How Often Did You Eat Out As A Kid?
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never ate out.
Not popular.0 -
We ate out..probably weekly.. birthday parties were either at someone's house or the beach and it was big..where I grew up..there was no such thing as a cake and ice cream party...everyone was invited and you were fed..alot.
Never saw a cake and ice cream party till I moved stateside..I personally can't do it.. always have food involved.. I stopped having parties at my house cause some people just never left..LOL..0 -
Just about every day. Mostly fast food. If it wasn't that it was something like Ravioli, pancakes, french toast and the like.
My mother stopped working when I was about 16 then we ate at home instead.0 -
My mother was never much of a cook. In fact, pretty much everything we ate came out of a tin or a box. About the only thing I can recall her making regularly from scratch was 'cheese and potato pie', because it was just mashed potatoes and cheese (butter and milk) and then baked in the oven, voila.
Every Sunday would be a trip to the chipper. Generally just chips (and a slice of bread and butter and ketchup) but as we grew older, we'd include battered sausages or deep fried chicken.
I take my kids out to eat a LOT now, and with them growing up in the US whereas I grew up in the UK, things are definitely different. (No mac&cheese for me growing up. Nor peanut butter sandwiches.) I'm trying to cut down, for the sake of our health and wallets!0 -
Growing up in the 70's, dinner out was a rare occasion. Going to Dairy Queen or McDonald's was a treat when Dad was out of town on business. A "TV" dinner, frozen pizza or my personal favorite, a chicken potpie, was saved for when Mom & Dad went out and us kids were left with a baby-sitter. A real "going out to dinner" was reserved to celebrate the end of the school year and good grades. I can still remember getting all dressed up to go to "Steak & Ale" for their huge salad bar and prime rib.0
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We ate out about once a week. Going downtown for Chinese food was our treat every Saturday. Other than that, pretty much never. My mom cooked all of our meals at home. I'm proud to say I'm following in her footsteps.0
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We generally ate out once a week, also on Sunday afternoon on our way to visit my grandmother. It was usually the same local restaurant, but occasionally one of the 2 local fast food places. One was a hamburger joint, the other specialized in hot dogs.
We did, however, have Kentucky Fried Chicken quite a bit at home or at picnics. Our home cooked meals generally included canned or frozen vegetables, especially outside harvest season. Where and when I grew up, the variety of fresh produce that is available now was unheard of. Most of our fruit was wild and local. We ate dessert every day. We ate a lot of sweets actually. And drank a lot of sugary Kool-Aid. And when Hamburger Helper came along, we had that quite often. Frozen or TV dinners were not uncommon either. During the summer there was a lot of fresh food from the garden though. Everything was salted heavily though. Fruit, vegetables, meat. We loved salt.
When I was in high school there was a influx of fast food and Taco Bell and Pizza Hut became the source of more than half my meals. This remained true for a few years until I had children, which wasn't long after high school. Then I began to think more about what we ate. I learned to cook, but we still ate processed foods sometimes, especially cheap things like boxed mac-n-cheese because money was tight. Fast food was expensive so that was only eaten occasionally.
I was never fat or unhealthy during any of that time. I never had a weight problem at all until about age 40. I ate more home prepared meals and more whole natural foods when I gained weight than I probably ever had.
Activity level was the difference.
ETA: Just saw Dairy Queen mentioned in another post. I'd forgotten about that. My aunt owned the local Dairy Queen. They only sold ice cream back then, but we went there a LOT. And always had a freezer full of Dilly Bars.0 -
From age 3 to 20 (1986-2003) I have memories of family meals. My parents both worked part or full-time and I had an older sister. We occasionally had aunts, uncles and cousins living with us (those adults also worked full or part time also).
For a few summers we had a full blown garden. When we didn't we grew peppers, tomatoes, and berries in pots or beds and/or shopped at roadside stands and farmers markets.
Both my parents (and other adults living there) cooked meals. My mom cooked the food that her mom cooked and my dad cooked the food his family cooked. I learned from the three of them and my aunts and uncles. My dad's mom bought her grandchildren cookbooks. My parent's Betty Crocker cookbook doesn't have a cover (and it was last used by me and my dad when I visited last week). We grilled hot dogs and hamburgers (even in snow).
When no one wanted to cook we had canned soup and sandwiches. When I was in HS and later we'd order a salad from the new place on the corner and someone would stop at Sam's and get a rotisserie chicken and baked potatoes from Wendy's.
We ate out at restaurants once or twice a month. Local breakfast place, a mexican place or a buffet. We ordered in Chinese, pizza, fish, ribs, salad, submarine sandwiches, or KFC sometimes (maybe one of those things 3 or 4 times a month). We ate fast food VERY rarely pretty much only during a car trip.
The only meals I remember eating out of a box is Hamburger Helper (which was rare), Swanson TV Dinners (once a month or less when it was me and my sister's night in and parents night out) and Kraft Dinner (for dinner and lunch cooked by my sister or me - not rare).
I did half school lunch, half bagged lunch. When I ate friend's homes food was like it was at home. Birthday parties were cake, sometimes pizza.
I think my food experience was well balanced, except for a lack of portion control and and abundance of poor snack choices (there was always cookies, chips, micro-fries and snack cakes) and the fact that we drank a ton of Kool-Aid and Tang.
Oh and we played outside. A LOT.0 -
We went through phases - sometimes it was three frozen dinners and four restaurant dinners a week, and sometimes it was the other way around. I used to pack lunches for my mom & myself - they were always a sandwich, a granola bar, a couple of cookies, and a piece of fruit. Which isn't as bad as some people I know (my husband's mom used to give him candy bars when he didn't want to eat what she made for dinner), but there's nothing in there that didn't come out of a package. Sandwiches = bologna or tuna fish on Wonderbread, not roasted chicken breast with romaine on artisinal cracked wheat or anything.
My mom still doesn't like to eat food that wasn't prepackaged. The 50s were a weird time to have your nutritional ideas formed.
e.t.a. All that said, I cook most of my family's meals now. Yes, I rely on some prepackaged stuff and we go out more than is really necessary (2-4x/month) but it's not like because I grew up thinking food only came out of boxes that I still choose that now as an adult.0 -
I remember eating out a lot. But, my parents still do.
When we did eat meals at home it was usually frozen lasagnas, some kind of meat pie etc.
I think part of that is what propelled me into wanting to cook so much...I loved playing in the kitchen, still do.
Now that I'm a mom, I do my best to provide wholesome meals as much as I can. For their lunches I always pack yogurt, cheese, a fruit, a veggie, and a sandwich (either turkey or ham) on whole wheat bread. For a "treat" for lunch they will get pretzels, or jello, or fruit snacks.0 -
Growing up my momma cooked (and she always had plenty for guest...so we always had people over LOL)
As I got older Sunday's after church we would go out to dinner, country cooking type place that had lots of veggies, chicken fried steak, real mashed tators & fresh dinner rolls.
When I got out on my own I did grab fast food more often (I think because it was easier to get by then) When my kids were younger I cooked at home almost daily, Friday nights we'd eat out or order pizza, but then my kids got older and I was running from cheer & gymnastics practice to baseball games...so eating out became a regular thing.
Sadly now we eat out 3-4 times a week!0 -
Didn't read the other posts, but growing up I was an especially picky eater. I never liked what my elementary school had in their lunch menu and so my parents would buy fast food for me and my sister for lunch everyday. Breakfast and Dinner were always homemade though.
I wouldn't say that kind of lifestyle affected my weight. I was never over (my desired) weight until 3 years ago. So I dunno. I have amazing parents that support my venture into weight loss and healthy eating, I've never faulted them for giving my sister and I fast food everyday.0 -
I didn't get fast food when we were out very often because my mom didn't really believe in it for kids. We had delivery pizza on Friday nights but in reasonable amounts. And we went out for a nice dinner about once a month. My parents and I weren't overweight at any point in my childhood, but my mom is a good cook and a great believer in vegetables and fruit. She also only let me have sugary drinks at birthday parties, never just at home. My parents were always good with moderation, in my opinion.0
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Almost never. My family didn't believe in it.0
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I could probably count on my fingers the number of times I ate out as a kid. It's just not something we did.0
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Interesting. It does appear that the article is somewhat right, that people are increasingly going out more and cooking less for their kids than they did in the past. We lived in an area that adopted things quickly, so even in the 60's there were lots of fast food places, but we didn't go to them. My mother made most of the meals, no microwave, rarely TV dinners.
The younger the people the better chance that they ate outside of the house a lot as children. However there seems to be quite a few people that this isn't true for.
Also, though it does seem to affect childhood obesity, there also seems to be quite a few people like me who had good examples as children, but didn't follow them as adults, to my regret now.0 -
My mother cooked almost everything from scratch. We rarely ate out, and there wasn't a lot of "convenience" foods. I wasn't quite as good with my kids, but it got much better when I married my current husband. Almost everything we cook now is whole foods.0
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EAT OUT?!?!?! hahahah.. wait, was this joke already made?0
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never, and we never do as adults either.0
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Reading this article:
http://news.yahoo.com/youll-gladly-die-children-why-wont-cook-them-155639748.html
got me to thinking. I was just wondering what your experiences were. Not judging tghem good or bad, just what were they? Is the writer of the article correct with the trends she says?
My experience as a child, age infant to 14 years. As a family we ate out once a week for Sunday lunch. It was always a kid friendly place, sometimes fast food, sometimes Friendlys or similar where we could have ice cream sundaes, or sometimes a pancake house.
Other than that all meals were at home. Breakfast was sometimes cereal, sometimes scrambled or poached eggs and toast, and on Saturday morning my Dad made pancakes. Lunch was a sandwich with pretzels or fruit or leftovers if it was a weekend. You had to bring your lunch to school and we ate in the gymnasium. We generally had sit down dinners, but not everyone was present all the time due to afternoon or evening activities, so food was kept warm on the stove until after everyone had eaten.
Birthday parties were held in people's houses or backyards or both and usually were just cake as far as food, but occasionally they involved hamburgers and/or hotdogs on the grill during warmer months and pizza during the winter ones.
What were your experiences?
Saturday evening: Cocktail and dinner ~ Family night out with the parents.
Sunday morning after 7am Mass: Family Sunday Brunch venue ~ Family tradition for years before us at an Immigrant family friend's restaurant whose parents were my late maternal grandparents' students and whose sons were students of my parents.0 -
No more than once or twice a month.0
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interesting read0
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It was a rare thing for me growing up and still is. Going out to eat when i was a kid usually meant that it was a very special occasion...my parents struggled just to put food on the table let alone go out and have it served to us. One exception was that my dad always took me out to breakfast once per month to our favorite greasy spoon diner. Those were good times indeed and I remember almost every one of those Saturday mornings.0
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We seldom ate out... when we did it was at a decent restaurant, no fast food.0
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almost never.0
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A couple of times a month, it would be on a Sunday after church. We typically ate at Shoneys and got the salad bar.
Where I grew up there was no such thing as fast food since we had to drive a half hour to get it.
My parents also grew a great deal of our food and canned it.
Dang it, my parents were not as awful as I thought they were.
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We didn't really eat out as children. My mum didn't work while we were young and we had a big house so my dad worked loads to pay for that. We went to France on holidays and went self-catering. When my mum went back to work, when I was about 14, that's when we'd sometimes go out for a meal. We never, ever went to McDonald's or similar, and never had a take-away. My first ever take-away was age 20 with my housemates at university.
Now I don't eat out a lot as I have young kids. We do have lunch out sometimes, and go to coffee shops quite a bit. My kids have no idea what McDonald's is, but they know Starbucks, Costa and Caffe Nero!
We used to have birthday parties at home or we'd rent a hall somewhere and provide our own food. That's what I'll do for my kids when they get to the age when they want to invite friends. At the moment we just keep it to family. I always make their birthday cakes myself too.0 -
I am an 80s-90s child and we went out to eat probably 1-2 times a week growing up. The other days my mom would cook, meat, starch, vegetable and I had to drink my milk. From that upbringing I still enjoy dining in restaurants when possible but I really love cooking and learning as much as I can about food. My mom always said she hated cooking and was bad at it, I don't know why but I definitely love to cook and will if I ever have a family.0
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Never, ever ate out as a kid. Always looked forward to taking the horses down to the states for rodeos so we could get Waffle House and Outback.... ohhh man. It was a treat, and I still think of it that way.
Plus my hubby says the only reason he EVER agrees to go to a restaurant is to give me a break, not because the food is any better. Good man, but he's right.
I rock that kitchen like it ain't no thang. But like anything if you take pride in it and try, you will get better.
Also loving the comments on kids birthdays, honestly if you can't throw on a pack of weenies, blow up some balloons, and invite people to your home I really don't know what you are doing with your life 0
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