why were people so skinny in the 70s?

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  • Aydens1nana
    Aydens1nana Posts: 4 Member
    I remember going to McDonalds about once a month. To the best of my recollection we could order hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, soda, and milkshake. My father would always have one hamburger and he would split the fries with mom. Now we have a triple bacon cheeseburger with super sized fries and soda.
  • kellyjellybellyjelly
    kellyjellybellyjelly Posts: 9,480 Member
    http://www.auburnjournal.com/article/5/03/18/junk-food-joe-golden-state-killer-suspect-deangelos-auburn-police-days-recalled
  • layladrew26
    layladrew26 Posts: 111 Member
    I was born in 1973. I used to always play out after school, climbing trees etc. as there weren't any gaming console's or tablets/smart phones. We used to walk everywhere too.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited May 2018
    Almost all of my friends (kids) in the 70s and 80s ate cereal for breakfast, often sugary cereal. I did not, because I have always hated cold cereal (occasionally I'd be forced to choke it down after spending the night since it was polite to eat what was provided, of course). My sister also ate it, she particularly loved Apple Jacks. None of us thought sugary cereal was particularly healthy, kids ate it because they thought it tasted good and I assume parents thought it was easy (I started getting my own breakfast from an early age due to the anti cereal thing -- I did like plain oats with fruit, although I mostly liked eggs).

    For a special treat we got to eat frozen waffles, and on the weekend sometimes we'd have a family breakfast with pancakes and bacon.

    None of my family or friends were fat then, and fat kids were pretty rare.

    My sister who loved Apple Jacks has basically no sweet tooth at all now, and has never been close to overweight.

    So no, I don't think eating cereal made people fat.
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    Sarahb29 wrote: »
    Does this answer your question?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakfast_cereal
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_Association

    Cereals, large portions etc were heavily marketed back then & throughout the 90s as being "healthy" or "part of a healthy breakfast". If you wanted to be healthy, you ate cereal.

    Which, ironically, made you fatter because the portion sizes for 1 serving was not enough to keep anyone full and it was basically dessert.

    The Sugar Association is a nasty beast if you want to do some digging into what they've done.

    So I guess your point is it takes 40 years for sugar to make you fat???

    I ate tons of Frosted Flakes, Apple Jacks, and frozen Cinnamon French Toast in the 70s and I was a little string bean. I didn't eat any sugary cereal in my 30s when I gained weight. :neutral:
  • jseams1234
    jseams1234 Posts: 1,219 Member
    Hah. I was skinny in the 70's because the only time I ate was when my parents forced me inside for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Otherwise I was running around with a mob of my friends looking for trouble. Snacking was typically just begging for a quarter from my mother so I could buy a frozen Kool-Aid cup from a neighbor during the summer.
  • Snowflake1968
    Snowflake1968 Posts: 6,978 Member
    ToFatT0B3S1ck wrote: »
    ...Drugs.

    LOL that was my first thought too
  • Snowflake1968
    Snowflake1968 Posts: 6,978 Member
    beaches222 wrote: »
    People had gardens and grew much of there own food and kids played outside constantly. Now days you have to make your kids go outside. It wasn't much eating out like people do now and it definitely wasn't any SUPER SIZE IT. LOL

    Listening to complaints from the young mothers in my life, so many people disagree with children being outside playing now without adult supervision 100% of the time. I think it causes fear of CPS being called with parents that want to raise their kids "the old fashioned way" and send their kids outside.

    I 100% agree with the food, we got to eat out as a treat maybe once a month or so and even then it was a sit down restaurant, not fast food so the food was always "homecooked" style. The area I'm from only got it's first fast food place in 1997. We did have in the summer, drive up canteens but again, all fresh never frozen except the fries. Headquarters of McCain's was close by.
  • Snowflake1968
    Snowflake1968 Posts: 6,978 Member
    ChrisM32205 wrote: »
    Disco for sure :), and like the OP said no computers or "screens" other than a TV.... and not as many people had Cable TV, so you spent less time in front of the TV.

    No remotes, you had to get up to change the station too
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    cocaine
  • ccsernica
    ccsernica Posts: 1,040 Member
    lorib642 wrote: »
    were they? I remember obese people in the 70s.

    Population data is absolutely clear, yes. We can't trust our memories with things like this, because we judge things like sizes in a relative way, not absolutely. While there certainly were obese people back then, there were nowhere near as many as we have now.

    https://stateofobesity.org/obesity-rates-trends-overview/
  • L1zardQueen
    L1zardQueen Posts: 8,753 Member
    milocamolly wrote: »
    Portion sizes were much smaller

    GMO food didn’t exist back then either

    GMO? What? Have you ever seen a wild cucumber or artichoke?
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,563 Member
    L1zardQueen wrote: »
    milocamolly wrote: »
    Portion sizes were much smaller

    GMO food didn’t exist back then either

    GMO? What? Have you ever seen a wild cucumber or artichoke?

    jinx
  • salleymo
    salleymo Posts: 50 Member
    Cocaine and they danced a lot. Disco!!
  • grinning_chick
    grinning_chick Posts: 765 Member
    edited May 2018
    salleymo wrote: »
    Cocaine and they danced a lot. Disco!!
    :thumbs up:

    Why were people skinnier 40 years ago? Not about to check 44 pages or responses to make sure I don't double-post it:

    Well, for some because they (the medical establishment) were still handing out amphetamine (and diuretic, and laxative, and thyroid hormone) based "rainbow diet pills" as well as downers for them so they could sleep to the housewives like they were PEZ...

    Plus smoking cigarettes. Everyone was still smoking them with wild abandon in the 70s. There's an appetite suppressant/metabolic booster, too. Along with all that caffeinated black coffee.

    2sk87jch37xr.jpg
  • 2aycocks
    2aycocks Posts: 415 Member
    I was a teen in the 70's. My mother cooked and we ate at home. She didn't fix prepacked food for convenience and it was meat and vegetables. And whatever she fixed, you ate it or did without.
    Eating out was a treat and it was RARELY crap. Kids were outside running and playing instead of sitting inside playing video games. We didn't keep colas or sugar drinks at home. You got milk or water. We didn't keep sweets all the time either, except Nilla Wafers. My Mother worked a lot of that time but managed to get everything done and cook good meals. I don't know how she did it all.
  • Momepro
    Momepro Posts: 1,509 Member
    TV dinners were actually very popular, with some families eating them almost nightly. Interestingly the TV dinner was invented in 1953, and American obesity rates started rising steadily from the 50's to the present time. There is a pretty good jump between the 90's and 2000's, probably due to abundance of computer and game systems becoming so much less expensive, while both parents are working out of tbe home more often, leaving bored kids who aren't allowed outside to avoid kidnapping or worse, having CPS called on them, so spend thier time online.


    https://infogram.com/us-adult-obesity-rates-since-1960-1gzxop49on65mwy

    https://stateofobesity.org/obesity-rates-trends-overview/


    http://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/html/10.11648.j.ajns.20150404.19.html

  • frankiesgirlie
    frankiesgirlie Posts: 669 Member
    I ate plenty of sugar growing up in the 60s and 70s. We drank kool aid and sunny d everyday. Meals were less convenience foods, so most everything was cooked from scratch, but I grew up in the south, so we ate a lot of fried chicken and biscuits with gravy. A LOT of potatoes. A LOT of butter. Health wasn’t a consideration other than a dinner having a meat, a starch ( that’s what we called carbs back in the day) LOL, and a vegetable.
    But, we never sat still. We came home from school , had a snack while we did our homework, and then we were outside running or biking around the neighborhood with our friends until the street lights came on. Oh, and I don’t know about anybody else, but I had 2 working parents so we had household and yard chores everyday. Computers, cell phones, and 1000 channels on tv are what have made us fat. Not sugar. Not corn syrup. Just too much food for such a huge lack of activity. Obese kids were not the norm but the exception back then.
  • frankiesgirlie
    frankiesgirlie Posts: 669 Member
    Also forgot. There was one car in the family. We walked to school and home. We walked or biked everywhere.
  • mutantspicy
    mutantspicy Posts: 624 Member
    Cocaine!
  • NovusDies
    NovusDies Posts: 8,940 Member
    I see a lot of people mentioning playing outside. As a child of the 70's all of that outside playing didn't keep me from gaining weight as an adult it only kept me more fit then. I don't doubt it is a factor in childhood obesity today but if the adults were thinner you'd have to look at their eating and activity.
  • doittoitgirl
    doittoitgirl Posts: 157 Member
    I don't think the Cafeteria Effect was in full swing yet. Also coke. And more exercise.
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