why were people so skinny in the 70s?
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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.
There's a large unknown variable here in people under 18. There is a massive data gap in humans under 18 and while we know it takes a tremendous amount of energy to support growth, this has yet to be distilled in the same formula that we used to track and budget calories.
A radio host in Milwaukee took calls on "The Most Influential Invention in the 20th Century" and while many would bring up powered flight, computers, nuclear fission, etc. he proposed the remote control was far more influential on our culture. Whereas previously people would watch the same show or flip through channels getting up...or sending the kids to do this...we now had the luxury of flipping through shows rapidly if we became bored. I tend to agree with this observation.3 -
HAHAHA! Google Twiggy. Sixties model who started the whole bone-thin craze. We dieted without benefit of "low calorie" or "fat free" or any other specialized packaged foods (we had Tab cola, sweetened with cyclamate--ick) so we had to focus on eating waaaay less. And yes, no Internet, no cell phones, we were way more active; as a teenager I went roller skating to meet boys, instead of Facebook, etc., and I walked 3 miles to high school--now kids are bussed everywhere.0
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I think people just ate less. Serving sizes at restaurants and fast food places were smaller. Popcorn and drinks at the movies were smaller. Did 7-11 have Big Gulps yet? Certainly not the Super Big Gulps. (just looked it up and Big Gulps started in 1976) Bags of chips were smaller, I don't think there were "family sized" versions of chips/cookies/etc. Fast food places didn't push value meals that included large fries and huge drinks. There weren't coffee places on every block selling the equivalent of milkshakes with a little coffee added.
Even if you're cooking for yourself it's easy to get a distorted picture of what a normal meal size should look like if they give you a bucket of food when you eat out.0 -
My mother fed me tv dinners & frozen food all the time & I was totally skinny then. I was allowed ice cream after dinner. I went out and played a lot tho.1
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You know when I think back most of the women I knew were probably overweight by today's standards. Not obese or even very overweight, but I'd bet most had a BMI > 25. Less than half of the women I knew over age 30 were "skinny".4
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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.
Yeah but again, most kids nowadays still have a normal weight.2 -
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.
Yeah but again, most kids nowadays still have a normal weight.
That's true, but the number who are overweight has more than tripled since the 70's.0 -
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.
ahhh. Thanks for the memories.
Why can't Netflix pony up and get those old shows? It had "Flipper" and "Twilight Zone" for a while there. I think "Andy Griffith" is on. I'd like to watch "Lassie" and a lot of the old cartoons like "Fractured Fairy Tales" and "rocky and Bullwinkle."
I was also a latchkey kid. I remember "Dark Shadows" in the afternoons after school and "The Adams Family." That was pretty supernaturally fun for a kid. But yeah, as soon as Mom got home, "Go outside!"
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Sex and drugs
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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.
Yeah but again, most kids nowadays still have a normal weight.
That's true, but the number who are overweight has more than tripled since the 70's.
Yeah, this is what seems to me the most striking difference -- the number of overweight and obese kids, even though it is still a minority.2 -
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Didn't read the whole thread so I might be beating a dead horse, but I wanted to just give an example here.
I'm a librarian. I was also born in 1987, so I don't actually remember working in the pre-internet age. But I know how things used to work.
The reason I bring that up is that people frequently mention that more people have office jobs vs. manual labor jobs now when we're talking about this subject, but the truth is that even jobs that have always been white collar "office jobs" like mine have become more sedentary.
For example, at my job, imagine a patron comes in and wants to look at an article from the spring 1983 volume of the Journal of Musicology.
In the pre-internet age, my process for fulfilling this patron's request would be:
-Get up from my desk
-Walk over to the card catalog
-Sift through the card catalog until I find the correct record
-Turns out the Journal of Musicology is housed four floors down and on the other side of a giant building, and the patron doesn't know their way around, so I have to walk with them to where it's shelved
-Walk back to my desk
With modern technology, my process for fulfilling this patron's request is:
-Open the library website
-Navigate to the databases section and open JSTOR
-Show the patron how to download the PDF
-All of this can be accomplished without me even getting out of my chair
Obviously, the pre-internet way of doing things involves a lot more walking! So even in my "office job" I burn fewer calories than a librarian 40 years ago did.17 -
So I'm trying to figure out why people were so skinny about 40 years ago vs today....here are some reasons i can think of and i want to know yours:
1. little to none high fructose corn syrup
2. more activity.....people didnt sit on their computers and smart phones all day
these are just two main ones i can think of, anyone else have any ideas?
Much smaller portions. There was no Cheesecake factory size appetizers and the large fries at McDonald's was like current day small. It's calories in vs calories out. Corn syrup has nothing to do with it.2 -
I didn't read through this entire thread but did anybody answer "Because of all the energy they burned carrying around all of that body hair" yet?7
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In the 80's the American government changed the dietary recommendations to limit fat and cholesterol intake and encouraged large servings of grain based foods. This created an increase in highly processed fake "low fat" foods and much more added high fructose sugar to diet. Healthy natural fats like butter were replaced by artificially created trans fats in margarine. This was pretty much the worst idea ever, and now science is proving they were wrong. Fat is not the enemy, and removing it from our diets has created an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.7
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catherineg3 wrote: »In the 80's the American government changed the dietary recommendations to limit fat and cholesterol intake and encouraged large servings of grain based foods. This created an increase in highly processed fake "low fat" foods and much more added high fructose sugar to diet. Healthy natural fats like butter were replaced by artificially created trans fats in margarine. This was pretty much the worst idea ever, and now science is proving they were wrong. Fat is not the enemy, and removing it from our diets has created an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Not really.
Yes, there was a push to lower fat and grain recommendations went up. There's no indication that people really followed that -- the recommendations also pushed whole grains, limiting sugar, and eating lots of fruits and veg, which people did not do, and total fat consumed (in calories) increased, and did not decrease.
Highly processed foods do not appear to have increased in the diet due to these guidelines, but because they are profitable (whether labeled low fat or not, a huge percentage of high cal "highly processed foods" are high in fat and carbs, and some kinds of fat increased in the foods during this period, including both the addition of cheese and various oils). Unlike the '70s (when they were already quite common), there are a much wider variety of processed foods, they arguably taste better and are cheaper, and our culture seems more open to relying on these regularly rather than home cooking, as well as consuming more food between meals. (Decent book on this is Fat, Salt, and Sugar.) One example of how fat as increased as well as carbs due to such changes is that calories from fast food have increased, although the average fast food meal is quite high fat.
Yes, of course there were low fat processed options to respond to demand (some lower in cal than regular, some maybe not), but that's no different from all the "no sugar" or "low carb" options available now. Again, fat did not actually decrease in the diet, and consuming skim milk does not make you fat. Calories do.
I would agree that early margarines (which followed a slightly different time line) were worse than butter, although current margarines aren't generally high in transfats. The same kind of anti butter rhetorical often pushed olive oil, and again I don't think olive oil makes us fat (unless you consume too many calories).
I understand the desire to have a scapegoat, but we aren't fat due to low fat diets, the US has never had a low fat diet and the claims that we radically reduced fat are just lies. IMO, fat is fine, carbs are fine, diets with too much sat fat OR refined carbs are not a great idea, instead the pretty consistent dietary advice to consume more veg and fruit and whole grains (vs. refined) and whole food sources of nutrients is probably a decent idea. Macro percentages are unlikely to be all that significant, the US's macro percentages aren't out of line with other places with much better diets. Blaming carbs is no more sensible than blaming fat.8 -
catherineg3 wrote: »In the 80's the American government changed the dietary recommendations to limit fat and cholesterol intake and encouraged large servings of grain based foods. This created an increase in highly processed fake "low fat" foods and much more added high fructose sugar to diet. Healthy natural fats like butter were replaced by artificially created trans fats in margarine. This was pretty much the worst idea ever, and now science is proving they were wrong. Fat is not the enemy, and removing it from our diets has created an epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
Except...people didn't actually reduce their fat. And the dietary recommendations said to eat more whole grains, fruit and veg...people didn't do that either.8 -
I was a kid in the 70s. I was overweight and so were my mom and dad. I have a good picture of the whole family and we were all pretty chubby. So everyone wasn’t skinny in the 70s.6
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whitebalance wrote: »
Dang... Now I want a pizza....People cooked meals at home instead of going out to eat or popping a pizza in the oven.
ETA something on topic: Parents weren't all scared that their kiddos could be abducted if left outside without supervision for more than five minutes... so kiddos were left outside without supervision for more than five minutes. I was outside constantly, and even as a Brownie in third grade I walked the mile or so from school to the troop meeting. And I was one of the sickly ones!
And yes, restaurant food was a once-a-week thing at most. I mean, I live on the stuff now. Mom's home cooking is the once-a-week treat now.
I ate a lot of home cooking growing up and now and i was still borderline obese in the 90'so it isn't just home cooking. My mom was a stay at home mom and cooked most everything from scratch. I brought a lunch from home 90 perecent of the time as well. I was not outside all the time though. There weren't always kids around to play with.2 -
Not bad for a 5 year old necro.
Anyway, I mostly grew up in the 70s, in a mixed suburban and rural part of New Jersey. Housing had taken over about half the land in the township, but there were still plenty of working farms around. My 4-H leader's dairy farm was one of them. My house was one of about a dozen that had made inroads into fallow farmland, but it was the end of the decade before the rest of the development went in, so we had lots of fields and woods to explore that are all gone now.
Being smack in the middle of NJ, we got ALL the TV channels, from both NYC and Philly, including some good UHF stations that made me a big fan of the Japanese "kaiju" genre. (Ultraman, Johnny Sokko, Space Giants...) I think the only unoccupied VHF channel was 8. And yeah, I was a nerd and addicted to TV, and by the standards of the time I was fairly sedentary. But I was probably a lot more active than most kids now. If I wanted to play pinball, the nearest machine was almost 3 miles away, and the only way to get there was on foot or by bike. There was a general store closer, about a mile away, which was good for snacks, and we got there under our own power too. And then I had my bicycle paper route, we had the pool, the brook on the other side of the fields, the dirt trail for biking, a hilly backyard for when there was snow on the ground, our animals to care for and play with... Just way too much to do outside to stay in, and even my tolerance for TV was limited.
It's fair to say that nearly all my peers were skinny. There were always 1 or 2 "fat kids" in your class, but that was it. And the kids we considered skinny -- I was one of them -- were REALLY skinny.
I was a picky eater, so that might have contributed, but my sister and brother were skinny too -- although not as much as me; they were more athletically inclined.3
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