why were people so skinny in the 70s?

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  • ladyreva78
    ladyreva78 Posts: 4,080 Member
    wizzybeth wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    they rode bikes,skateboards, danced and walked to the park to play. they ate basic meals without them adding 100 ingredients AND we were broke/poor so couldn't spend much money on groceries. Now days...it seems as though we have to have a recipe a mile long and with bread on the side. dessert every night. the list is endless.

    Yup!! I often talk about this change too, whenever I can get someone to listen. :)

    Why does food always have to be a "recipe" now??

    What an odd odd string of conversation this is. I have three of my grandmothers cookbooks. She had all sorts of recipes handwritten as well as the actual cookbooks... She wrote them on the pages at the front and back of the book plus stuck them on tablet paper in between the other pages. Recipes for things like soups, goulash, bread, pies, cakes, meatloaf, meatballs... Not sure where this idea that recipes are some kind of new fangled thing came from. These cookbooks were from the 20s and 30s.

    My Grandma used a lot of cards. Funny going through them to see the changes she made and her notes. Christmas pudding needed "multiply * 4 for *(^((&&(*& boys" for the caramel sauce. (Was our name, not swearing).

    My wife does the same thing. Except her gluten/lactose free recipes have notes whether or not I will eat them. :D

    I have all the recipe books from my grandmothers going back 2-3 generations beyond them. The oldest one I have is dated 1849. It belonged to a great-great-great-grandmother of mine. As per the note on the front page, she received it on her wedding day together with a very nice wardrobe (which is standing in my parents' entry hall). The handwritten notes in those are priceless.

    Some of the recipes in there can hold up with the 'ingredient list a mile long'...

    @Tacklewasher I think I rather like how your wife thinks :tongue:
  • Tacklewasher
    Tacklewasher Posts: 7,122 Member
    ladyreva78 wrote: »
    @Tacklewasher I think I rather like how your wife thinks :tongue:

    As you know, she has a lot of things she can't eat. It's not so much that I'm picky (okay, I am) but it's nice for her to know which meals she can cook for both of us and when she tells me I'm on my own more than anything.
  • spinnerdell
    spinnerdell Posts: 233 Member
    People I knew in the 70's went to restaurants quite often. During my brief stint as a waitress, I had a number of daily customers chowing down on our mountains of delicious food. My husband and I went out to eat at least once a week, as did most of our friends. I really don't remember the 70's being a golden age of home-cooked healthy eating.
  • mcnite
    mcnite Posts: 1 Member
    we were young and active. Now we're old and sedentary. Just think back when you had to get up to change TV channels!
  • TorontoDiane
    TorontoDiane Posts: 1,413 Member
    DISCO .. KEPT everyone thin lol
  • People I knew in the 70's went to restaurants quite often. During my brief stint as a waitress, I had a number of daily customers chowing down on our mountains of delicious food. My husband and I went out to eat at least once a week, as did most of our friends. I really don't remember the 70's being a golden age of home-cooked healthy eating.

    My parents were teens during the 70s and my dad's mom was a fabulous cook. She was a stay at home mom too. He was very skinny during the 70s. There's a picture of him and my mom on our refrigerator. My mom was very thin too. I don't think they could afford to eat out much. She really likes to eat in restaurants now. My mom always says that she just didn't really care about food when she was younger.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    edited February 2018
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    fb47 wrote: »
    sgtx81 wrote: »
    I know this is a couple of decades off (1950's) but this is one thing

    8f9b6gg6o93h.jpg

    other than that people use to get a lot more physical activity... today physical activity = checking facebook and seeing what new and wondrous things you can be offended with and whine about

    Let's not forget, back then people went to restaurants on special occasions and most cooking were home meal cooking. Nowadays, it's common to see people at restaurants/fast food chains almost every day.

    Again, another statement that makes me wonder a) if you were alive in the '70s, and/or b) if the experience was really that different in different places.

    We went out to eat quite often - at least as often as we do nowadays. Definitely at least once a week, sometimes more, and 100% definitely not just for special occasions. Sometimes it was a chain restaurant, sometimes a mom-and-pop place, sometimes fast food.

    Mom wasn't June Cleaver of the '50s, chained to the stove in her gingham dress cooking a stereotypical "home cooked dinner" every single night. Sometimes her "home cooked dinners" were TV dinners, packaged pot pies, big pans of cheese enchiladas, huge pots of chili served with cheese, sour cream and saltine crackers, etc.

    vlowabncsezt.jpg

    I was alive in the 70's and in my perception there was less eating away from home then there is now. On a total U.S. basis, this chart tends to confirm my perception:

    jyhlsard4yvn.png


    https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending/

    You can tell from the chart, the % of food $ spent outside the home was less in 70's that it is today. You could even make the argument the number of meals/calories consumed outside the home increased a greater % than the expenditures due to the growth of fast food since the 1970's vs "regular" restaurants where the cost per calorie would typically be lower.
  • ccsernica
    ccsernica Posts: 1,040 Member
    I for one ate out at least as much in the 1970s as I do now. I certainly ate a lot more fast food than I do now, but there were also diners (this was NJ), pizza, etc.
  • Westschmeis
    Westschmeis Posts: 350 Member
    Well, I was alive in the 40s, and my farm family (5 kids) almost never ate anywhere but home and school lunch. My wife and I started hanging together in '57, and we had our first real restaurant dinner in1959 at a Holiday Inn in Boise, Idaho, and it was a cultural experience! By the 70s we were in Cambridge, Mass, and we loved to eat at the best restaurants in Boston, about 3 or 4 times a year. I'm talking Loch Ober, or better. We also had a great family owned pizzeria on our block, and usually had pizza once a week. The rest of the time we ate at home, or at a university lunchroom.
    It is not hugely different now, pizza night on Friday, eat lunch at a diner or local restaurant 2-4 times a week, the rest of the time at home. We do not butcher our own meat anymore, but most of our habits and preferences were well formed by our mid 20s, and I suspect that applies to many people.
    I have eaten at a McDonald's only a few dozen times in my life, usually on long road trips!
  • CharlieAnn31
    CharlieAnn31 Posts: 45 Member
    I was born in 1960 so was 10 in 1970. Kids were outside from the time they got home from school until they were forced to come inside by their parents. We didn't have computers, cell phones and video games didn't come out until the end of the 1970's (pong and packman). TV's had 3 or 4 channels until around1970 when we got two new channels 19 and 43, we thought we were it when we got those channels. And there was only one television so it wasn't like you were able to sit around watching what you wanted, your parents had control when they wanted to watch it. If I wanted to go somewhere I walked or rode my bike and I always wanted to go somewhere, Everyone who needed money had to work and we all needed or wanted money. We all worked most of us starting around 12 years old including baby sitting, shoveling snow, cutting grass. Portions were smaller, and if you were lucky enough to go to mcdonald's your meal was a small hamburger, small fry and small pop, ( that was the regular size meal in the 60's and early 70's). I don't know when the quarter pounder or Big Mac came out but supersize wasn't in our vocabulary until after 1990. My son was born in 1980 and i have to say their generation grew up much like my generaton, still no computer until he was 14 and we couldn't afford the minutes so for the most part those kids were still playing outside all day.
  • ccsernica
    ccsernica Posts: 1,040 Member
    edited February 2018
    We didn't have computers, cell phones and video games didn't come out until the end of the 1970's (pong and packman).
    The amount of TV you had available depended a lot on where you lived. We lived smack between two major metropolitan markets, and so had only one unoccupied VHF channel plus a small selection of UHF stations. It wasn't actually more choice in the evenings when network programming was showing because there were two sets of the same network feeds -- and one set we didn't receive as clearly -- but local programming was more diverse.

    Most people didn't have them, but the first home game console for a Pong-like game was the Magnavox Odyssey, which came out in 1972. My family had an Odyssey 500, which came out in 1976. My parents got it for free by sitting through a pitch for a timeshare, and then gave it to us for Christmas.

    Quarter Pounders and Big Macs were available throughout the 70s. Remember the McDonaldland commercials? "Big Mac" was the police officer. But your recollection is correct that "supersize" was a later idea.
  • squatsnotsquat
    squatsnotsquat Posts: 29 Member
    edited February 2018
    all the high-waisted pants and loose shirts kept people from having muffin tops. They ate bigger breakfasts, more red meat, and actually, people ate more calories overall but moved more. People went out and had fun more, they kept their houses cleaner, sports were more valued and active manual jobs were more popular, plus overall people had more money to spend on healthy food. Kids didn't text all day, they went out and saw each other. More cigarettes, more uppers. Parents were stricter about kids not eating junk. Processed food just wasn't eaten as much. Low fat everything wasn't a thing, so food kept you full longer and wasn't loaded with sugar. People didn't drink sugary Starbucks. It wasn't okay to be fat as much as it is today.
  • Packerjohn
    Packerjohn Posts: 4,855 Member
    all the high-waisted pants and loose shirts kept people from having muffin tops. They ate bigger breakfasts, more red meat, and actually, people ate more calories overall but moved more. People went out and had fun more, they kept their houses cleaner, sports were more valued and active manual jobs were more popular, plus overall people had more money to spend on healthy food. Kids didn't text all day, they went out and saw each other. More cigarettes, more uppers. Parents were stricter about kids not eating junk. Processed food just wasn't eaten as much. Low fat everything wasn't a thing, so food kept you full longer and wasn't loaded with sugar. People didn't drink sugary Starbucks. It wasn't okay to be fat as much as it is today.

    No, average calorie consumption has increased since the 1970;s:

    hthtqgn6vauw.png

    http://geeksta.net/visualizations/calories-us/

    I would agree people moved more.
  • sweeetypie1
    sweeetypie1 Posts: 122 Member
    Looking back at my own childhood, we ate three meals a day and maybe popcorn for a snack in the evening. We didn't snack between meals at all. I agree with the others - processed foods, sugar, snacking, overeating, fast food all contribute to overweight. I remember when I got my first job and had money and it was so easy to buy junk food that I did. I stayed skinny until college, then started to pack it on - and I think that's when I became sedentary and look to food for comfort.
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,563 Member
    edited February 2018
    Everybody chain smoked. Just because they were skinny doesn't mean they were healthy.

    Um, everybody who? It was certainly more socially acceptable to smoke in public, but claiming that "everyone" smoked is gross misinformation. The percentage of adult smokers in the US declined from about 37% to about 34% between 1970 and 1978, I don't buy that smoking in general had much impact one way or the other on weight.

    https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig_smoking/

    As a side note - sadly, I know a number of overweight smokers, many of whom were overweight smokers in the 70's ( I was in my twenties during that time).

    edited for clarity
  • ccsernica
    ccsernica Posts: 1,040 Member
    Everybody chain smoked. Just because they were skinny doesn't mean they were healthy.

    Most of my father's family were smokers, and none of them chain smoked.
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    That's almost a liter bottle. I can't even finish that much soda in a whole day, nevermind a single meal. A 1.5l bottle lasts 2-3 days for me.

    Yeah, was never a problem for me. A liter of pop with lunch was normal up to a couple years ago. Now it's that much water.

    Normal portion size is an 8oz glass at table (maybe a 12oz if you like), so why do people drink more than that when buying meals out??

    Your normal portion is not my normal portion.
    I can easily drink 40 oz of whatever beverage I’m having with supper, be that water, Coke Zero, regular coke, root beer or milk (though that much milk does weigh heavy on the stomach).
    I’m that guy who the waiter can never keep up with when it comes to refills. I drink no less when I eat at home. It’s very rare that I get through a meal without a refill or two.

    Okay. So that's your usual portion, not necessarily a "normal" portion.
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    wizzybeth wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    they rode bikes,skateboards, danced and walked to the park to play. they ate basic meals without them adding 100 ingredients AND we were broke/poor so couldn't spend much money on groceries. Now days...it seems as though we have to have a recipe a mile long and with bread on the side. dessert every night. the list is endless.

    Yup!! I often talk about this change too, whenever I can get someone to listen. :)

    Why does food always have to be a "recipe" now??

    What an odd odd string of conversation this is. I have three of my grandmothers cookbooks. She had all sorts of recipes handwritten as well as the actual cookbooks... She wrote them on the pages at the front and back of the book plus stuck them on tablet paper in between the other pages. Recipes for things like soups, goulash, bread, pies, cakes, meatloaf, meatballs... Not sure where this idea that recipes are some kind of new fangled thing came from. These cookbooks were from the 20s and 30s.

    I get what you mean, but I had a lot of "plain" food at home, compared to what I see when we go out socially now. Why do good old healthy vegetables need to have oil, cheese, fruit, nuts, bacon, etc. added to them to make a modern SALAD!!?
  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    fb47 wrote: »
    sgtx81 wrote: »
    I know this is a couple of decades off (1950's) but this is one thing

    8f9b6gg6o93h.jpg

    other than that people use to get a lot more physical activity... today physical activity = checking facebook and seeing what new and wondrous things you can be offended with and whine about

    Let's not forget, back then people went to restaurants on special occasions and most cooking were home meal cooking. Nowadays, it's common to see people at restaurants/fast food chains almost every day.

    Again, another statement that makes me wonder a) if you were alive in the '70s, and/or b) if the experience was really that different in different places.

    We went out to eat quite often - at least as often as we do nowadays. Definitely at least once a week, sometimes more, and 100% definitely not just for special occasions. Sometimes it was a chain restaurant, sometimes a mom-and-pop place, sometimes fast food.

    Yes I agree there were and still are cultural differences between places. Yes I was alive in the 70s and my parents didn't do this eating out thing. The occasional fast food restaurant for a treat, but never restaurant meals as a substitute for our daily meals at home. And now I don't do it in my own house with my wife and children either. Just doesn't appeal to me.
  • ccsernica
    ccsernica Posts: 1,040 Member
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    wizzybeth wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    they rode bikes,skateboards, danced and walked to the park to play. they ate basic meals without them adding 100 ingredients AND we were broke/poor so couldn't spend much money on groceries. Now days...it seems as though we have to have a recipe a mile long and with bread on the side. dessert every night. the list is endless.

    Yup!! I often talk about this change too, whenever I can get someone to listen. :)

    Why does food always have to be a "recipe" now??

    What an odd odd string of conversation this is. I have three of my grandmothers cookbooks. She had all sorts of recipes handwritten as well as the actual cookbooks... She wrote them on the pages at the front and back of the book plus stuck them on tablet paper in between the other pages. Recipes for things like soups, goulash, bread, pies, cakes, meatloaf, meatballs... Not sure where this idea that recipes are some kind of new fangled thing came from. These cookbooks were from the 20s and 30s.

    I get what you mean, but I had a lot of "plain" food at home, compared to what I see when we go out socially now. Why do good old healthy vegetables need to have oil, cheese, fruit, nuts, bacon, etc. added to them to make a modern SALAD!!?

    Mostly, so that people actually want to eat it.
  • KatsuKitty
    KatsuKitty Posts: 6 Member
    meth :laugh:

    Nope, meth wasn't invented yet! It was all weed, coke, acid, PCP, shrooms...
  • wefts
    wefts Posts: 183 Member
    we ate less snacks , and fast food was not easy to get in most neighborhoods . we had to walk 3 miles to the cinema if we wanted to save the buss fair for a 26 cent Mc Donalds cheeseburger after the movie ! that would have been about 1971- 72
    we walked to school and to the library , If we wanted to go any where further walked to the T station when we got to our stop we walked to the pool or skating rink , played outside earned a dime or a quarter running to the store for neighbors
    ( because if you were indoors mom would find chores )for play time we rode bikes, climbed trees , skated . in the winter we made snow caves and forts and went ice skating and sledding . TV was so limited and reception was not great .
    It is so different now even the grocery store is full of fast food
  • mph323
    mph323 Posts: 3,563 Member
    KatsuKitty wrote: »
    meth :laugh:

    Nope, meth wasn't invented yet! It was all weed, coke, acid, PCP, shrooms...

    Check your history:

    "By 1970 amphetamines by themself or combined in other mixtures turned out to be one of the most abused drugs besides marijuana throughout the United States"

    http://www.crystalrecovery.com/the-history-of-crystal-meth.html
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