Why were people so skinny in the 70s and 80s

[Anonymous]

Actually, working out was very popular in the 80s. Aerobics and etc. I remember watching my mom do Jane Fonda's workout and similar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I recommend the book The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollen. It's really good insight into where our food comes from and what goes into it. It's easy to say stuff like "food is more processed now", but can you explain what that means, specifically? And why that is?

Anyway the reason this relates to your question is that the entire bio-agricultural industry was different in the 70s and as a result the food people consumed was just vastly different. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich with grocery store bought ingredients today probably has scores of additional additives and preservatives and an entirely different macronutrient value as compare with the same exact sandwich made with grocery store ingredients in the 70s.

+1

People don’t understand that the nutrient density of a tomato was VASTLY different 50yrs ago than it is today…. and that’s across the board. Our soil has nothing in it anymore - industrial farming practices didn’t take into account how to maintain nutrient dense soil.

Food sustained us for longer, and kept us healthy (ie veggies and fruits with natural cancer fighting nutrients).

And then I think it’s a multitude of reasons, all of which have been named many times over on this thread.

My kids feel oppressed with the healthy food options I give them at home, but I tell them all the time I have to fight constantly what they are getting outside of our home, and it’s a balancing act. I agree that kids who struggle with weight typically struggle for their lives, and I don’t want to see that happen. I truly believe we are reinforcing the old adage, we are what we eat …. our obesity and chronic disease epidemics are indicative of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Running and working out wasn't a thing back then. My parents were skinny as heck. They played sports but weren't going to the gyn especially as they got older. Both had desk jobs. We lived in a city so not a ton of walking (it wasn't safe). Anyone feel like it's strange?

portions were smaller. For a family of five we ate one pizza, for example

[Anonymous]

Agree it's one a compilation of a lot of different things, many of which have been flagged by many PP.

One issue which I didn't note (but i quickly skimmed through the 12 pages of comments) is that we have a lot of conveniences and changes in technology and design of things we use in everyday life that have changed how many calories are burned in a standard day. I remember in the 70's, relatively few had garage openers. Most people opened the doors manually. I remember that it was a real luxury feature to get power steering and power windows on cars. Most people had to pull much harder o the steering wheel to turn and had to hand crank the windows. Most people use stairs for 1-2 floors. There were plenty of buildings with 2-4 floors that had no elevators. Cars had more metal and less fiberglass and plastic. Car doors and trunks were heavier. All shopping carts were metal and many more people used hand carry baskets instead of those new minicarts. Many more businesses had manual open doors rather than automatic doors and there were no handicapped buttons. Lawn mowers, snow blowers (for the very few that owned them) and shovels were all heavier. There are many lighter allows of metal and a lot more plastic used in common tools and conveniences than back then. There were no remote controls for TVs and if you wanted to see who was at the door, you walked there to open it. Many fewer windows had springs to make them easy/lighter to open, so you had to actually use muscles to open the house windows. Gas pumps and handles were a lot heavier. And so on.

The average person in the 1970's and 1980's used a lot more calories for the same type of living that we do today. Even if that only accounted for a couple hundred calories over the course of the day, that combined with smaller portion sizes and lower caloric intake meant that people in the 1970's had an easier time with equating calories in=calories out. Nowadays, we use less calories in daily living, portion sizes have exploded and there is a lot more caloric junk food.

[Anonymous]

This thread is interesting because we are trying to take snapshots of an era (the typical 1970s diet, the typical 2020s work schedule) and extrapolate. But all of this is on a continuum that, for some metrics, started in the Industrial Age.

My grandparents smoke and drank and had stressful lives, but they also had to walk most places (cars existed but were a luxury for many), and day-to-day life would be considered hard labor for most people I know today -- hand washing clothes, scrubbing floors on your hands and knees, not only cooking your own meals but sometimes butchering your own meat, etc. No dishwashers. Sometimes the toilet was in an outhouse instead of in the house. No TV or if you had one, there was nothing on for much of the day, so no camping your kids in front of it -- you had to chase those babies around. Yes, there were fewer chemicals in food but also way less variety, and really fresh, healthy foods could be hard to come by, so canned food was common. On the other hand, working and middle class people did not eat at restaurants often if at all, and take-out didn't exist. My grandparents were relatively thin but incredibly unhealthy -- alcoholics, plus they smoked, super high stress lives. Two of my granparents died before the age of 55. One who didn't, my maternal grandfather, went blind in his 50s and this is likely nutrition-related.

My parents had their kids in the 70s and 80s. They were thin and fit in the 70s but by the 90s they were both obese, my father had had two heart attacks, and my mom was pre-diabetic. It's hard to pinpoint what went wrong. I do think reliance on cars and other technology is a big part of it. Neither of them worked office jobs but they were both very sedentary, even with young kids. Their diet was really not that different from what they grew up with, but add in more fast food options. We still didn't go to restaurants almost at all, though, and fast food was an occasional treat, so it's not just that. I do think TV might have played a role, but I the the availability of cars and other tech probably played a bigger role in discouraging exercise -- they had jobs so it's not like that sat around watching TV all day. Neither of them really exercised except with the occasional express purpose to lose weight. My mom did Nutrifast, Slimfast, Weight Watchers, Jazzercise, etc. But nothing stuck. I think it was a negative that these were all fads that were designed to extract money but not necessarily designed for longterm commitments. It would be better to just be in the habit of walking places than to get really into Jazzercise for a few months and then decide the class fees weren't worth it because you were bored or had trouble motivating.

I do think being raised in homes with alcoholic, often abusive parents, who were themselves probably experiencing PTSD from WWII and the Great Depression, likely contributed to my parents weight gain over those two decades, and probably continues to impact their health. There is a proven link between childhood abuse and not only obesity, but a lot of obesity-linked ailments like heart disease and diabetes. Read up on ACES and the research they've done in that area. There is a reasonably hypothesis that trauma, and especially childhood trauma, impacts your central nervous system in ways that have longterm health repercussions.

So I think it's a lot of things, and most of them are cultural, institutional, not really about individual willpower or choices. Weight is one factor that can play into health, and it's not as predictive as we like to think. Specifically, thin people are not automatically healthy (especially if thin because they smoke, have anxiety, are overworked, or malnourished). The cultural narrative is that fat=lazy/bad, though, so we all play into that. But it's much more complex. People are heavier now than they used to be, but it's definitely not clear that it's because they are lazier or eat worse. I think it has to do with our entire lifestyle and the way our environment shapes our choices.

[Anonymous]

Read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" that should explain a big part of the weight gain in past 25+ years.

[Anonymous]

1969/could not find an overweight dancer in the room
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ_c-N9R-pI

[Anonymous]

No snacks. We had 3 small (by today’s standards) meals. Occasionally, kids would have a snack after school. People didn’t eat out all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually, working out was very popular in the 80s. Aerobics and etc. I remember watching my mom do Jane Fonda's workout and similar.

Same with my mom. Jane Fonda was awesome. Lots of aerobics at our community club, going to "do Nautilus", etc. She was also a jogger, even back in the 70s.

My dad was also active - biking, etc.

[Anonymous]

Sounding like a chorus here in saying it was a combination of various things. Not everyone smoked, by the 70s the smoking rate was already dropping so at least half of adults weren't smoking. And they were still thinner.

Portion sizes were smaller. Look at dinner sets from the 50s, 60s, 70s and even into the 80s and the plates and cups are smaller. Dishes started getting bigger in the 1990s. I remember when those big mugs started becoming popular. I also remember my grandparents' generation having fabulous portion control compared to my parents and us kids, even though we weren't heavy either. But I suspect many people in previous generations really did grow up with strong portion control beliefs as part of their ethos.

People's diets have also changed. And sugar seems to be a big factor behind it. For all the jokes about the 1950s and processed food it was really the mid to late 1960s when processed food started coming in on a big scale and it's possible there was a delayed effect. Sugar is added to almost all processed food in some form. And I suspect the widespread embracing of corn syrup also played a role. As perhaps even soybean products.

People did drink a lot of sodas in the 70s. Diet coke was just coming in. But a standard serving of regular coke has a sugar content that pales in comparison to the typical Starbucks coffee drink.

[Anonymous]

Where are people getting the idea that there was "no fast food" in the 70's and 80's?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You mean, why were people in the normal BMI range, contrary to now, when two thirds of adults are overweight or obese?

Because there wasn't as much junk food back then. People cooked more from scratch, and their parents had fed them normal portions, not ginormous portions, so they'd grown up knowing how much food is normal.

Today, most children in the US grow up with no knowledge of what a normal portion should look like, and perhaps no knowledge of how many meals to consume a day, and even what constitutes a meal, since adults around them are snacking all day, and encouraging them to snack. Junk food occupies the majority of most supermarket aisles, and some of it is less expensive and easier to prepare and eat than healthy carbs and vegetables. We are in a diabetes and cardiovascular disease epidemic, and every taxpayer pays the burden of their, and other people's, bad eating choices.

I grew up in the 70s and remember a ton of junk food and sodas.

What we didn’t have a lot of was take out. Or high fructose corn syrup. We had sugar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Availability of liquid calories and snacks is so much different now than it was in the 70s and 80s. The marketing is subversive, too. "Healthy" juices and smoothies that add extra calories and more grams of sugar than is recommended in a whole day. Entire aisles in the supermarket devoted to whole grain snacks, superfoods, etc. that from a macros perspective are no different than a bag of chips. Daily starbucks runs (my parents drank black coffee, maybe some cream and a couple cubes of sugar. Think of how many people now habitually consume take-out coffee drinks instead.) Add to that better accessibility to more food in general OR less accessibility to quality foods.

You must not have been around in the 70s and 80s. There was tons of soda, fruit juice, "fruit" juice (like Sunny D), Hawaiian Punch, Capri Sun, you name it. Starbucks didn't exist but we had plenty of junk to fill us up, even in the ye olde times. And plenty of weird diets, too.

I think you're all looking back with skinny-colored glasses.

Yes there were all those things. But people are also remembering correctly. All you have to do is look at old year book class photos. Or pictures from Woodstock, or the day Kennedy was assassinated. People overall were thinner then.

This is part of how this history is mis-remembered. Look at pictures of Coachella from today. You will see skinny people there, too. That's because the media and the public share (and remember) the most glamorous and sexy version of any event. It's not representative of the world - it's representative of what angle on events filters into the public memory.

I just did a Google search for Coachella 2020:







You're not getting the full view of humanity by looking at the pictures still being shared of Woodstock, just like youre not getting the full view of humanity by looking at the pictures the media is sharing of recent Coachellas. I hope you understand that!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Availability of liquid calories and snacks is so much different now than it was in the 70s and 80s. The marketing is subversive, too. "Healthy" juices and smoothies that add extra calories and more grams of sugar than is recommended in a whole day. Entire aisles in the supermarket devoted to whole grain snacks, superfoods, etc. that from a macros perspective are no different than a bag of chips. Daily starbucks runs (my parents drank black coffee, maybe some cream and a couple cubes of sugar. Think of how many people now habitually consume take-out coffee drinks instead.) Add to that better accessibility to more food in general OR less accessibility to quality foods.

You must not have been around in the 70s and 80s. There was tons of soda, fruit juice, "fruit" juice (like Sunny D), Hawaiian Punch, Capri Sun, you name it. Starbucks didn't exist but we had plenty of junk to fill us up, even in the ye olde times. And plenty of weird diets, too.

I think you're all looking back with skinny-colored glasses.

Yes there were all those things. But people are also remembering correctly. All you have to do is look at old year book class photos. Or pictures from Woodstock, or the day Kennedy was assassinated. People overall were thinner then.

Very noticable in the old Soul Train videos!

Do you really think that videos of people who were chosen to be on television because of their attractiveness are representative of the population as a whole?

Jesus you kids - don't they teach you logic and critical reasoning anymore?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Availability of liquid calories and snacks is so much different now than it was in the 70s and 80s. The marketing is subversive, too. "Healthy" juices and smoothies that add extra calories and more grams of sugar than is recommended in a whole day. Entire aisles in the supermarket devoted to whole grain snacks, superfoods, etc. that from a macros perspective are no different than a bag of chips. Daily starbucks runs (my parents drank black coffee, maybe some cream and a couple cubes of sugar. Think of how many people now habitually consume take-out coffee drinks instead.) Add to that better accessibility to more food in general OR less accessibility to quality foods.

You must not have been around in the 70s and 80s. There was tons of soda, fruit juice, "fruit" juice (like Sunny D), Hawaiian Punch, Capri Sun, you name it. Starbucks didn't exist but we had plenty of junk to fill us up, even in the ye olde times. And plenty of weird diets, too.

I think you're all looking back with skinny-colored glasses.

Yes there were all those things. But people are also remembering correctly. All you have to do is look at old year book class photos. Or pictures from Woodstock, or the day Kennedy was assassinated. People overall were thinner then.

This is part of how this history is mis-remembered. Look at pictures of Coachella from today. You will see skinny people there, too. That's because the media and the public share (and remember) the most glamorous and sexy version of any event. It's not representative of the world - it's representative of what angle on events filters into the public memory.

I just did a Google search for Coachella 2020:







You're not getting the full view of humanity by looking at the pictures still being shared of Woodstock, just like youre not getting the full view of humanity by looking at the pictures the media is sharing of recent Coachellas. I hope you understand that!

PP doesn't think those girls are skinny, that is the problem.