Older Adults Are Sharing How Eating Habits Have Drastically Changed Since They Were Kids, And Some Of These "Food Rules" Are So Bizarre To Me
Just like food trends come and go, so do eating habits. So, as someone who is always curious about how and what folks ate "back in the day," I was super interested when I saw redditor towinem ask the r/AskOldPeople community to share their food habits growing up. From what a typical meal looked like to portion sizes, here's what they had to say.
1."The whole concept of 'snacks' was quite foreign when I was a kid. It was either 'wait for dinner' or 'you already ate.' Portion size at dinner was controlled by 'this is it.' Things like sodas just weren't in the fridge, although Kool-Aid was occasionally."
"Snacks were 'have an apple.' If you weren't hungry for an apple, you weren't hungry."
2."We didn't eat out back then, except maybe on a special occasion, and lunch was usually just a sandwich. Now, eating out is commonplace, and lunch is an all-out meal for a lot of people."
3."McDonald's didn't come to town until I was a teenager; fast food didn't exist."
"Burger King and McDonald's were a payday treat when I was little. It was also the only time I could have soda."
4."Our relationship with hunger and thirst was just different. We didn't take water bottles or snacks everywhere, and you generally didn't see people eating or drinking anything unless they were socializing or having a meal. Now, it seems that we condition young children to expect food or drink whenever they have the slightest urge for it, and snacks and drinks are available almost everywhere, so you don't even need to pre-plan. Huge cultural shift."
5."Everyone smoked. That's part of it. For supper, you never had to ask what it would be: beans of some type, potatoes, and cornbread. We rarely ate meat because it cost too much. We ate what we grew in our garden."
"Thank you! No one ever thinks of smoking! It's an oral fixation and appetite suppressant. Now, people snack more to make up for it."
6."Portion sizes are vastly different, more like the 'child-sized' portions you get at restaurants now. Cokes were originally six ounces. Six! A large Coke at McDonald's is five times that now. Even coffee. You used to drink coffee in a cup, like a teacup, which is half as many ounces as the smallest Starbucks size, and that's just the drinks."
7."One thing from the '70s is that salad bars were fairly common. You could go to many restaurants and just order salad bar as a meal."
"I loved those days. Since COVID, I doubt we'll ever see one again."
8."It's changed for better and worse all at the same time. The choices to eat healthy today are incredible, and young people have options to make better choices. The process of eating healthier is EXPENSIVE. That makes zero sense to me, and it just seems backward — it should be incentivized to be healthier. Growing up in the '70s and '80s, being healthy meant eating a salad with nine gallons of dressing."
9."We had meat and potatoes and MAYBE an iceberg lettuce salad for dinner every night. A classic example would be Hamburger Helper or ground beef and mashed potatoes. For some reason, my mom would put leeks in water, which was our vegetable."
"Iceberg lettuce always. I didn't even know other kinds existed back then."
10."The transition to fattening foods really got underway when red meat and animal fats got unfairly blamed for causing heart disease while at the same time, the sugar industry buried a study that said that it was a major cause. After that, it was sugar, sugar, sugar put in EVERYTHING while falsely calling it 'heart healthy,' and they're still doing it."
"Yeah, companies pushing 'fat-free' everything with tons of other unhealthy crap added to make it taste better. Eggs were bad, butter was bad, etc. Now, we know better, but the damage was done."
11."Way more processed microwave 'meals for the family' that hit all our favorite fat/sugar/salt buttons at once for an instant high."
"The microwave oven doesn't get nearly enough credit for how it changed what, how, and when we eat. Hot meals were no longer a luxury. Although the microwave oven had been invented years earlier, it wasn't until the late 1970s that the prices had become affordable for the average American."
12."The amount of junk food consumed today is off the charts compared to then. For our family, it was a once-in-a-while thing. Otherwise, our mom made dinner almost every night. She also didn't ship us off to school with junk food."
13."I don't think people had as much disposable income then. I can count on one hand the number of times my parents ordered pizza when I was a kid (that's why pizza day in school was such a treat!). You had more stay-at-home moms, so meals were homemade more than out of a box."
14."There was bread at every meal, and our meals were eaten together at the table. Afterward, I cleaned up and closed the kitchen for the night by turning on the light over the stove."
15."We ate venison pot roast with potatoes, onions, and a side of home-canned green beans, peas, or corn. If not that, it was either meatloaf or fried chicken with scalloped or fried potatoes and one of those veggies. There was always milk for the kids, never soda. Adults always drank black coffee."
16."Our big snack was popcorn. If I wanted a dessert, I had to make it from scratch. Tang powder was a dessert (like Pixy Stix). Otherwise, candy was eaten only during holidays."
Were there any traditional food norms or rules you grew up with "back in the day"? Tell us about them in the comments or fill out this anonymous form.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
