Eating In The 50's
indianwells
Posts: 12,702 Forum Member
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I received this via email this morning and thought it was quite funny.:)
Pasta had not been invented.
Curry was a surname.
A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
All crisps were plain, the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.
A Chinese chippy was a foreign carpenter.
Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever, part of our dinner.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Coffee was Camp, and came in a bottle.
Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
Only Heinz made beans.
Fish didn't have fingers in those days.
Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
Indian restaurants were only found in India.
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognised food.
"Kebab" was not even a word never mind a food.
Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
Prunes were medicinal.
Surprisingly muesli was readily available, it was called cattle feed.
Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
Water came out of the tap, if someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than petrol for it they would have become a laughing stock.
The one thing that we never, ever, had on our table in the fifties ..
.. was elbows!
Pasta had not been invented.
Curry was a surname.
A takeaway was a mathematical problem.
A pizza was something to do with a leaning tower.
Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time.
All crisps were plain, the only choice we had was whether to put the salt on or not.
A Chinese chippy was a foreign carpenter.
Rice was a milk pudding, and never, ever, part of our dinner.
A Big Mac was what we wore when it was raining.
Brown bread was something only poor people ate.
Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking
Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green.
Coffee was Camp, and came in a bottle.
Cubed sugar was regarded as posh.
Only Heinz made beans.
Fish didn't have fingers in those days.
Eating raw fish was called poverty, not sushi.
None of us had ever heard of yoghurt.
Healthy food consisted of anything edible.
People who didn't peel potatoes were regarded as lazy.
Indian restaurants were only found in India.
Cooking outside was called camping.
Seaweed was not a recognised food.
"Kebab" was not even a word never mind a food.
Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold.
Prunes were medicinal.
Surprisingly muesli was readily available, it was called cattle feed.
Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one.
Water came out of the tap, if someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than petrol for it they would have become a laughing stock.
The one thing that we never, ever, had on our table in the fifties ..
.. was elbows!
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Comments
They certainly weren't healthier, they probably ate better though because they couldn't afford a lot of foods.
When today that's nearly 80th birthday.
It wasn't all good back then
I think the OP was referring to the 1950's, not the 1750's.
Life expectancy in the 50's was 66.
Which was from birth so people in the 1950's probably died about the age of 60.
Plus the air pollution was awful back then, they had the smog! Again death from poor air quality was nothing to do with their diet (plus remember they still mined for coal and WWII had injured a lot of people) so you can't really equate death rates then to now.
They ate less rubbish (rationing didn't end until 1954) and exercised more.
Things like peppers, ginger, ... Pizza..... McDonald's :eek:
My parents say they were definitely eating pasta in the 50s - proper pasta at that, not Heinz tinned stuff.
But I have a vague memory that pasta in the form of macaroni was eaten as a pudding ?
similar to rice pudding
but it's only a vague recollection, I could be wrong
Also another one..............Olive Oil was something you put in your ear if you had earache........and you bough it in little phials at the chemists
"Curry was a surname" - curry was popularised by Britons returning from India in the Raj era, curry powder has been available since Victorian times at least.
"The only Indian restaurants were in India" -
First curry house opened in London in 1809
"A takeaway was a mathematical problem." - We've had takeaway fish 'n chips since Victorian times.
"Seaweed was not a recognised food" - the Welsh wouldn't agree - dis their laverbread at your peril!
Theres a few others I'm dubious about, though must admit that to folk in the early '50s bananas, pineapples and oranges probably had been quite rare beasts during the war and after.
My mum used to make a milk pudding with macaroni much the same as rice pudding - she would also do sago and tapioca.
Macaroni cheese features in Mrs Beatons cookbook.
Oh - and pasta must have been known in the '50s, else how could the famous 1957 Panarama spoof about the spaghetti harvest have worked if no-one had heard of spaghetti?
:oSorry, but these sort of viral e-mails wind me up...:mad:
It's probably true that people ate healthier. There wasn't the proliferation of convenience meals back then and a working class family was likely to have plain but relatively nutritious home cooked food.
Apparently the diet was even healthier during rationing - which ended in 1954.
Also - there was less reliance on private cars - you simply walked further. Nor was there the amount of gadgetry to turn us all into couch potatoes.
As others have said - the gradual rise in life expectancy is more to do with medical advances. Plus in any case, the averages for those born around 1900 are presumably slewed by childhood mortality and war.
I'm sure that most people had heard of spaghetti but almost certainly weren't quite sure what it was...........that's why the April Fool worked, because people weren't sure !
My Granny kept a small bottle in the medicine cabinet, she used it to treat burns as well as for earache.
Every Saturday morning around 9.30 the Penclawdd cockle women would descend on our neighbourhood and go door to door with their huge baskets of cockles and laverbread.
My dad always bought both.