed food stuff, more homecooked meals, little to no fast food, oh and drugs lol
I feel like at least some of this is based in our projections of what life was like in the 70s, not what life was actually like in the 70s (my apologies if you actually lived through the era and these are your memories).
Less processed food, little to no fast food . . . I don't know if this describes the 1970s generally, although it may have been the experience of some people then (as it is the experience of some people now).
Yeah, that's my impression.
For an amusing take on food in the '70s, the Supersizers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-AbfqIQreM 2 -
GregElsasser wrote: »Because the "low fat" craze wasn't around then. Fat became the enemy in the 80s--sugar became king.
It was around in the 70's too. We commonly had "ice milk" instead of ice cream. Ice milk was low-fat ice cream. And margarine full of trans fat was also common.3 -
janejellyroll wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Where did people live that there was less processed food and no fast food? Processed food really took off in the 50s after WWII...so did fast food.
My mom did prepare some meals from scratch certainly...but I recall eating a fair amount of mac 'n cheese, hamburger helper, wonder bread, bologna, and cream of whatever condensed soup in numerous "home cooked" meals. My dad was a potato chip fiend...and when he had to feed me because mom was gone, it was usually a slice of wonder bread with beans and weenies on top with a side of chips.
We had more than several McDonalds, Wendy's, A&W, Long John Silvers, Burger King...just to name a few.
My mom was single in the mid to late 70s and she told me that she ate cottage cheese and Tang for breakfast each morning, a peanut butter sandwich on white bread for lunch, and either a sloppy joe or a hot dog for dinner each night. For fruit and vegetables, she says she would sometimes have carrots or an apple but not daily. She didn't get interested in nutrition until she had kids. She also didn't like spending money on food -- her "splurge" was an orange soda.
How could I forget sloppy joes...and Tang.
vegetables growing up were pretty much canned unless we were at grandma's house because she had a big garden...those weird pale canned peas still haunt my dreams...mac 'n cheese, fish sticks, and weird pale peas...
One of my favorites though was tuna and noodle casserole...mom made it with cream of mushroom soup and then put a crust of potato chips on top...for whatever reason I crave that after a day on the slopes...the last time we went skiing we were meeting up with my mom for dinner afterwards and I asked her to make it and she was all...
She's became quite the health nut after my sister and I grew up and left the house...
Oh yeah...let's not forget about Velveeta cheese...I remember the first time I had real cheddar cheese and I was like...WTF is this?4 -
I was a nerdy person who loved to read but to fulfill my addiction I had to bike to the closest book-mobile, which was miles away. And then try to ride back with a HUGE bag of books.
Bored? It was nothing to hop on my bike and just tool around the neighborhood.
My parents took us out for ice cream at least once a week. In the summers we all rode our bikes to the Dairy Queen.
Oh, the bookmobile!
All this is making me nostalgic too.
We also got to buy ice cream if the ice cream man came around.3 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »janejellyroll wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »Where did people live that there was less processed food and no fast food? Processed food really took off in the 50s after WWII...so did fast food.
My mom did prepare some meals from scratch certainly...but I recall eating a fair amount of mac 'n cheese, hamburger helper, wonder bread, bologna, and cream of whatever condensed soup in numerous "home cooked" meals. My dad was a potato chip fiend...and when he had to feed me because mom was gone, it was usually a slice of wonder bread with beans and weenies on top with a side of chips.
We had more than several McDonalds, Wendy's, A&W, Long John Silvers, Burger King...just to name a few.
My mom was single in the mid to late 70s and she told me that she ate cottage cheese and Tang for breakfast each morning, a peanut butter sandwich on white bread for lunch, and either a sloppy joe or a hot dog for dinner each night. For fruit and vegetables, she says she would sometimes have carrots or an apple but not daily. She didn't get interested in nutrition until she had kids. She also didn't like spending money on food -- her "splurge" was an orange soda.
How could I forget sloppy joes...and Tang.
vegetables growing up were pretty much canned unless we were at grandma's house because she had a big garden...those weird pale canned peas still haunt my dreams...mac 'n cheese, fish sticks, and weird pale peas...
One of my favorites though was tuna and noodle casserole...mom made it with cream of mushroom soup and then put a crust of potato chips on top...for whatever reason I crave that after a day on the slopes...the last time we went skiing we were meeting up with my mom for dinner afterwards and I asked her to make it and she was all...
She's became quite the health nut after my sister and I grew up and left the house...
Oh yeah...let's not forget about Velveeta cheese...I remember the first time I had real cheddar cheese and I was like...WTF is this?
Oh, my dad *loved* canned peas. Even when my mom switched to fresher stuff, he would still insist on having them sometimes. He would always get the entire bowl to himself. Nobody else could stand them.
*full body shudder*3 -
My family still drinks Tang- my dad's personal preference is to drink it warm- like hot tea.
You sort of get used to it after the warm grape fruit revulsion over takes you for a half a second.2 -
My family still drinks Tang- my dad's personal preference is to drink it warm- like hot tea.
You sort of get used to it after the warm grape fruit revulsion over takes you for a half a second.
oh man...I didn't know they still made it. I might have to go find some...I wonder if it tastes like I remember...0 -
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.
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I was born in 1972. The convenience foods I can remember eating at home were stuff like Kool-Aid and (kosher) Jell-o. Mom baked a lot from scratch, but we had a stockpile of Sara Lee cakes in the freezer in case of unexpected company. I took Bessy's fruit drinks (flavored sugar water that may or may not have contained trace element of actual juice) to school; other kids had Orangina. My parents didn't give me junk food, nor even cookies as a snack, except for a couple of weeks after Halloween. I got fruit, which I never ate. We made soup from mixes (still do, sometimes). Cake mixes were much rarer and, thinking back, Mom may have used them to ease us kids into the idea of baking. Loads of canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, but we also had a vegetable garden. And I remember a few summers where our neighbors came over and helped us freeze our own green beans.
Mom did bake a bit more and she wasn't concerned with calories, so much as convenience. (She didn't do elaborate layer cakes, but trifles and shortbread cookies made regular appearances. So did her poppyseed cake, which I thought was low-cal because it wasn't overly sweet. Little did I know...) Actually, thinking back, bakery desserts were pretty rare and usually brought by someone else. That changed in my teens when my dad started picking up the bread order for the hospital where he worked (he was the pharmacist at a chronic care hospital) and buying ours at the same time. By then, Mom had gone back to work and didn't have as much time and Dad was paying wholesale rates.
I know we did get occasional TV dinners, but it was rare and they were never that great. Frozen fish sticks were a thing, though.
I think part of it also was that we were strictly kosher and, growing up in Montreal, there weren't that many kosher-certified convenience foods at a reasonable price. That's changed quite a bit in the last 35-odd years.6 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »My family still drinks Tang- my dad's personal preference is to drink it warm- like hot tea.
You sort of get used to it after the warm grape fruit revulsion over takes you for a half a second.
oh man...I didn't know they still made it. I might have to go find some...I wonder if it tastes like I remember...
I don't recommend it. I've stopped tasting stuff I loved as a child because it's never the same and just taints the memory.3 -
I wondered that myself, especially looking back. When I look at celebrities that in those days were considered "fat" they are pretty close to what would be average now: Jackie Gleason, Mama Cass. I was coming of age in the early 70s and I think the food was different. Not as much variety, but real food, grown from non-GMO seeds in healthier soil. We ate in restaurants only on rare occasion, and I did not have pizza until I was about 16. There was a strong trend toward "skinnyness" --- and, yes, there were drugs, but I do not think the drugs explain the thinner physiques of the time. The general level of activity was different for many people for the reasons mentioned above. However, the activity level then depended on the individual, too --- because there are many who walk and bike everywhere and do all kinds of exercise today, but they are not thin. Likewise, there were many sedentary people back then who were. I think the actual components of the food, which is something more than simply the easy gratification and availability, though that is a strong factor. As Michael Pollan points out, today many people have the option and do eat fries 3 times or more a day ... but when you had to make them yourself, it was more of a big deal. If we had chips, potatoes were peeled and they were done in the home deep frier, or wrapped in newspaper from a fish and chips shop. On a tv program I watched recently about the obesity epidemic, a boy of about 8 years old weighing around 200 lbs was featured ... and the narration inferred that it would be of little use for the parents to tell this boy he needed to play outside more and eat more fruits and vegetables and less junk.3
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Cocaine and other drugs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯4
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Sorry to get serious here, but....
In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollen makes the case that we in America have an excess of cheap calories because corn is an extremely energy dense food, and we have an excess of corn because government subsidizes corn so heavily that a farmer who grows corn cannot lose.
He claims that many farmers have plowed up the lawn in front of their houses because it is valuable corn soil.
The book notes that the edges of the grocery store are where the real foods are, the veggies, the meat, the dairy.The center is where the cans, boxes, and processed foods are. All those foods are now cheaper and much more filling and tempting than they once were because they are loaded up with corn, corn syrup, and corn sugar.
Then there are the portions. A Coke in the 70s was 8 ounces -- maybe a can with 12 ounces. We would have been appalled at the idea of a 16 ounce cola, a 20 ounce, etc.
We still usually eat one bagel. But the bagel of today is twice the size of the bagel of yesterday.
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!
Now, back to the comedy....6 -
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.
I won't even touch Pollan's woo about corn. Corn isn't the devil and it's not why our society is dealing with an obesity epidemic. Helps him sell a lot of books, though.15 -
lots of sex - it’s great cardio
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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.
I won't even touch Pollan's woo about corn. Corn isn't the devil and it's not why our society is dealing with an obesity epidemic. Helps him sell a lot of books, though.
There used to be an all you can eat pizza buffet across the street from my high school... my best was 19 slices. The high school kids put the place out of business in 3 years...5 -
crabbybrianna wrote: »If you wanted to go to your friends house, you walked, rode your bike or roller skated. My mom was constantly shoo-ing us out of the house. "Go get the stink blown off you", she'd say.
My dad was the same, except he would say “Go play in traffic.” That makes him sound like a horrible person, lol!
My grandpa used to say "go play on the freeway!!" Gotta love that 70s humor!!
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