What kids eat now compared with what you had at their age

My diet in the 50s was plain but nutritious. All cooked from scratch of course. Meat pies and puddings, liver, a chop, stews, sausages and plenty of fruit and veg grown by Dad. Fish on Fridays. Always homemade cake, fruit pies and steamed puddings and occasionally jelly and blancmange. A roast on Sundays but never chicken as it was very expensive then. Turkey for Christmas and maybe chicken for Easter. I remember how wonderful fish fingers and beef burgers were when they appeared, also Birds Instant Whip which was replaced by the much more sugary Angel Delight. And of course eventually the exotic Vesta packet meals, only for me as a teenager though! Mum didn’t cook curries or pasta. I think Dad preferred plain English cooking, and she was good at that. And yes, though Mum was always very generous with food plate sizes and therefore portion sizes were smaller then.
What I wouldn’t give to enjoy Mum’s cooking with her again!

My mum was a very plain cook but my dad was a good adventurous cook. A lot of his dishes were based around roadkill. We lived in the country and it was not at all unusual for him to appear with a rabbit, hare or pheasant which he would pluck or skin and then cook. Judged hare was a favourite of his - but not mine!! He would also make curries in the frying pan, which meant we had yellow fried eggs for days after.

We did also have great desserts tho. I remember in particular a baked jam roly poly. Heaven!
With custard! Yum

My mother made curry with leftover meat from the Sunday joint with curry powder.

However, the first time I tasted Spaghetti Bolognaise was when it was cooked by another girl when I was 18.

The thing is, when many of us were young, there just was not the variety of food stuffs readily available to buy in the shops that there is now, so our diets tended to be plainer

There was still rationing for years after WW2 too.

We had a large garden and my dad grew most of the veg we needed, the butcher delivered twice a week and the fishmonger on a Friday. We had a joint of beef, pork or lamb on a Sunday and cheaper cuts like stewing beef, belly pork, mince, sausage, liver etc in the week served with fresh veg and potatoes. Chicken was reserved for Christmas when we had a capon, occasionally we’d have a chicken at Easter. My mum was a good baker and we rarely had brought cakes, we’d eat what was in season, rhubarb or gooseberries out of the garden made into a crumble or pie, homegrown strawberries & raspberries with a block of ice cream or carnation milk or made into jam for cakes & tarts, we also had apple, pear and plum trees. Both grandmas and my mum pickled onions, red cabbage etc and made homemade lemon curd. We had very few snacks, maybe one bag of crisps a week each with our Sunday tea and the odd custard cream or cream crackers, occasionally we’d have something like a club biscuit or Taxi bar. We always had a full fruit bowl but would have half a piece of fruit each rather than a whole one. I didn’t start eating yoghurt till I was about 12 when Ski came in churn shaped pots, my favourite was the pineapple flavour but I only got one occasionally as a treat. Now & then we would have fish and chips but other than that no takeaways, we might have a crusty cheese & onion or ham cob at a country pub in the summer. I can’t remember people having takeaway coffees back then either.
I suppose one of the biggest differences now is the variety and availability of food products. Also the massive increase in the number of takeaways and meals out people have. Lots of restaurants and pubs now welcome families which didn’t happen when I was a child although I don’t think we would have been able to afford eating out all the time. We now have some great restaurants and delicious foods from different cultures available in the supermarkets.Unfortunately a lot of the popular snack foods and takeaways are just full of junk. Looking back we had quite a healthy well balanced diet.

Don't laugh!! I've no idea how my post ended up on the wrong thread.
I've reported it and asked for it to be moved to the correct thread.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

The thing is, when many of us were young, there just was not the variety of food stuffs readily available to buy in the shops that there is now, so our diets tended to be plainer. Now, foodstuffs from all over the world can be bought here quite easily.
Also, travel abroad became more easily available to many more people, which has helped to broaden our tastes, to the extent that we wanted to try to recreate some of these dishes once back home. (The wide variety of recipe books covering dishes from all over the world is probably a reflection of this desire).
When I was a child, we never travelled abroad as it was unaffordable at that time for us, so we never got to sample different cuisine, other than the occasional Vesta curry! (Remember those?😂).

We ate mainly Danish food, as my mother was Danish and loved cooking, so cooked a wide variety of dishes.

The Scottish dishes that either were cheap, like stovies, or things Daddy was not prepared to do without, like steak and kidney pie were served regularly as well, but my mother drew the line at steamed puddings, which she found detestable, so we only had apple dumpling once a year, on Daddy's birthday, and never any other steamed pudding except for Christmas pudding.

Happily for me our school cook made the most delicious steamed puddings - treacle, jam, swiss roll, as well as apple tarts, mince pies and all served with lashings of custard.

I don't remember much about Mum's cooking, except I liked it. Mince and tatties a lot. Home made pie.
Baked or steamed jam sponge, roly poly, "hair wash pudding" (Durban pudding, I think), blancmange. Hm. Beginning to spot the beginnings of my sugar addiction!
Bacon sandwiches - floppy bacon on sliced white bread, still the only way!

Sunday breakfast always bacon and egg and a few mushrooms for a treat. Always a Sunday roast but only ever chicken at Christmas and Easter, it was too expensive.

Cold leftover mince on toast for a teatime treat!

My mum was an excellent cook and had trained as a baker when she first left school. She made spag bol, gammon in orange sauce and other slightly exotic fare. Her puddings and cakes were the best. We were lucky that my grandparents had a large orchard so we were never short of apples, pears and plums.

Ours was mostly a meat-and-two-veg household. My dad had an allotment which supplied some fruit and veg. My grandad lived with us and he ate pigs trotters and tripe etc but mum would never give those to us.

She tried out new things, I recall clearly her coming home with our first ever spaghetti not out of a tin. A big long blue paper-wrapped pack! Also mild curries and something called kidney Lorraine which I loved.

Mum is in her mid-90’s now and still likes to try new recipes!

Nothing remotely 'foreign' in our house either. We did have well cooked meals though with lots of vegetables. I remember how the Sunday joint used to stretch for three days, roast on Sunday, cold on Monday and cottage pie on Tuesday.
I also remember rice pudding made with evaporated milk, delicious.

My Mum made curry, always with added apple and sultanas. Also ‘Chicken Marengo’. Her dinner party speciality. Basically chicken pieces cooked with a tin of plum tomatoes. Otherwise our food was quite basic being there was still rationing for some things.

We had boiled potatoes almost every day with overcooked veg en stewed beef with gravy. Sometimes liver or kidney. Mondays if we were lucky, was left over day with all leftovers mixed with macaroni topped with cheese and breadcrumbs in the oven. Only time the oven was used, it was the place where shoe polish and brushes lived! This was in holland. For pudding either fruit or plain yoghurt with a desert spoon of sugar, or once a week vanilla or chocolate custard which all came in glass liter bottles delivered by the milkman, horse and cart when i was v little! Chips were strictly for our birthdays. I can remember smelling the chip fat stored in the chip pan in the cellar, when walking down the cellar steps. Oh the extasy when packets of nasi goreng came in, so exotic and actually tasted of something, then came the inevitable spag bol and i left home. Never eaten a boiled potato since!

Meat from the butchers, veggies from the garden, baking by mum and like you Greyduster you could tell what day it was. Next door were more adventurous and had Spaghetti Bolognaise once a week. I’d never heard of it until they moved in!

Still shudder at the thought of wednesdays dinner of ribs stewed in water with barley. Lumpy mash on the side soaked in greasy gravy.She did make a wonderful Sunday roast with all the trimmings though.

Pasta was unheard of, apart from macaroni cheese or macaroni pudding. Had lasagne for the first time on holiday in South Wales, mid 80’s.

I grew up thinking that peaches were out of a tin, sliced in heavy syrup. Didn’t know they were a whole fruit in their own right.

Never had curries or anything remotely ‘foreign’ or spicy. Garlic was a definite no no.

Yogurts, well they were the Ski ones, probably knew about them in my mid teens, but Mum thought they were made with sour milk, so another no no.

As for pizzas, hamburgers, pot noodles, never knew what they were until grown up.

Food was plain and you could tell what day it was by what was served, week after week. My mother cooked to suit my father’s tastes, which meant pies with enormously thick crusts and lots of stews. Nothing remotely exotic. But she did make the most amazing rabbit stew, with Yorkshire pudding seasoned with sage and onion. A new gas oven came with a cookbook full of promise and things that made my mouth water. Did she ever cook anything out of it? Not a chance. All I could do was read it and dream!

Plain homegrown food at home and at grans with the odd pigeon thrown in. Everyone seemed to have an allotment or the back garden was for veg. I was lucky an Italian aunt lived on the same street and I went to her house and was introduced to Italian food.
My father had been in the forces with Americans during WW2 so when we went on holiday he would buy doughnuts, hamburgers and chips with mayonnaise which we never saw in our town,

Casdon

My mum was like yours GagaJo, we had lots of ‘foreign’ spicy dishes, which we loved. The only thing I can remember that we all (four children and my dad) refused to eat was Moules Mariniere - we had bread and jam, whilst my mum and the neighbours enjoyed them.

My dad had a shotgun, which added to the 'luxury' feel of our diet. We frequently ate duck, pheasant and rabbit. All delicious, unless cooked by dad, because he didn't get all the bones out. Yuck! I had no idea pheasant was posh food until I became a nanny for an aristocratic couple in London.

Breakfast was porridge made with water, served with a spoonful of sugar.and a dash of milk.

We had two plain biscuits with milk at fist school break.

Meat and veg for lunch followed by pudding and custard on school days. Bread and jam when at home.

Dinner was served on small plates and again was meat and two veg. Except for Fridays when we had fish.

A snack consisted of a rare packet of crisps or half a piece of fruit. A picnic was a bottle of water, bread and jam and biscuits.

My children have access to an ever expanding range of foodstuffs and dinner plates now are so large that many of them wouldn’t fit in my dishwasher. (I use dessert plates for my meals.)

My mother was a great baker, of bread, pastry and cakes but not so good when it came to meals.

I remember her making stews which she would turn into a curry by sprinkling curry powder on top when serving. All veg was overcooked, the first time we had corn on the cob she boiled it for an hour, and mushrooms were also boiled for an hour.

My mum was like yours GagaJo, we had lots of ‘foreign’ spicy dishes, which we loved. The only thing I can remember that we all (four children and my dad) refused to eat was Moules Mariniere - we had bread and jam, whilst my mum and the neighbours enjoyed them.

This is bringing back the nightmare that was mum's Hawaiian mince. We had plain fare but it was well cooked. Her baking day was Monday, scones, pancakes, gypsy creams, oat biscuits, custard tart and an apple tart were regulars. She decided to experiment and the Hawaiian mince was not repeated. Ordinary mince with the addition of tomato paste and tinned pineapple chunks. 🤮 Her repertoire improved with Charlotte Russe, amaretto chocolate tart and much more. In the 70s my attempt at exotic food was a Vesta chow mein.

We had raw untreated milk which I didn’t like. We generally had plain nutritious food, we had tinned food but it was mostly unprocessed. I’m finding I’m craving the diet of my childhood more. To drink it was either water or milk. One treat I do remember and haven’t had for decades but would love now- Nestles Milk.