why were people so skinny in the 70s?

LOTS OF DRUGS

I agree - I keep hearing about all the overweight kids but I don't see it much myself. I have 4 kids ranging in age from 4 to 20 so I see lots of children of all ages and I don't find that they are very heavy at all. There is maybe 1 or 2 "fat" kids in each class that I notice. This is about the same as when I was their ages. None of my kids had an issue with being overweight... they did have issues with being underweight but we work on that. I also find that they have lots of very positive physical activity at their schools and much better playgrounds than we did when we were their age. Gym class and recess seem to be much more positive experiences for my kids than it was for me growing up in the 70's. - this is the positive side of more supervision and more organized activities. There are pros and cons to it really.

There are lots of fat kids. When we lived in FL my kids were called the skinny kids because most were overweight or obese. And I've had an 8 year old patient who was 186lbs and mom was proud. It's poor parenting. Now we live in Denver,Co the healthiest state and aren't as many.

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.

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.

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.

Disco baby! People were out dancing and shaking their groove thang (and doing other things at the club lol) and not on the computers and phones all day and night.

I was a kid in the 70's, and I remember eating plenty of processed foods, along with sugar, simple carbs and high fat foods. I remember bringing chips and twinkies in my lunch, along with my old school PB&J (on white bread) and a grape soda. We had popcorn with butter every Sunday night for supper, and sugary cereal for breakfast (with whole milk). We ate a lot of hamburger meat, tuna from a can, and Spam was a pretty common occurrence. No one had heard of low fat food.

My Mom did try to make us eat healthy by sneaking bell peppers into everything (I can't eat them to this day), but other than that our veggies came out of a can. Basically, we ate everything that we consider 'bad' today. I'm by no means saying we should go back to this way of eating, just that this is what I remember, and none of us were overweight.

We were definitely more active than most people are now. There was only so much you could watch on TV those days, and most families only had the one. I remember spending a lot of time walking around the neighborhood with my friends after supper.

So what's the answer? We ate a bunch of crap but were less sedentary? I don't know, but I suspect it's probably far more complex than that.

I was a kid in the 70's, and I remember eating plenty of processed foods, along with sugar, simple carbs and high fat foods. I remember bringing chips and twinkies in my lunch, along with my old school PB&J (on white bread) and a grape soda. We had popcorn with butter every Sunday night for supper, and sugary cereal for breakfast (with whole milk). We ate a lot of hamburger meat, tuna from a can, and Spam was a pretty common occurrence. No one had heard of low fat food.

My Mom did try to make us eat healthy by sneaking bell peppers into everything (I can't eat them to this day), but other than that our veggies came out of a can. Basically, we ate everything that we consider 'bad' today. I'm by no means saying we should go back to this way of eating, just that this is what I remember, and none of us were overweight.

We were definitely more active than most people are now. There was only so much you could watch on TV those days, and most families only had the one. I remember spending a lot of time walking around the neighborhood with my friends after supper.

So what's the answer? We ate a bunch of crap but were less sedentary? I don't know, but I suspect it's probably far more complex than that.

I was a kid in the 70's myself. we had fast food & junk food/pizza/soda....all that stuff however I think it was because we were more active outside than todays generation. Kids played more outside back then then they do today, back then we didnt have Xbox or smart phones. Nowadays we can't even use the "I couldnt find a payphone" excuse when coming home late...

Disco, cocaine, peer pressure, tight fitting low cut fashions, super thin post-twiggy models, post World War II parents, fast food was a new trend (it was a treat and not an every day thing), kids would be bicycle riding, playing basketball, or just playing outside almost every day after school, only a few TV channels and no videos, no video games (unless you count pong and space invaders) , no internet besides very basic message boards, and the President's physical fitness test that all students were forced to take publicly and we're ranked in amongst their peers.

They may have been the continuation of the free love days, but there were still lots of social pressures for both drop outs and mainstream people to keep up their physical appearances in their peer groups. And most people were a lot more active than people today. Overweight people were often stigmatized and left out of a lot of social circles. Unlike today with high obesity rates with overweight people in almost all social circles, being fat in those days made you the one fat kid or heavy person in a crowd. There were still overweight people and even obese people, but it was a lot harder to fit in and being overweight was definitely not the norm like is is in so many communities today.

They ate (real) food and moved some.

yes, we ate some frozen foods, but even then, NOTHING compared to today.

Because back in the ancient history of the 1970s, prehistoric man ate like the Paleo diet.

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.