Why were Americans of all ages so thin during the 1960s and 1970s?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
|
I'm on the smaller side, everyone in school was always bigger/heavier than me but only a few are what I would say is considered obese.
I had sugary cereal with chocolate Ovaltine for breakfast, sugary snacks afterschool (usually those pink frosted animal cookies or sugar wafers), pizza takeout a few times a month, french fries/onion rings from Burger King or McDs pretty regularly, Little Debbie snacks with milk before bed. I watched a few cartoons after school but played outside the rest of the time until dinner and weekends I was out from morning to night when the weather was nice. |
Anonymous
|
We rarely ate out, maybe a few times a year at McDonalds.
No cable t.v. or remote! Had to get up and manually change the channel. Of which there were only a few to choose from. Played outside or rode bikes everywhere. We also walked to school, no buses. The only snacking was after school. No one carried around food or drinks. |
Anonymous
Mine too! My sister's and I never wanted seconds. |
Anonymous
|
There are a lot of theories here but I think it's a combination of factors. People are pinging in on the theories that illustrate differences between their own childhoods. But everybody grew up differently. I think a lot of the theories too are based on your own biases.
The studies show that generally we are taking in about 20% more calories now than we did decades ago. we ate fluffernutters and Twinkies and Stouffer's meals back then; we eat better now, but we eat more. I think therd are also maybe chemical and hormonal imbalances in play, and for childhood obesity, definitely a more sedentary lifestyle. But we adults aren't any more sedentary now than we were. I |
Anonymous
If the weather was nice, I think all we did inside was homework, eating meals, and doing chores. |
Anonymous
Oh yeah I remember Ovaltine and Swiss Miss. |
Anonymous
| Portion size. Which is also correlated with eating out a lot less |
Anonymous
|
No theory. There's data (Sorry I don't have a source handy, but more of our income used to go to food.)
Food was more expensive, particularly junk food. Since we ate less processed food and we ate less sugar. We didn't drink soda (it was pretty pricy). |
Anonymous
|
I was a kid in the 60s and 70s and was thin until I broke my arm doing cartwheels and my mom freaked and wouldn’t let me play outside for a while. But I rode my bike all over, played jump rope, 4 square, 7-up, tag, and walked a mile each way to school.
We didn’t eat snacks all the time and carry them everywhere. You ate your lunch at school, then you maybe had a cookie when you got home. Dinner was meat, starch, veggie or maybe jello salad. No HFC, and Diet Coke wasn’t invented until 1982. We went out to dinner once a week to a steakhouse. There were no McDonald’s in my town until I was in HS. We had pizza places and a fried chicken place, but only got those every once in a while. More people smoked. If you watch old Soul Train reruns the people are super skinny. |
Anonymous
| its not the sugar but the corn syrup.Its a proven endocrine disruptor, totally screws up so many body functions. People also eat way larger portions at meals now. They may have eaten more snack food back then but they also didnt eat a massive portion of dinner that is big enough for two. |
Anonymous
|
^^ and because it was expensive, we just plain ate less.
and we ate at home. |
Anonymous
| Kids also didnt snack non stop back then. sorry, kids do NOT need snack after 45 min of soccer. These are five year olds and are basically just standing aroud anyhow on the field. The snack culture in america is out of control. |
Anonymous
|
I think we start things off badly now, with this idea that babies and toddlers need to snack all the time.
From the earliest days, my kids got three meals a day, and one snack (whether the snack was in the morning or afternoon depended on when their naps were. That is, when they had the longest awake stretch between meals.) And they never ate on the run. Snacks were eaten at the table, just like meals. They didn't drink milk all the time like so many kids. Or juice. All they drank was water. I know people will say I was a mean mom, but they never asked for snacks between times. One result of the meal schedule was that when they did have meals or a snack, they ate more than their peers, because they'd actually waited long enough to work up an appetite. (This also helped them be less picky eaters, in my opinion.) Call me a sanctimommy if you want, but I feel it worked well to snack less. (and yes, there were exceptions to the rule if there needed to be. But my kids never begged for food. They were too busy!) I think too many parents offer food as appeasement (you're upset? Want a yogurt?) or as a reward (you've been so good! Let's get an ice cream!) |
Anonymous
You are not posting any information about people being very thin in the 60s and 70s. You continue to post information about how fat people are NOW. Do you really not see the difference???? There's a difference between people being fat now and people being very thin in the 70's. Is this not clear to you? |
Anonymous
Ohh the Jello Salads/molds. We had Jello in one of those green circular molds shaped like a bundt cake. |