why were people so skinny in the 70s?

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  • tbright1965
    tbright1965 Posts: 852 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.

    I guess it depends on how you grew up.

    We didn't have such snacks. Now I did eat Apple Jacks every morning. But snack cakes, not so much. Soft drinks were a Thanksgiving treat. The rest of the year is was water or 2% milk.

    I don't know what video games you had in the 1970s? Pong? Heck, I don't think we even had a McDonalds in my hometown until 1981 or 1982. The only McD's trips for us were if the church youth group traveled. My teen boy body could down two Big Macs, Fries and a Coke. But it was a very rate event.

    It was pioneer days in our house. Granny canned fruits and vegetables for the winter. We had chickens in the hen house so eggs and the Sunday chicken often came from out back. We lived in town, at the edge, but still in town. So we were on the line between farm and "city" if you call population 7500 a city.

    I made money by mowing laws, detasseling corn, and bucking bales of hay.

    Life was very different for my kids some 30 years later compared to what I grew up with.
  • elisa123gal
    elisa123gal Posts: 4,287 Member
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    Eating out was rare... fast food restaurants where few..also a treat to go..i remember Burger King 10 cent burger night.something like that..we'd all load up and go once in a while. yet my mom would never let us get the whole shebang .. never burger fries and a coke..just two of them. It was so hard to choose.
    We ate at the table and had meal times. We played outside all the time ..never sat around and watched t.v. We didn't drink soda either. As the youngest of six.. i have to say i was hungry all the time. I was a rail.
  • lucerorojo
    lucerorojo Posts: 790 Member
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    Thanks for posting that link. It says we eat 23% more calories than in 1970s. That's a lot. The Tdee of my goal weight of 138 is 1600 calories. If I were to eat 23% more, that's 2000 Cal's per day, which is the TDEE of my current weight 191 lbs.
  • conniehgtv
    conniehgtv Posts: 309 Member
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    love , drugs, sex and rock and roll!
  • glyndavies3
    glyndavies3 Posts: 2 Member
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    Well, I am 58 so remember the 70's very well. No one had as much disposable income in those days, plus there were no real fast food shops, the chip shop, wimpy, but these were a treat not a given. The front of everyone's house was always swept and kept clean and tidy. We all walked much more and we played outside when we got home from school. No one sat at home drinking red wine, my parents would maybe go to the pub once a week and have a couple of half pints of beer. In general, people were as you said were generally far more active and not pushing calorific things down their throats on a daily basis. However, one bad thing was that a good percentage did smoke, so some false economy going on.

    My wife and I have just been away on holiday to Greece, we don't go abroad that often, the last time we stayed in a Hotel in Greece was a good few years ago, I remember most locals looked far more healthy and fit than we all did, however this time I would say that over 65% of under 30's were overweight, we were very surprised. It is the generation that they have been brought up in, which I really do not see improving nationally or Internationally, it has to be a personal thing. Hence I train 3/5 times a week and manage my diet or I could be in M&S buying expandable pants ;-)
  • fittocycle
    fittocycle Posts: 825 Member
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    Have you ever noticed how lean everyone was in photos from the 1940's? It was the postwar era and most people lived with sugar and flour rations. And as you can imagine, they were much more active then as well.
  • tomorrowperfume
    tomorrowperfume Posts: 67 Member
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    I'm sitting in front of a relic right now: The Baylor Family Cookbook, courtesy of the Baylor University Baptist Student Union. It's not dated, but I believe it is circa late 70's. It's legit: type-written and bound with metal rings.

    Trust me, they still had sugar in everything.
    yvqe5d27bm77.jpg
  • Gabbie361
    Gabbie361 Posts: 16 Member
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    During the early 70s LSD and high experimentation was popular. Drugs we're available LSD was legal till the Early 70s. Meeting at parks and outdoor concerts were still a big thing.
  • RaeBeeBaby
    RaeBeeBaby Posts: 4,245 Member
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    AnvilHead wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    ccsernica wrote: »
    Why rely on personal anecdotes when there's good data that answers the question?

    We eat more. Period. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/

    Yep. Every time this thread gets resurrected it just adds anecdotes. But I have no idea why people think that conditions where they lived (and based solely on their memory) were necessarily universal. Whether you lived in a rural, suburban, or urban area, what country you were in, what economic class your neighborhood was in, whether your parents/community were traditional or progressive, whether they were health-minded or not, whether you were raised in a single or two-parent home, whether you were a sheltered child or were often out in public or other family's homes... all of these would affect many of the factors everyone is bringing up.

    Not sure why all of this seems more compelling than we moved quite a bit more and ate less. I mean, I'm sure other factors might have had an effect, but the most obvious answer is pretty simple and I think apparent.<shrugs>

    ^ Agree. Well said. It's obvious from all the anecdotes in this thread that everybody's experiences in the '70s were vastly different.

    It's still fun to read about them and maybe take a little trip down memory lane. :wink:
  • try2again
    try2again Posts: 3,562 Member
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    RaeBeeBaby wrote: »
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    ccsernica wrote: »
    Why rely on personal anecdotes when there's good data that answers the question?

    We eat more. Period. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/13/whats-on-your-table-how-americas-diet-has-changed-over-the-decades/

    Yep. Every time this thread gets resurrected it just adds anecdotes. But I have no idea why people think that conditions where they lived (and based solely on their memory) were necessarily universal. Whether you lived in a rural, suburban, or urban area, what country you were in, what economic class your neighborhood was in, whether your parents/community were traditional or progressive, whether they were health-minded or not, whether you were raised in a single or two-parent home, whether you were a sheltered child or were often out in public or other family's homes... all of these would affect many of the factors everyone is bringing up.

    Not sure why all of this seems more compelling than we moved quite a bit more and ate less. I mean, I'm sure other factors might have had an effect, but the most obvious answer is pretty simple and I think apparent.<shrugs>

    ^ Agree. Well said. It's obvious from all the anecdotes in this thread that everybody's experiences in the '70s were vastly different.

    It's still fun to read about them and maybe take a little trip down memory lane. :wink:

    I've always taken this thread to be more about nostalgia and not really a scientific discussion. ;)
  • dws00
    dws00 Posts: 159 Member
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    Such a great question. It seems like bone structures are even larger these days.
  • ccsernica
    ccsernica Posts: 1,040 Member
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    All1971 wrote: »
    Here's and answer from science - we are eating more carbs than we used to.

    We are eating more overall than we used to. If most of the additional calories come from carbs, that doesn't point to carbs as being particularly evil. We'd see the same results if they came from fats or protein instead.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,344 Member
    edited May 2018
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    All1971 wrote: »
    Here's and answer from science - we are eating more carbs than we used to.

    Trends in carbohydrate, fat, and protein intakes and association with energy intake in normal-weight, overweight, and obese individuals: 1971–2006
    "Results: The prevalence of obesity increased from 11.9% to 33.4% in men and from 16.6% to 36.5% in women. The percentage of energy from carbohydrates increased from 44.0% to 48.7%, the percentage of energy from fat decreased from 36.6% to 33.7%, and the percentage of energy from protein decreased from 16.5% to 15.7%. "
    https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/93/4/836/4597739

    Associations of fats and carbohydrate intake with cardiovascular disease and mortality in 18 countries from five continents (PURE): a prospective cohort study
    "High carbohydrate intake was associated with higher risk of total mortality, whereas total fat and individual types of fat were related to lower total mortality. Total fat and types of fat were not associated with cardiovascular disease, myocardial infarction, or cardiovascular disease mortality, whereas saturated fat had an inverse association with stroke. Global dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings."
    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)32252-3/abstract



    You might also take both of these studies an indictment of the nutrition community and the current dietary guidlines.

    The "miracles" of keto again, huh?

    How do you explain this, then?:

    kmm4jj3k9cy6.jpg
  • All1971
    All1971 Posts: 89 Member
    edited May 2018
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    AnvilHead - here is a companion to your graph.

    mo0vgtiwrp6g.png
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/heal-the-mind-heal-the-body/201711/new-diet-ideas-the-artificial-sweeteners-controversy

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