What was your childhood diet?

ragz_2

Older diets are not necessarily good ones, a shortage of decent food meant many filled up on bread etc because they HAD to... (Jam sandwiches are NOT a meal, though my sister feeds them to her kids!)

Personally, my Mum was a vegtarian, with a very small kitchen and I remember a lot of tinned beans with sausaged in them and tinned spaghetti! Mum's homemade chips were divine though...

Rather than replicating 20th century English diets try looking at diets of other cultures (preferable ones with fewer food related health issues) for inspiration.

Hardup_Hester

Born 51.
My childhood diet was sporadic, my Mum was too young & had little interest in cooking.
Sometimes a meal would be a few spoonfuls of condensed milk, sometimes skate in black butter. If Mum did cook a meal she never cooked any veg with it, no potatoes or anything else.
Veg in the form of frozen peas were served occasionally on Sunday with roast chicken of which only the breast was eaten the rest was binned.
Hester

Mojoworking

I was born in the late 70's and I remember Brain's Faggots in a gravy with mash - I loved this up until that bit in the film I think it was Jewel in the Nile with Michael Douglas and they eat the monkey brains and I was convinced that I was in fact being conned into eating brains - this was around the time my nan had given me a tongue sandwich so I was deeply suspicious of everything.

Always had a Sunday roast - I do remember in the very early 80's my dad was out of work and we used to get cereal for tea as a "treat" and beans on toast - years later mum told me it was because there was nothing else in the house.

Towards the late 80's I have fond memories of shepherds pie, sunday roasts, beefburger beans and chips in the deep fat fryer and we used to have a sandwich (invariable some unidentifiable paste usually fish!) a club biscuits or similar and bag of crisp in our lunch boxes. Only remember drinking diluting orange juice and for a treat soda stream.

Fray bentos pies were a rare treat.

We used to sometimes have ice cream as a treat and very occassionally a bread and butter pudding which was gorgeous.

I loved staying at my nan's as she always seemed to have vienetta.

bearcub

It would be very interesting if my DD1 posts on this thread (she posts regularly elsewhere on MSE), as she was born in the 80s. I think she'd say she had a pretty good diet. I was born in the 50s and, as I remember, we had good wholesome food, but solid IYKWIM. Breakfast would be porridge or toast and jam, or maybe a fried egg at weekends. Lunch was at school during the week, but we had a roast dinner every Sunday, followed by a filling pud like bread and butter pud, Spotted !!!!!! or jam roly poly with custard. I can remember feeling really miffed that I was so full-up with Mum's roast potatoes (roast potatoes are still a great favourite of mine!), I had little room for pud. Evening meals during the week would be sausages (from the butcher), or chops or stew. I have ALWAYS hated stewed beef and lamb (it actually made me heave, I was incapable of swallowing it), as did my dad, so poor Mum did the meat and veg separately for me and dad, while Mum and my sister had stew. What I found out in my teens was that there was rarely enough meat to go round for all four of us, so Dad got most, sister and I got some each, and often Mum went without. I suspect she wasn't the only mother that did that in the early and mid 50s.

midnightraven3

another child of the 70s here

my dad was a chef
so dinner was never anything mundane
i looooooooooonged for chips, i had them once a year on our holiday:o
all of my friends loved an invite to dinner
he did everything possible to make meat appealing to me
but i just couldnt (didnt like the texture)

sundays were my favourite days
relaxed brunch and the only day we had a relaxed snacky dinner and pudding

THIRZAH

I was born in 1955. We ate traditional English food. Everything was cooked from scratch. My mother did buy bread but made all cakes, pastry, jams, chutneys and bottled fruit. We grew nearly all our fruit and vegetables although I think we did buy a sack of potatoes from a local farmer.

We always had a cooked breakfast-eggs or bacon or sausages occasionally porridge. Our main meal was at lunchtime. We always had meat-couldn't buy fish in our village-veg and potatoes followed by a proper pudding. Then we'd have high tea in the evening-usually something cooked, salad sometimes in the summer with bread and butter followed by cake-home made of course.
I used to envy the girl next door-they had shop bought cake and things like fish fingers or Heinz tomato soup for tea-and her clothes came from a shop, mine were home made or my cousins cast offs.

fluffpot

B 1966.

I remember LOTS of mince - spag bol, shepherds pie etc. Also liver - with horrible tubes in it - yeuch! Corned beef hash - with the leftover veg from Sunday lunch (always roast chicken)

Then as freezers became more widely available findus crispy pancakes, some sort of pizza baguette things with stringy cheese - horrible thinking back!

Lots of beans on toast with scrambled eggs - 1 tin of beans between 2 adults and children!

Puddings were ice cream or butterscotch angel delight!

I've now been veggie for 20+ years and always cook from scratch!


Oh yeah - just remembered we always had faggots, peas and chips on a Tuesday and the only day we were allowed to eat in front of the TV watching John Cravens Newsround!

bearcub

Mum always cooked everything from scratch, and we've always done so, too, except for a while when DD2 first became a veggie. It took us a while to adapt, but we got there. OH and I now have at least two veggie meals a week, so DD2 did us a great favour. For nearly all of our marriage, I cooked during the week, OH cooked at weekends. When OH retired, he took over cooking all the meals. Although I quite enjoy cooking the 'bad for you' stuff, like puds and cakes (which we rarely eat nowadays), I find cooking meals deadly boring, while he enjoys it. We grew the vast majority of our veg and fruit, too. Sadly, we can only grow a small proportion now, as our garden is tiny. Amazing how much you can grow in a small space, though.

suki_na_tomodachi

I was born in 85, and my mother was a single mother, and didn't work until i was in my late teens. I was also a fussy eater, but mostly had processed foods. I lived on simple things like ham and cucumber sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, cheese on toast, beans and toast, beans, egg and HM chips (i still to this day only like my mothers HM chips), sunday roast for me was chicken/pork (beef or lamb as a treat) and smash with 2 yorkshire puds, didnt like veg when i was younger, apart from a raw peeled carrot after i ate my dinner (still dont like carrots cooked). I also had tinned soups with bread and butter, tinned spaghetti with bread and butter, and egg and soldiers. I also had fruit as an "after".

Lizling

Born in 1980.

I had a stay at home mum and we weren't on a tight budget, but I remember lots of tinned stuff: tinned beans and sausages, tinned ravioli, tinned spaghetti, tinned tomato soup, tinned peaches... Everything was served with plain veg, usually green beans, peas or carrots or very basic salad with no dressing or anything. I remember one time mum tried to give us spinach instead but she boiled it like she'd do with the peas and served it on its own, and it was a horrible, soggy mess.

Other things we had a lot, which weren't from a tin, were pork chops with mash and peas, shepherds pie, fish pie (which was the one thing I just couldn't eat), beef stew, and macaroni or cauliflower cheese, spag bol with parmesan from a shaker on top. There was also at least one attempt at curry, which had raisins in. I remember picking all the raisins out. Sundays was usually a roast and a proper pudding with custard. Sunday evenings was cheese on toast or crumpets. Very, very occasionally, we got a Chinese takeaway but that might have been the early 90s by then.

School was spam and grey mash, meat pie and grey mash, sausages and grey mash, cheese flan or cheese salad. Being a vegetarian (which I was by about 1989) meant having to take packed lunch because vegetarians weren't catered for every day.

80s food was a bit rubbish really.