why were people so skinny in the 70s?
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I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.3 -
bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
I didn't have time for TV. That would have cut into my time I could have been out riding my bicycle, playing street football, skateboarding, etc. Saturday morning cartoons were fine enough while eating breakfast, but then it was out the door to go have some fun.7 -
bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
And, even if you did watch some TV, dad was always making you get up to change the channel for him. I swear I got more steps in being dad's remote than walking to school.
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I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.2
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crabbybrianna wrote: »I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.
I got yelled at if I sat too close
But now I think we are getting into a Monty Python sketch "our dad would slice us in two with a bread knife"7 -
Tacklewasher wrote: »crabbybrianna wrote: »I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.
I got yelled at if I sat too close
“You’ll go blind!!!”5 -
Tacklewasher wrote: »crabbybrianna wrote: »I would just sit on the floor right in front of the tv so I didn’t have to get up and walk to change the channel or volume.
I got yelled at if I sat too close
“You’ll go blind!!!”
Ahh.
I wasn't going there.....
Oh. You mean from the TV screen.6 -
Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it. It's dirt cheap because of government subsidies for corn farmers and gets put into literally everything, even things such as bread are ridiculously sweet by international standards. Wikipedia spells out the time frame pretty clearly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup)
"From 1970 to 2000, there was a 25% increase in "added sugars" in the U.S.[26] After being classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1976,[27] HFCS began to replace sucrose as the main sweetener of soft drinks in the United States. At the same time, rates of obesity rose. That correlation, in combination with laboratory research and epidemiological studies that suggested a link between consuming large amounts of fructose and changes to various proxy health measures, including elevated blood triglycerides, size and type of low-density lipoproteins, uric acid levels, and weight, raised concerns about health effects of HFCS itself."
Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.9 -
I totally forgot about Koolaid, one packet of tasty powder, 1 cup of sugar in a pitcher of water...the standard beverage for many years because soda was too expensive to drink all the time. The thought of it gags me now.
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ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it. It's dirt cheap because of government subsidies for corn farmers and gets put into literally everything, even things such as bread are ridiculously sweet by international standards. Wikipedia spells out the time frame pretty clearly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup)
"From 1970 to 2000, there was a 25% increase in "added sugars" in the U.S.[26] After being classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1976,[27] HFCS began to replace sucrose as the main sweetener of soft drinks in the United States. At the same time, rates of obesity rose. That correlation, in combination with laboratory research and epidemiological studies that suggested a link between consuming large amounts of fructose and changes to various proxy health measures, including elevated blood triglycerides, size and type of low-density lipoproteins, uric acid levels, and weight, raised concerns about health effects of HFCS itself."
Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.
Go ahead, stand by it. Science says otherwise: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5133084/
Excerpt:There are well established risk factors for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease and considerable overlap amongst these entities when it comes to nutritional practices. For now, we would agree with the assertion in the Dietary Guidelines for American (2010) [136] that overconsumption of calories represents the single greatest health threat to individuals in the United States and elsewhere. This may, in part, be linked to the overall consumption patterns in what has been called the “Western” diet. Certainly, added sugars may be considered as components of this overall diet and, therefore, targets for reduction as are other energy dense components of this nutrition pattern. Singling out added sugars as major or unique culprits for metabolically based diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease appears inconsistent with modern high quality evidence and is very unlikely to yield health benefits. The reduction of these components of the diet without other reductions seems very unlikely to achieve any meaningful results. Perhaps in this situation, we should remember a favorite quotation of President John F. Kennedy who quoted Winston Churchill who, in turn, had paraphrased the philosopher George Santayana by saying “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.9 -
And as far as the scaremongering using HFCS as a bogeyman, HFCS is essentially bio-identical to sucrose as far as the body is concerned:
https://bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/straight-talk-about-high-fructose-corn-syrup-what-it-is-and-what-it-aint-research-review.html/
https://examine.com/nutrition/difference-between-hfcs-and-sugar/
https://examine.com/nutrition/is-hfcs-worse-than-sugar/5 -
ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it.
It's easy. I don't generally consume HFCS, and yet I consume packaged foods.
I'm assuming you don't mean meat, which comes in packages, or vegetables and fruit, which even fresh often do these days. I will also exclude frozen fruit and veg, which make up a good chunk of what I buy in the winter), even though they too are packaged foods, and nuts, which come in packages.
Things I have purchased (just a sampling) that are packaged foods without HFCS
soy milk (milk, of course, and various other non sweetened milk substitutes won't have HFCS)
non sweetened dairy products in general: cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt (flavored yogurts may have HFCS, I suppose, but you can very easily find even those without -- low cal uses artificial sweeteners and the higher quality ones use sugar)
tofu (also tempeh)
note: I didn't get any, but I've looked at packaged non-meat meatballs and so on, and you can definitely find versions easily that don't have HFCS
protein powder (also plenty of protein bars, although I generally don't buy them, and some other not sure how to classify them things like Kind bars)
canned and dry beans
oats
dried pasta (any good dried pasta won't have an added sweetener)
plenty of breads (I don't buy bread, but someone claimed this before and I looked and easily found plain old cheap bread without HFCS, although some have a bit of it)
rice, quinoa, barley, etc.
I don't usually buy but know you can easily find rice pilafs and rice and bean mixes and seasoned rice and quinoa and various grains and so on that do not have HFCS too
canned tomatoes in various forms (you can find pasta sauce without it too, but I never buy that, I make my own pasta sauce as we did in the '80s! (and probably the '70s, I just don't recall))
lots of good quality chocolates and ice cream (sugar in these)
I'm sure various frozen meals, although I don't buy those either. I checked a random Amy's one, and no HFCS. As an aside, the options for frozen meals for someone who cares about calories and nutrition are many, many times better now than they were in the '70s and '80s.
nut butter (some have them, but I like mine to be basically just nuts and never have trouble finding them, certainly no sweeteners in the ones I buy)
coffee and tea
There are many more, of course. I just went through the things I buy regularly with some thoughts for the most commonly mentioned other examples.6 -
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ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
This has 0 to do with HFCS. Soda is not cheaper now; it's actually still quite expensive due to how much is spent on things like marketing, vs. the cost to make it.
It's also not common in MOST families for kids to drink soda with meals, I'd bet (none of my friends would serve soda regularly with meals). But it varies in different subcultures or social circles or whatever. Even now MOST people don't drink huge amounts of soda, but the thing is that the smaller portion who drink a lot of soda drink a whole lot.
The idea that drinking those amounts would be fine if they just drank coke with sugar makes no sense.As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.
I recall it being an occasional treat too, and most of my friends with kids still treat it that way. Are there people who do not? Sure -- cultural change, again, but nothing to do with fast food not being available back then, it was.0 -
bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
This was my experience too. During the day all that was on were soap operas, news and talk shows. And IDK if this was true in cities, but in the rural area where I lived most families watched only one channel regularly because one one would come in clearly without climbing up on the roof to rearrange the antenna.2 -
ThereAreManyNames wrote: »Meh, I'm standing by everything I said. A fun activity sometime is walking into a grocery store today and finding literally any packaged food without HFCS in it. It's dirt cheap because of government subsidies for corn farmers and gets put into literally everything, even things such as bread are ridiculously sweet by international standards. Wikipedia spells out the time frame pretty clearly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup)
"From 1970 to 2000, there was a 25% increase in "added sugars" in the U.S.[26] After being classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1976,[27] HFCS began to replace sucrose as the main sweetener of soft drinks in the United States. At the same time, rates of obesity rose. That correlation, in combination with laboratory research and epidemiological studies that suggested a link between consuming large amounts of fructose and changes to various proxy health measures, including elevated blood triglycerides, size and type of low-density lipoproteins, uric acid levels, and weight, raised concerns about health effects of HFCS itself."
Drinking huge portions of soda with every meal wasn't common until more recent decades, it was recognized as being a treat. People now have habits of 2 litres a day or more.
As for fast food, even in the 80s I remember a burger being a once every couple of weeks thing at most, while I work with people now who raise their kids on McDonalds and Church's Chicken and see nothing unusual about it because they never ate a balanced meal at home themselves.
Off the top of my head, I buy bread, salsa, canned beans, soy sauce, mustard, mayo, chutney, miso, rice, canned tomatoes, pasta, frozen vegetables, hummus, guacamole, potato chips, nuts, chocolate chip cookies, soup, and vegan butter that is all HFCS-free. I don't even make an effort to avoid it -- I do buy some foods with it.
Literally any packaged food? No. That's just not true. It's not in literally everything.7 -
Calorie consumption has risen.
Activity levels have fallen - mass car ownership in particular.
the rest is just conservation of energy equations.8 -
Need2Exerc1se wrote: »bennettinfinity wrote: »I keep reading about how people were more active because there was no Internet etc... People read books and newspapers. People still watched tv (even if it was 3 channels instead of 200). I mean, I'm sure that kids were more active by then, but most kids I see have a normal weight.
I too also think that it has to do with portion control... or maybe the processed food we have now has more calories than it had then?
Hard to say for me, I was born at the end of the 70s and in another country, so I have absolutely no clue how it was then versus now.
From a kid's perspective, most homes only had one TV and 3-4 channels... there was almost no children's programming to speak of outside of Saturday morning cartoons. If you didn't like the boring shows your parents wanted to watch, you found something else to do. You played with the neighbor kids or siblings... Much less screen time for kids.
This was my experience too. During the day all that was on were soap operas, news and talk shows. And IDK if this was true in cities, but in the rural area where I lived most families watched only one channel regularly because one one would come in clearly without climbing up on the roof to rearrange the antenna.
I don't recall our reception being bad (although I'm sure my standards were different), but the 3-4 channels, most of it being boring most of the time, was indeed my experience. The well-known PBS shows and Saturday cartoons in the morning.2 -
I actually watched a lot of TV when I was a kid in the 70s because we were able to get a channel out of New York City - WNYW, which had a great variety of interesting programs on that were not on the 3 local channels we could get.
There were no soap operas on this channel. It was all syndicated old sit coms and stuff - a non stop barrage of things like: Gilligan's Island, the Ghost & Mrs Muir, Love American Style, The Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch, Lost in Space, The Flying Nun, Petticoat Junction, Green Acres, I Love Lucy, Andy Griffith Show, The Flintstones, Looney Tunes, Yogi Bear. - and my favorite favorite, LOST IN SPACE.
I was an only child, lived in the country, no neighbors my age...I had nobody to play with. I did play outside a good deal sometimes, but never doing anything too active except ride my Big Wheel when I was little - and some sledding in the winter till I got too cold and wanted to come in.
So I watched TV. And ate junk food - but I was never overweight until in my late 20's early 30's (post pregnancy). Interesting.0
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