When did junk food/sweets/fast food stop being just an occasional treat?
Options
Replies
-
Remember this crap?
My mom would buy this namely because it was cheaper than actual bacon...bleh! Every friggin' Saturday morning...at least my dad knew how to fry up some eggs and potatoes though...and I got to wear spider man underoos...
4 -
French_Peasant wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »jessiferrrb wrote: »cwolfman13 wrote: »On the other hand, I liked going to friends houses because it seemed like they always had "the goods"...sleep overs and Fruit Loops for breakfast, etc. One of my dad's really good friends was pretty well to do and they ate out frequently...I was always a little jealous. We only ever ate out on Sunday after church.
yaasss! going to kids houses that had poptarts was amazing! or just going to houses where they had free range to access the fridge. my mom would always monitor access to food and i felt like it was so cool when kids could make their own food decisions. except for my one friend who used to eat raw cheese filled hotdogs out of the fridge after school.
Yeah, my mom never bought stuff like that. I can remember grocery shopping and I'd beg and plead for something besides oatmeal or cheerios..."like please can I have Lucky Charms fecking once before I die?"
My pops had a bit of an affinity for chocolate doughnuts though...so he'd sneak me one here and there.
I think alot of us were separated at birth.
My folks were always waiting on the next depression to happen, so while they made middle class incomes, they were incredibly frugal and saved ~60% of their income (not exaggerating). I grew up with off brand generics like Oatey O's, bags of puffed rice and the cheapest foods in bulk imaginable. Pops was definitely the target demographic of Sams Club.
Sleep overs were a blessing - Sodas! Name brand Sugar Frosted Bomb Flakes! Brand name Kool-Aid (not Wylers) with a full cup of sugar! Oh sweet joy!
On rare occasions if I worked enough to earn my keep Pop would bring home a 2L of red cream soda.
I see much of this a trade off with quality time over convenience.
I think I'm related to you guys too! Oatmeal and eggs, when the glories of Capn' Crunch exist?!
And yep, eating out once a week, after church, unless we were visiting family (my grandma pickled EVERY damn thing!)
This hits me funny, on a completely unrelated point, because we were specifically NOT allowed to go out to eat after church. We were discouraged by our pastor from normalizing the practice of working on Sundays.2 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »If I had to put an approximate time to the period when the variety & ubiquity of fast foods, snack foods & prepared foods really started to explode during my life, I'd guess mid to late 1960s.
It was pretty much in full swing by the time I was in college in the mid 1970s, though of course it did and still does continue to evolve.
Like I said, I'm 47, and I recall there being fast foods and prepared foods like TV dinners and things like poptarts, frozen waffles, candy, frozen treats, Oreos, chips, Ding Dongs, on and on, being easily available when I was a kid (1970s and 1980). I do recall them being kind of rarer, though: I don't think fast food was harder to get to, but people had it as a treat, not multiple times a week. Like I said, the stats I've seen do suggest that people eat it more now, but not because it wasn't available before. Perhaps the same with the snacky stuff (I recall mainly eating it in summers sometimes, as a snack, frozen waffles as a part of a weekend breakfast sometimes (although more often we'd have pancakes from Bisquick). I think the amounts eaten were smaller (and chips were a side with sandwiches, not a snack to have outside of mealtime). We'd have a post school snack, and not eat that stuff at school (it wasn't available to my memory). But of course how much you had it depended on parents, since I don't recall ever going to the store and buying food with my own money (as a teen we went to get dinner/lunch together sometimes, but I still don't recall buying snacks).
TV dinners were for when my parents went out.
I think it would be really interesting to do a walk-thru of a circa 1975 grocery store as compared to today. Yesterday when I went to the store, the entire front wall (40 ft?) was lined with Little Debbies, Doritos, & chips. Across from that was a sizable section of Easter candy. Then the produce dept (with displays of caramel wraps to wrap your apples in, and cakes to put your fruit on). Every end cap had crackers, cakes, etc. And the pop has its own aisle & actually overflows into a center island in the canned goods, presumably because they have such a hard time keeping it stocked. Half the frozen section is ice cream, frozen treats, and frozen pizza. I really don't remember it being like that when I used to go grocery shopping with my mom. This is a pretty small store by today's standards, mind you, and very similar to the size of the one my mom shopped in (in a Midwest, but urban, area). I had to really hunt for the boxes of animal crackers she would sometimes let me get.
It's going to depend on the store, however.
I suspect that if you compared the two you'd find a LOT more now, both "healthy" and not.
For example, I walk into my store in the produce section (this is the mainstream grocery--Jewel--not a WF). There is a lot more available there than I think was in 1980, especially at this time of year. There's also a ton of convenience products: bagged greens of every variety, pre chopped mushrooms, numerous pre chopped fruits and veg. Also a variety of things we did not have -- tofu, seitan, tempeh. (My dad heard about tofu in the early '80s and decided we should try it. He had no clue how to cook it, we all hated it, as it was cooked stupidly, and made fun of him for ages. Most people I went to school with wouldn't have known what it was.)
Moving left we have a huge salad bar (not sure when they were added, but I think around the time I was in college from what I recall), lots of prepared foods (including some pretty decent things from a health perspective) and a deli (I'm sure it is more elaborate), sushi (something we would not have had in the grocery store in '80), the "fancy" cheese section (nothing to write home about compared to the WF, but a lot more than in '80), and a variety of baked goods. I think there's more there too, and I also don't recall ever getting bakery stuff at the grocery store as a kid, but then I never did as an adult either and was kind of shocked that people do -- I mean, I knew they must, it's there, but I always assumed the cakes and so on wouldn't be any good.
Moving on, there's a kosher section, which we didn't have, a fish section (more than we would have had), a long meat section (more than we would have had, but not as different, I don't think). Then (staying along the wall) a huge soda section with a lot more selections, but there was plenty of soda in '80s, I am sure. Then a eggs (a lot more options and things like "organic" and "free range"), nut milks (if they had them in '80 I was unaware), fresh pasta type things (again, not aware of that being there then), cookie dough (dunno), dairy (many, many more options of yogurts and so on). The end part of this store is drug store stuff, so skip over it, except that there are protein bars and powders here.
Now we are in frozen goods, and it has the same basic things but more options of everything, both "healthy" and "unhealthy." One thing I do know is that there are much better selections of frozen meals and stuff to add to make a meal -- I'm snobby about that stuff and generally don't buy it, but my mother (who has always hated to cook, although she did nightly when I was a kid) uses lots of it now. Some of it probably is poor from a nutritional perspective, but a lot of it is fine and makes life easier for many.
Then what? A holiday section, not too large. Has Passover and Easter stuff now. Various canned and boxed stuff (I tend to go to what I want vs. wandering, so can't compare these sections that well, but I think the variety again is much greater, both with the so called healthy stuff and non healthy stuff AND there's much more stuff that is in special "healthy/organic" kinds of aisles, as well as more stuff that would have been considered "ethnic" back in the day, and was harder to find. Big bins of dried stuff -- probably there before. A greater selection of oats and flours and so on, again many appealing to people who want whole grain or almond flour. Boxes of nut and soymilks and rice milk (the non chilled kind here).
So the main thing is that there is a lot more. I don't think a higher percentage is so-called junk food or whatever. The chips and candy selections seem about the same except there aren't candies at the check out like there used to be.
Definitely the greater variety includes prepackaged meals and sweets and so on, but it also includes many things that would be considered stereotypically healthy.
The top floor has alcohol only and there I know the selection is WAY better than there would have been at a grocery when I was a kid (although it would have been in a separate liquor store attached). I suspect part of this is the particular customer base, as well as a wider selection of beers and wines and other alcohols being commonly available, but it falls along the same pattern.
Oh, this is also a smaller than average (since urban) midwestern grocery store. It's a roughly a half mile from a WF and TJs and most who go there probably also do some shopping at those stores.1 -
I think our age difference, 47 to 61, is just enough difference to make a difference.lemurcat12 wrote: »If I had to put an approximate time to the period when the variety & ubiquity of fast foods, snack foods & prepared foods really started to explode during my life, I'd guess mid to late 1960s.
It was pretty much in full swing by the time I was in college in the mid 1970s, though of course it did and still does continue to evolve.
Like I said, I'm 47, and I recall there being fast foods and prepared foods like TV dinners and things like poptarts, frozen waffles, candy, frozen treats, Oreos, chips, Ding Dongs, on and on, being easily available when I was a kid (1970s and 1980). I do recall them being kind of rarer, though: I don't think fast food was harder to get to, but people had it as a treat, not multiple times a week. Like I said, the stats I've seen do suggest that people eat it more now, but not because it wasn't available before. Perhaps the same with the snacky stuff (I recall mainly eating it in summers sometimes, as a snack, frozen waffles as a part of a weekend breakfast sometimes (although more often we'd have pancakes from Bisquick). I think the amounts eaten were smaller (and chips were a side with sandwiches, not a snack to have outside of mealtime). We'd have a post school snack, and not eat that stuff at school (it wasn't available to my memory). But of course how much you had it depended on parents, since I don't recall ever going to the store and buying food with my own money (as a teen we went to get dinner/lunch together sometimes, but I still don't recall buying snacks).
TV dinners were for when my parents went out.
I'm a passenger on a car ride from MI to NJ and kinda bored, so I looked a few things up.
Pop-tarts came out in 1964. Hostess brand took Ding Dongs national in 1967, though they'd been a regional treat earlier. Eggo frozen waffles were distributed nationally in 1953.
Tortilla chips moved from a regional thing to national popularity in the 1970s, competing with earlier corn chips (Frito-Lay brought out Fritos in 1959).
McDonalds, arguably the first national chain fast food (as opposed to short order), began franchising in the mid-1950s, but wasn't really widespread until the 1960s.
Candy & frozen treats have been around far longer, obviously, though variety and ubiquity have burgeoned. Treats in general have existed as long as humans, but prior to the 20th century were much more constrained by locale, season, and wealth, of course, at least in the US.
Interesting!0 -
To the OP's point, I was raised in the southern midwest in the 80s. We ate most meals at home but there were plenty of sugary breakfast cereals and such, and we usually had ice cream in the freezer. My grandma made cookies a lot, and homemade bread (which I miss a lot more than the cookies-- she burned those every time). My parents had a garden so we ate seasonal vegetables. My dad was a meat cutter so we ate a lot of slightly out of date meat. Hamburger helper was a regular thing-- which is something I have not carried over into adulthood. We didn't go out to eat very often, mostly because there weren't many good restaurants in my town.0
-
ILiftHeavyAcrylics wrote: »To the OP's point, I was raised in the southern midwest in the 80s. We ate most meals at home but there were plenty of sugary breakfast cereals and such, and we usually had ice cream in the freezer. My grandma made cookies a lot, and homemade bread (which I miss a lot more than the cookies-- she burned those every time). My parents had a garden so we ate seasonal vegetables. My dad was a meat cutter so we ate a lot of slightly out of date meat. Hamburger helper was a regular thing-- which is something I have no carried over into adulthood. We didn't go out to eat very often, mostly because there weren't many good restaurants in my town.
Oh man...hamburger helper...that brings back more bad memories...2 -
Since everyone seems curious...I grew up in a relatively small town in Montana with older parents and a dad who owned a local grocery store and I lived in relatively the same environment (not with my parents but in the same area) until I graduated college...than I moved to a major city out of state. I've lived in this big city five years and I think I just experienced a lot of culture shock because city life is way different than country life. And way more aspects than just food, I can tell you that much.
But my experience and the experience of most of my friends and family but I grew up with and was around was what I described. All through my time in elementary school middle school and high school I don't really remember there being that many overweight kids. There were one or two that I can remember specifically but everybody I grew up with was relatively physically active. Now maybe the fact that I grew up in a small town and had more access to "real" food skewed things a little...that's possible. My parents were also always more old fashioned because...you know, they were old
I think a better question I could have asked is why different people categorize food different ways or feel more emotional towards food than others, but that's a whole different discussion I think...0 -
the only answer i can give is because we are all different
you will be surprised what some people think is normal in one house hold but not in others
2 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »bienemajamfp wrote: »Growing up in the 70's and 80's we never ate fast food. Didn't exist. Homecooking every day. Every now and then some chocolate or pudding. Even today I don't care for sugary stuff. Fast food like MC Donalds Burgers etc. is IMO disgusting. Guess how ever you grow up.
What do you mean it didn't exist? Of course it did.
Sorry. I meant where I lived in Germany, we got the first Mc Donald's sometime late 80's in my hometown, then later in the 90's a lot more Fast Food Restaurants popped up unfortunately.1 -
Maybe it's an age thing. I'm 61 and (talking to OP here)my experience is similar. I'm in the UK and the only fast food available in the 50s/60s was from the fish and chip van. We did have sweets,chocolate etc in the house but were only allowed them after meals. One thing I do remember is that my mum ALWAYS made a pudding/dessert - I mean a "proper "one,not just ice cream etc. As I recall,it was similar in my friends' houses. But I don't know if we were typical. Because another feature of my childhood is that we didn't have a TV so I wasn't exposed to much advertising.
Edit: does anyone from the uk remember Wimpy restaurants? And the excitement when McDonald's finally arrived here ? 0 -
comptonelizabeth wrote: »Maybe it's an age thing. I'm 61 and (talking to OP here)my experience is similar. I'm in the UK and the only fast food available in the 50s/60s was from the fish and chip van. We did have sweets,chocolate etc in the house but were only allowed them after meals. One thing I do remember is that my mum ALWAYS made a pudding/dessert - I mean a "proper "one,not just ice cream etc. As I recall,it was similar in my friends' houses. But I don't know if we were typical. Because another feature of my childhood is that we didn't have a TV so I wasn't exposed to much advertising.
Edit: does anyone from the uk remember Wimpy restaurants? And the excitement when McDonald's finally arrived here ?
As said earlier in the thread... OP is in her 20s.0 -
Chef_Barbell wrote: »comptonelizabeth wrote: »Maybe it's an age thing. I'm 61 and (talking to OP here)my experience is similar. I'm in the UK and the only fast food available in the 50s/60s was from the fish and chip van. We did have sweets,chocolate etc in the house but were only allowed them after meals. One thing I do remember is that my mum ALWAYS made a pudding/dessert - I mean a "proper "one,not just ice cream etc. As I recall,it was similar in my friends' houses. But I don't know if we were typical. Because another feature of my childhood is that we didn't have a TV so I wasn't exposed to much advertising.
Edit: does anyone from the uk remember Wimpy restaurants? And the excitement when McDonald's finally arrived here ?
As said earlier in the thread... OP is in her 20s.
I'm just giving my experience. But yeah- maybe age has little to do with it.0 -
My father, who was also fat, required dessert every night. In later years he also expected it for lunch although that was usually fruit. My mother was a wonderful cook and made healthy meals. But I got my sweet tooth from my father and I still battle against it every day. I still feel like I should have dessert every night. It's ridiculous.0
-
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »I grew up in the 60's and 70's. We had sweets every day. There was never a time that there wasn't a homemade cake or pie or cookies available. And we always had ice cream or ice milk (what low-fat ice cream was labeled back then) in the house. We drank Kool-Aid a lot too. And we almost always had sugary cereal for breakfast.
We had these things daily, but other than breakfast cereal they weren't meals. They were dessert and you didn't get them if you didn't finish your meal, which was usually meat, potatoes and a vegetable.
There wasn't much fast food in our area when I was young other then KFC and that was real treat usually saved for special Sunday dinners.
This could me be talking. My life was exactly like this. My mother was a wonderful cook and did an incredible job feeding 7 people on my father's income. She made bread and there was always cookies, ice cream or cake. I just never learned to develop an off switch when it came to sweets.1 -
Chef_Barbell wrote: »Chef_Barbell wrote: »I think how people eat is their own personal business.
Totally respect that and I'm not advocating one way or another.
I'm just wondering why attitudes towards sweets and fast food have changed, or why people view them so much differently.
That is your personal experience. I am sure there were families that ate sweets regularly while you were growing up.
Oh of course I'm not saying there weren't. I guess it's just interesting how different peoples attitude and thoughts about food Are. And I think peoples attitudes towards food probably stems from how they were raised and the household attitude they were raised in. It's interesting to me because until I started talking to people in my personal life about the food and started reading discussions on here, I never realized that food was such an emotional, personal issue to people.
Not saying that's a bad thing, just an observation.
I grew up in a household like yours. No eating out or order in unless it was for special occasions, same with sweets and junk food. When I branched out on my own, I didn't have the exact same mentality, I was more, I can eat what I want when I want. Now I am here and learning to balance. One can be raised in a home where junk food was every meal, every day, but grow up with a different perspective of food and vise versa.0 -
comptonelizabeth wrote: »Maybe it's an age thing. I'm 61 and (talking to OP here)my experience is similar. I'm in the UK and the only fast food available in the 50s/60s was from the fish and chip van. We did have sweets,chocolate etc in the house but were only allowed them after meals. One thing I do remember is that my mum ALWAYS made a pudding/dessert - I mean a "proper "one,not just ice cream etc. As I recall,it was similar in my friends' houses. But I don't know if we were typical. Because another feature of my childhood is that we didn't have a TV so I wasn't exposed to much advertising.
Edit: does anyone from the uk remember Wimpy restaurants? And the excitement when McDonald's finally arrived here ?
I loved wimpy. We had two in our area. Made the food to order1 -
I've known a number of people who grew up with serious food insecurity and parents who either didn't cook or didn't know how. So they grew up only really liking the taste of junk food as it's what they had. AND they grew up binging as some nights there would be no food at all, so when mom finally went out and got some chips and sugary cereal the kids would gobble all of it at once. Some of these people grew up to depend on junk food and wouldn't even try healthy foods. Others had to relearn their entire way of eating and relating to food.
I live in a pretty poor area of the city and it used to not really have grocery stores/the stores they did have weren't stocked well. I would walk across the big park (and that wasn't always a safe path) to buy produce on the other side. But I watched families coming home at night, two parents, three kids, each carrying their own McDonald's bag. So yes, some people did grow up this way. It is hard to retrain your tastebuds when you're used to salt, grease, and sugar and little else. Many who didn't grow up eating vegetables find then bitter when they first try to eat them.
0 -
Shanel0916 wrote: »Its funny how everyone one grew up eating differently yet we're all still here on this weight loss site seems like it may not matter much then.
Ha! Maybe. Though I'm not sure that my type of diet growing up or my type of diet now is the issue, so much as the amount.... I grew up with a mother who watched and criticized every single bite I ate. I was constantly reminded I was in danger of getting fat and if that happened nobody would ever want to be around me (though, there was always some reason nobody would ever be able to love me or stand being around me--food wasn't the only instrument of abuse here). Anyway, I went off on my own and was able to cook my own food. Suddenly sitting down and eating a whole huge plate of pasta was just heaven. Cereal, bread, rice..... Throughout my twenties I worked several jobs that kept me on my feet all day every day, so I could eat as much as I wanted and not gain. Then I got a desk job with a long commute, was diagnosed with lupus and put on prednisone for it, and everything fell apart.0
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.7K Introduce Yourself
- 43.5K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 394 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.3K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.3K MyFitnessPal Information
- 23 News and Announcements
- 945 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.3K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions