why were people so skinny in the 70s?

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  • kellyjellybellyjelly
    kellyjellybellyjelly Posts: 9,480 Member
    edited May 2018
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    Snowflake1968 wrote: »
    beaches222 wrote: »
    People had gardens and grew much of there own food and kids played outside constantly. Now days you have to make your kids go outside. It wasn't much eating out like people do now and it definitely wasn't any SUPER SIZE IT. LOL

    Listening to complaints from the young mothers in my life, so many people disagree with children being outside playing now without adult supervision 100% of the time. I think it causes fear of CPS being called with parents that want to raise their kids "the old fashioned way" and send their kids outside.

    I 100% agree with the food, we got to eat out as a treat maybe once a month or so and even then it was a sit down restaurant, not fast food so the food was always "homecooked" style. The area I'm from only got it's first fast food place in 1997. We did have in the summer, drive up canteens but again, all fresh never frozen except the fries. Headquarters of McCain's was close by.

    Dang! The first fast food place was in 1997. Which one did you get?
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
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    seltzermint555 wrote: »

    Talking about it recently with friends (offline) we were all considering one possibility that food wasn't as much of an entertainment thing as it is now. I am sure that's been mentioned in this thread many times but I do think it is true.

    Now we have food companies marketing to every category of people and often focusing on the young and hip. It's even seen as aspirational and definitely as a source of entertainment & "fun".

    In our shift to not smoking and drinking being less glamorous, we've embraced food, food, and more food...bigger, better, faster food...along with high-calorie venti lattes and mochas. Just another thought.

    I was thinking about this too... food as entertainment. I know some years back when I still watched morning shows (Today), I remember wondering when every minor holiday/event had become an excuse for a food blowout ("Coming up... the perfect Arbor Day menu!"). And of course nowadays we have hundreds of websites/channels devoted to food. I have a couple of FB friends that post a steady stream of decadent recipe ideas. Food shows & recipes don't make people fat, of course, but I think it helps keeps food on the brain. And I think you're on to something there with the thought about trendy beverages & food taking over for smoking & drinking. In the 70s, my parents always had a cigarette and/or a drink in their hands, but didn't seem to care so much about food. Now everybody has a Starbucks cup in their hands and our entertainment often revolves around food.

  • lucerorojo
    lucerorojo Posts: 790 Member
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    We've already mentioned portion sizes and fast food. Not to pick on Starbuck's but considering that a lot of people make it a daily habit to buy these coffee milkshakes (and they aren't small either) that's a lot of calories if one drinks one daily. In the old days, in 1980s, it was very rare to buy coffee to go. I remember a few trucks when I was working in NYC, that would self coffee (I think it was 25 cents back then) but the paper cups were small about 6 oz - 8 oz. and you could get it black or with milk/sugar. But that was it. No such thing as a latte. At work there was a coffee pot and you drank it black or with milk/sugar and it was 4 oz. There is one coffee chain shop in my city that makes delicious COFFEE, but you cannot get any flavored stuff at all. They have lattes, capuccino and mocha, but that's it for the fancy stuff. Today I bought a coffee from them and there were tourists in there who asked for flavored coffee latte (milkshake) and they didn't know what to do when they said they had no flavors!
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
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    lucerorojo wrote: »
    We've already mentioned portion sizes and fast food. Not to pick on Starbuck's but considering that a lot of people make it a daily habit to buy these coffee milkshakes (and they aren't small either) that's a lot of calories if one drinks one daily. In the old days, in 1980s, it was very rare to buy coffee to go. I remember a few trucks when I was working in NYC, that would self coffee (I think it was 25 cents back then) but the paper cups were small about 6 oz - 8 oz. and you could get it black or with milk/sugar. But that was it. No such thing as a latte. At work there was a coffee pot and you drank it black or with milk/sugar and it was 4 oz. There is one coffee chain shop in my city that makes delicious COFFEE, but you cannot get any flavored stuff at all. They have lattes, capuccino and mocha, but that's it for the fancy stuff. Today I bought a coffee from them and there were tourists in there who asked for flavored coffee latte (milkshake) and they didn't know what to do when they said they had no flavors!

    I was never a coffee drinker until coffee *drinks* started to come in vogue and my mom would always tell me, "You don't want coffee... you want dessert." She wasn't wrong ;)
  • VUA21
    VUA21 Posts: 2,072 Member
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    The Happy Meal size was the adult portion size! Portion sizes have doubled or more for restaurants.
  • tbright1965
    tbright1965 Posts: 852 Member
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    ktm96 wrote: »
    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?

    Because the small soda we have today at the fast food restaurants is the large of the 1970s. Plus, we now have free refills.

    I'd say we eat more and move less than we did then.

    I was a kid in the 1970s and we were outside on our bikes or playing football, baseball and basketball all summer. Today, kids (and parents) are on some screen that hadn't been invented back then.

    We eat more and move less.
  • MikePfirrman
    MikePfirrman Posts: 3,307 Member
    edited May 2018
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    I remember the 70s pretty well. As a rapid growing kid (I pretty much peaked in 8th grade/9th grade in height to 5' 10") and the youngest of six, food was pretty basic. If we got Pop Tarts or Cereal, that was a treat. You'd look in the pantry and it was either Peanut Butter or Oatmeal a lot of days. I do think the convenience foods (both at home and out) contribute to obesity, along with lack of exercise today. Soda was also a huge treat back then, not something you drank morning, noon and night (I live in Southern Ohio, where the breakfast of champions is Mountain Dew, Cigarettes and BBQ chips and I'm not kidding).
  • ljashley1952
    ljashley1952 Posts: 273 Member
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    I also believe that the food industry is guilty of using additives that have a known addictive effect. The cigarette industry was caught red-handed doing that and they were forced to stop the additives. We have grown to crave sugars and salt and highly seasoned foods. It's like we have to be over-stimulated to be satisfied. Also, what you said, much less activity and poor eating habits.
  • HealthyAndSober2018
    HealthyAndSober2018 Posts: 25 Member
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    Larger portions, housewives would cook dinner, more likely to walk/bike instead of drive, more pressure to stay thin, less options for plus size clothing, gov't didn't subsidize the crap out of sugar and corn, etc...
  • lucerorojo
    lucerorojo Posts: 790 Member
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    deecuebee wrote: »
    So, I was a kid in the 70's. I can assure you that sugar and processed foods abounded and parents were far less hung up on it than parents are now (seems like every kid in my class had Twinkies or cupcakes or Oreos in their lunches every day). We did NOT eat meals cooked from scratch every night (my mom worked nights, Dad made us frozen chicken pot pies, hot dogs, or something out of a can) or grow our own food. We had PE twice a week (my kids now have it 3x) and we ate fast food at least once a week, sometimes more, since we had piano lessons, soccer practices, and assorted other things in the evenings that prevented us from eating at home on those nights. I took the bus to and from school. We played outside sometimes on weekends, but were just as likely to be inside doing chores or dragged to some event by my parents. We played video games for hours on end. We ate cereal and drank juice for breakfast every morning and took PB&J in our sack lunches. Granola bars were health food. We overdid it on candy every holiday. We drank soda multiple times a week. In spite of all this I was a skinny kid. So were almost all my friends.

    Some of the people posting here seem to be confusing the 70's with the pioneer days, lol.

    Bottom line is that I don't know why people were skinnier then because people seem a lot more health conscious now. I do think that people eat in restaurants more often now, but probably not that much more. Portions are probably larger. Kids have somewhat less free time, but not that much less, we had school and homework and working parents and lots of activities back then, too. It sure seems to me that there has to be something else going on.

    Different from you, in high school we had PE DAILY. So 5 days a week. I took it every year, I loved it. We had so many different classes, gymnastics, slimnastics, modern dance, all the team sports, running. Snacks were not something we did in my home, and like others said we didn't eat out much, soda was a treat--we rarely had it in my house and we had to ask permission to eat or drink anything (but water). That was probably a big difference from many families.
  • JJordon
    JJordon Posts: 857 Member
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    People didn't stay cooped up inside or glued to a screen, like they are now. People also did stuff, alot of stuff, that wasn't sitting down at a desk.
  • PaperDoll_
    PaperDoll_ Posts: 32,845 Member
    edited May 2018
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    lucerorojo wrote: »
    deecuebee wrote: »
    So, I was a kid in the 70's. I can assure you that sugar and processed foods abounded and parents were far less hung up on it than parents are now (seems like every kid in my class had Twinkies or cupcakes or Oreos in their lunches every day). We did NOT eat meals cooked from scratch every night (my mom worked nights, Dad made us frozen chicken pot pies, hot dogs, or something out of a can) or grow our own food. We had PE twice a week (my kids now have it 3x) and we ate fast food at least once a week, sometimes more, since we had piano lessons, soccer practices, and assorted other things in the evenings that prevented us from eating at home on those nights. I took the bus to and from school. We played outside sometimes on weekends, but were just as likely to be inside doing chores or dragged to some event by my parents. We played video games for hours on end. We ate cereal and drank juice for breakfast every morning and took PB&J in our sack lunches. Granola bars were health food. We overdid it on candy every holiday. We drank soda multiple times a week. In spite of all this I was a skinny kid. So were almost all my friends.

    Some of the people posting here seem to be confusing the 70's with the pioneer days, lol.

    Bottom line is that I don't know why people were skinnier then because people seem a lot more health conscious now. I do think that people eat in restaurants more often now, but probably not that much more. Portions are probably larger. Kids have somewhat less free time, but not that much less, we had school and homework and working parents and lots of activities back then, too. It sure seems to me that there has to be something else going on.

    Different from you, in high school we had PE DAILY. So 5 days a week. I took it every year, I loved it. We had so many different classes, gymnastics, slimnastics, modern dance, all the team sports, running. Snacks were not something we did in my home, and like others said we didn't eat out much, soda was a treat--we rarely had it in my house and we had to ask permission to eat or drink anything (but water). That was probably a big difference from many families.

    I wasn't alive in the 70's, but PE was required in my school up until 11th grade when it became an elective. This was the early 2000's. I don't recall there really being a lot of overweight people in my class at all. But even when I was a child we played outside all the time after school. Summers were spent biking around the neighborhood and playing sports and tag. I don't see kids outside playing like they used to anymore because there's so much concern for their safety. So much has changed in a lot shorter period of time than the 70's.

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