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Old 09-08-2019, 09:24 AM
 
Location: Pittsburgh
29,648 posts, read 34,150,999 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth View Post
There weren't microwavable junk foods, but there were frozen French fries, and all manner of frozen treats, as there are now. I think the 50's and 60's was the era of the food industry catering to "convenience" for the housewife, to make food prep easier, so French fries, all manner of donuts and other sweets were easily available in packages. Individual bags of chips or pretzels were a mainstay of some kids' lunches back then; lunches packed by their moms. As often as not, potatoes in some form would be served again at dinner. Nutritional science was very basic back then, with "starch" considered to be one of the 4 main food groups. This was the era of the basic meat-and-potatoes diet, with something green--a boiled vegetable or a salad, thrown in. Starchy casseroles were popular as well. This was also the Wonderbread era; cheap empty calories for filling the stomach, not for providing nutrition.
This was definitely true for my family--I was the youngest of four and grew up mostly in the 80s. My mom was a SAHM, but she did not cook anything from scratch. We often had frozen tater tots or boxed mashed potatoes with canned vegetables as a side dish, she made Hamburger Helper and Kraft spaghetti kits for dinner. Every birthday cake she made was from a box. Lunches she packed were often packaged lunchmeat on white bread. Nobody in my family is obese, but we certainly were partaking of the plethora of convenience foods available. Which is not at all to rag on my mom--by the time I came around, she was tired.
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Old 09-08-2019, 09:25 AM
 
Location: Free From The Oppressive State
30,164 posts, read 23,560,305 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nor'Eastah View Post
It is hard to imagine anyone 30 years ago who was skinnier than 70-year-old Elizabeth Warren is today. If you look at Bernie Sanders, Lindsey Graham, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Bill Clinton....it's obvious that these people of means, all in their seventies, are getting better info on food than most of us.

If anyone here feels they have a weight problem, and may not be able to exercise as much as in their youth, here is something that may help. Eat 2 meals a day. Just have black coffee or plain tea for breakfast, then a normal lunch and dinner. Millions of people do this already, not realizing they are doing intermittent fasting. This allows you to go 16-18 hours (counting sleep time) producing zero insulin. Painless.

The weight will melt off, and your energy and mental clarity will improve.
I only eat once a day...most of the time. There are days that I completely forget to eat. Even then, I still have to be careful about what I eat or I'll gain weight. Carbs are my enemy. The good thing is, I'm not big on breads, cakes, chips, etc. I always thought of those as "dry foods" (even if the cake is moist), and I don't like them. Potatoes, on the other hand - well, that's when my Irish ancestry starts showing. So, I don't buy potatoes all that often because I know myself way too well to eat mashed potatoes like a normal human.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Burnley View Post
I totally agree with this.

Back in the 1980s there was literally like only 1 McDonald’s in the entire city of Houston that’s the 4th largest city in the nation.
I went to high school in a pretty small town. We had In N Out burger, and that was it. And that In N Out burger was a tiny little shack where you walked up to the window, ordered your food, and went home to eat it. It was not an actual restaurant.

Not too long ago, I did a Google maps tour of that town - so much has changed. Along with some of the other shocking changes are that they now have a Subway and a McDonald's. What?! That town isn't big enough to support those - but they still have them.

The only time we ever got to eat fast food was either:

1) Back to school clothes shopping and we drove to a city about an hour away to do that - we'd get to eat at BK or McDs.

2) Very, very rarely - so rare I think I can count the times on one hand, we would get to have those In N Out burgers, or we'd get a pizza. That hardly ever happened. And I remember them so well because it hardly ever happened.

Quote:
Originally Posted by RamenAddict View Post
You can’t honestly say that your body in 1982 is the same as your body is in 2019. Most people who were alive in 1982 can’t eat and drink the same things now as they could in 1982 and feel this same way. Younger bodies (assuming they were not child bodies) can take more than older adult bodies can.
I completely agree with this. Above, I wrote about my love for mashed potatoes. When I was younger, I could eat as much of them as I wanted and not gain an ounce. Now? It's best I stay away from them because I can't do that anymore - but I love them so much.

Quote:
Originally Posted by WouldLoveTo View Post
They are both part of the problem (processed and grains).

As a kid in the 70s, we rarely went to McDonalds. The closest one to us was not in a good area. We had Friendly's and Howard Johnson's, but even those were rare treats.

My mom baked every weekend. We were allowed 3 cookies as a snack. We often got an apple in our punchbag - but not with cookies, it was either or.

I do remember sneaking cookies into the classroom - it really wasn't allowed. Nor were drinks. The thought of so many kids bringing coffee into the classroom these days is frankly shocking to me.
Yes! We were never allowed to eat in class. We would have to write 100 sentences about not even chewing gum in class. (Ask me how I know.)

As for packed lunches, we would get a sandwich, a fruit, and a granola bar for "dessert". Whee. What a dessert. Some kids got to have Twinkies and other things, and a lot of kids ate the horrible school lunches every day, but even then, we were still really active. We had P.E. that everyone took - you didn't see large groups of people sitting out of P.E. class. We had our sports activities after school, all year round. Half the people in the high school I went to went skiing every Saturday in the winter - we would get on the bus at the high school and go to the closest ski resort. Almost everyone was in the community pool in the summer.

We had a river, we had lakes nearby, people went boating, water skiing, swimming, etc. We did have video games, but none of us were allowed to just sit in the house playing video games - almost every kid I knew was outside until the street lights came on, because that's just what we did.

I don't see that anymore, not even in smaller towns.
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Old 09-08-2019, 09:28 AM
 
Location: State of Transition
102,077 posts, read 107,088,272 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
Except they were real potatoes. Just plain cut and frozen potatoes.



Available but not eaten as frequently as today. Chemical preservation wasn't nearly as perfected as it is now--Hostess Twinkies actually went stale fairly quickly back then. There might have been some moms packing such things in lunches, but not often--they were expensive.

And, again, mothers still cooked back then. Most lunches were leftovers from the previous night's dinner.



Real food, though, with far fewer chemical additives.



Which relatively few people take advantage of. That kind of food is expensive and requires kitchen preparation.




All that means it was easier in the 80s,
We're speaking from different experiences, based on different demographic groups, it sounds like. Are you saying, that kids' school lunches in your day consisted of leftovers from the dinner before? Most lunches in my observation, and according to the aggressive advertising of the day, were made up of sandwiches made from Wonderbread. Leftovers from yesterday's dinner would be far more nutritious than the fake-food Wonderbread + cheese, or Wonderbread & processed sliced meats, or peanut butter.

What are the chemical additives in home-prepared dinners today? I guess I'm not familiar with people using packaged foods. You're talking about microwaveable meals? Back in the day, the equivalent was TV dinners, and don't tell me those were "real food". They had chemical additives, too, and were quite popular.

Yes, the fact that poverty has increased in the US does mean it was easier to be a healthy weight back in the 80's, but for a reason other than what's being discussed here. It's a major factor in the picture, that needs to be acknowledged. Some of the eating habits or food choices discussed here as contributing to obesity are socio-economic-group-related to a certain extent.

If the percentage of the US population that's obese has increased to 1/3 of the population, perhaps as we try to identify causes and solutions, we should be discussing contributing factors to the increase in poverty and decreased access to higher education, and how to resolve those trends. It's the elephant in the room, IMO.
Whatever happened to the President's campaign promise of bringing industry back home to US workers? Why is the federal budget being gutted in order to fund tax giveaways to the rich, when what's needed are more college scholarships, Pell Grants, and affordable loans, job training and re-training, etc.? If there's "fat" to be trimmed from the budget (we all know it's basic gov't functions and services being trimmed, not "fat", but for the sake of argument...), why are the funds liberated from supposed "waste" not being used more constructively, to give marginalized populations and others at risk a leg up? That would be one way to curb the increase in obesity. Instead, our attention is being diverted by vapid videos attempting to case the blame on as yet unproven bogeyman factors.

Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 09-08-2019 at 09:46 AM..
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Old 09-08-2019, 09:38 AM
 
Location: Free From The Oppressive State
30,164 posts, read 23,560,305 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth View Post
We're speaking from different experiences, based on different demographic groups, it sounds like. Are you saying, that kids' school lunches in your day consisted of leftovers from the dinner before? Most lunches in my observation, and according to the aggressive advertising of the day, were made up of sandwiches made from Wonderbread. Leftovers from yesterday's dinner would be far more nutritious than the fake-food Wonderbread + cheese, or Wonderbread & processed sliced meats, or peanut butter.

What are the chemical additives in home-prepared dinners today? I guess I'm not familiar with people using packaged foods. You're talking about microwaveable meals? Back in the day, the equivalent was TV dinners, and don't tell me those were "real food". They had chemical additives, too, and were quite popular.

Yes, the fact that poverty has increased in the US does mean it was easier to be a healthy weight back in the 80's, but for a reason other than what's being discussed here. It's a major factor in the picture, that needs to be acknowledged. Some of the eating habits or food choices discussed here as contributing to obesity are socio-economic-group-related to a certain extent.

If the percentage of the US population that's obese has increased to 1/3 of the population, perhaps as we try to identify causes and solutions, we should be discussing contributing factors to the increase in poverty and decreased access to higher education, and how to resolve those trends. It's the elephant in the room, IMO.
You are not wrong about the price of packaged foods being cheaper than raw foods. I stated that in my previous post to you. The thing is, back in the day, the raw foods were the cheaper food, and the packaged foods cost more.

I was a young kid back then, but I know very well that raw food was cheaper because my mom made me cook dinner once a week after I opened my mouth and complained that we "never got anything good".

What I had meant was that we never got to have those packaged foods for meals. We always got the fresh, raw foods that had to be cooked and took an hour to prepare a meal. So, she made me go to the store with her, on her weekly shopping trip, and I would have to pick out the ingredients for whatever I would make on Thursday nights. The packaged foods were more expensive, but way easier to make. The raw foods were cheaper, and it meant I had to stand in the kitchen monitoring them for an hour.

My parents were ridiculously frugal - do you think I got to make packaged foods on Thursdays? No.
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Old 09-08-2019, 09:49 AM
 
7,289 posts, read 4,061,940 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Burnley View Post
I totally agree with this.

Back in the 1980s there was literally like only 1 McDonald’s in the entire city of Houston that’s the 4th largest city in the nation.
This is quite a stretch. I worked at a McDonalds in 1981 in Victoria, Texas (near Houston, population 60,000). There were two McDonalds in Victoria at the time.
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Old 09-08-2019, 10:03 AM
 
9,952 posts, read 6,594,214 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Three Wolves In Snow View Post
You are not wrong about the price of packaged foods being cheaper than raw foods. I stated that in my previous post to you. The thing is, back in the day, the raw foods were the cheaper food, and the packaged foods cost more.

I was a young kid back then, but I know very well that raw food was cheaper because my mom made me cook dinner once a week after I opened my mouth and complained that we "never got anything good".

What I had meant was that we never got to have those packaged foods for meals. We always got the fresh, raw foods that had to be cooked and took an hour to prepare a meal. So, she made me go to the store with her, on her weekly shopping trip, and I would have to pick out the ingredients for whatever I would make on Thursday nights. The packaged foods were more expensive, but way easier to make. The raw foods were cheaper, and it meant I had to stand in the kitchen monitoring them for an hour.

My parents were ridiculously frugal - do you think I got to make packaged foods on Thursdays? No.
It probably depends on where you live and what was available. Raw foods might be cheaper if you had a good growing season and were in an area that grew a lot. I grew up in Florida and some foods grew during the winter months, but during around May-Oct, forget it. I assume that is common for most of the US with a growing season. However, in the ‘80s, cans were cheap. I went with my parents shopping every week and most of our vegetables and fruits were from cans except for the ones that were pretty easy to get fresh like citrus and bananas. My lunch was deli meat and Wonderbread. We also had a lot of casseroles. So to the extent that “processed food” has changed, it has always been less expensive. It is just not in the same format today as it used to be.
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Old 09-08-2019, 11:12 AM
 
Location: Majestic Wyoming
1,567 posts, read 1,172,347 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph_Kirk View Post
There are a number of factors involved.

First, remember that we're talking about the overall population here. The percentage of people whose diet is wholly or consistently organic is very small. The number of people whose diet is largely or wholly ultra-processed food is the much greater percentage. And we know that ultra-processed food not only contains chemical additives and adulterating elements that have many known detrimental effects, but also that it is deliberately formulated to increase the desire to eat more.

Back in the 60s and 70s, almost nobody had a diet that was so predominantly ultra-processed food. That's one big difference. The few pesticides carried into foods in those days pale in number to what's in food today. We practically were eating organic back then, comparatively speaking.

It's not just taking in fewer calories, it's taking in the right calories, and that has dropped into a well since the 60s and 70s.

A second difference is that back in the 60s and 70s we did not consume calories as often during the course of the day. Every time you take in calories (and, as well, consume artificial sweeteners), it spikes the blood insulin level. Carbohydrates spike the level higher, but everything causes a spike. It takes several hours for the insulin level to drop back down.

These days, it's breakfast before work, Starbucks as soon as we get to work, more Starbucks and a snack in mid morning, a soda or two, then lunch, then mid-afternoon Starbucks and a snack, more soda. A snack on the way home, another snack before dinner, then more snacks before bed. Insulin levels stay high all day long, and eventually it leads to insulin resistance and diabetes.

But, wait, there' s more! Stress also induces the release of cortisol into the bloodstream. Cortisol plus insulin at the same time sends blood sugar straight to fat. Eating while stressed makes people fatter. Stress at work plus constant snacking (including sodas) makes people fatter.

Back in the 60s and 70s, we commonly went five or six or more hours between taking any calories at all. In school, there was nothing but water between breakfast at home and lunch at school, and then nothing but water again until we got home.

Then when we got home, it was "don't eat until we have dinner or you'll spoil your appetite." After school snacking was invented by food companies in the late 60s. I remember the commercials. So our insulin levels rarely stayed high all day long.

Working people seldom had more than the quick mid-morning coffee break, and you had to have a "good" job even to get that. Nor was there much in the way of vending machines to provide snacks at your desk (and you had to have a really good job to have a desk).

It's not only reducing calories, but also reducing the number of times per day calories are consumed--and that has exploded since the 60s and 70s.

And the bad thing is that young people today don't realize that their diet is so vastly different from diets of their parents.

There is going to be an epidemic of death from diabetes and high blood pressure that is going to slash through the black American Millennial population like a pandemic in about 20 years. It's going to look like genocide. I'm sure the preponderance of obese young black women is clearly obvious on the street.

But if you comb through the Internet for pictures of young black women from earlier than the 80s, you will see that these "thic" derrieres on young women are actually a very recent phenomenon. Black people used to be thin until late middle age (like everyone else).

Diabetes doesn't care about your "body positive" attitude.
Ralph summed it all up nicely so I won't go repeat it all. It's insulin resistance because of the non-stop eating we do, that's what makes us fat and eventually diabetic. Stop eating all the time. You don't need breakfast, you don't need snacks all day long. You need to fast for 16+ hours to get your body back on track and your insulin levels down again.
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Old 09-08-2019, 12:37 PM
 
Location: A coal patch in Pennsyltucky
10,290 posts, read 10,535,010 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RamenAddict View Post
Wonder bread was introduced in the 20s. Canned food was popular in the ‘50s as were frozen dinners.
Anyone remember TV dinners?

Speculating here, but I wonder how much microwave ovens have contributed to the increase in obesity? The increase in microwave ovens roughly correlates to the increase in obesity being discussed here. From Wikipedia, "By 1986, roughly 25% of households in the U.S. owned a microwave oven, up from only about 1% in 1971;[19] the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that over 90% of American households owned a microwave oven in 1997."
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Old 09-08-2019, 12:41 PM
 
Location: equator
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Originally Posted by James Bond 007 View Post
No, it is true - it really is more complicated than that.

Read Wheat Belly by William Davis. Wheat (and other grains, but mostly wheat) have actually changed in the past 30 or so years. Today's wheat invokes a greater insulin response than the wheat of just 30 years ago, due to various effects of selective breeding. That insulin response is what makes you gain weight. A slice of bread will make you fatter than the same slice of bread 30 years ago.

There are other factors as well, such as increased plastics packaging of foods, etc. There are chemicals in plastics that are known endocrine blockers, which can lead to increased obesity.

Even the increased use of PVC piping contains chemicals that are known to increase obesity and diabetes.
Great post. I've read "Wheat Belly" and watched all of Davis' You-Tubes, which you non-readers might like. The amount of pesticides and other toxins in the environment and products are just now showing results.

Wheat is totally different than 30 years ago. Even whole-grain.

The effect of all this is not just weight gain. I believe the hugely increased rates of autism and diabetes, ADD-problems---all point to this plethora of modern issues outlined above.
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Old 09-08-2019, 12:42 PM
 
Location: equator
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazy4Chickens View Post
Ralph summed it all up nicely so I won't go repeat it all. It's insulin resistance because of the non-stop eating we do, that's what makes us fat and eventually diabetic. Stop eating all the time. You don't need breakfast, you don't need snacks all day long. You need to fast for 16+ hours to get your body back on track and your insulin levels down again.
Exactly. I only eat once a day---dinner. Even at that, I only maintain, not lose. Cook all from scratch, too.

It's a losing battle ---LOL. I wish.
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