S/o what did you eat when you were a child?

[Laura Corin]

Say a sample day from when you were eleven. 

Me - 1974 - middle class single income family - England.

Breakfast - eggs of some sort with toast and butter,  reconstituted frozen orange juice with extra vitamin C.

Lunch at school - cooked from scratch beef stew, boiled potatoes, steamed cabbage and carrots. Sponge pudding and custard for dessert. No choice of food unless you had a religious or medical dietary requirement.  You didn't have to eat everything on your plate but most people did. You could bring a packed lunch if you liked, but few did.

Snack - a couple of factory-produced biscuits (small cookies) and an apple.

Supper - home cooked risotto made with a small amount of meat left from the Sunday roast, steamed broccoli and green beans. No dessert. Maybe a sweet/small piece of candy.

Eta. We ate out in England once or twice in my entire childhood. We did eat out a bit when we went camping in France.

 

Edited January 7 by Laura Corin

[prairiewindmomma]

11?

Breakfast--if I was lucky, a bowl of cold cereal with milk before I caught the 6 am bus to school. My mother did not make breakfast, and I wasn't old enough to use the stovetop.  We occasionally had reconstituted orange juice in the house, but not often.  On days when we did not have cereal or juice, I would sometimes make toast or grab a mealy mushy red delicious apple. (We had terrible apples in our small grocery store.)

Lunch--handmade by scratch by the German Anabaptist women working the school cafeteria.  A typical winter meal would be a stew of some sort with handmade bread rolls and some stewed apples.  My favorite meal was chili, cornbread and cinnamon rolls with an orange.  

Supper--inevitably some sort of beef (grew up on a ranch) and veg from the garden.  In winter this would have been either something canned or frozen.  My mother was a terrible cook, and finances were very tight, so rarely did we have anything else.  There was only one restaurant in our town, it was a small family diner....probably 6 tables inside.....and we ate at it maybe twice a year.

[Bootsie]

Bkfst--poptart and chocolate milk

Lunch--peanut butter and jelly sandwich, bell pepper strips, orange, kool-aid

Snack--Little Debbie snack cake

Dinner--meat patty; rice-a-roni, canned green beans, canned fruit cocktail, kool-aid

Before bed--vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce

[MEmama]

We mostly ate a combination of German and Southern foods, reflective of my parents' upbringings.

My mom took a lot of "ethnic" cooking classes so we also enjoyed whatever she was learning about--lots of Chinese, Moroccan (inspired by a trip to Morocco), Turkish (same), Mexican etc. My dad enjoyed cooking a variety of Southern dishes from his childhood; he's a terrific cook and baker.

There was a hefty amount of '70s American food in there too, like Hamburger Helper and weird casseroles, but also non traditional things like cow tongue and steak tartar. My parents didn't shy away from anything, lol.

[Brittany1116]

Age 11, part of the household was eligible for WIC. 

Breakfast was a WIC cereal with milk. 

Lunch was whatever the public school served.

Snack was rare. Maybe a piece of fruit. Occasionally a Little Debbie. 

Dinner varied. The household staples were spaghetti with meat sauce and cheese, pork roast with carrots and potatoes, or baked chicken with green beans and fries or mac. 

If we were at my grandmother's for dinner, it was pinto beans with ham/bacon and onions, cornbread, corn on the cob, sliced tomato, apple pie. Editing here: she also made a lot of cabbage rolls and chicken and dumplings. I have no clue what we ate at other grandmother's house. I only remember shelling pecans with her.

If we went out, McDonald's burgers and shared fries and drinks.  

Until I was a teen, the only veggies served in my home were potatoes in every form, canned corn, canned green beans. They tried peas but we refused. I ordered broccoli any time we went somewhere that served it. Later, late 90s, we got into salads, sliced raw carrots, cucumbers, and celery, always with Hidden Valley Ranch. I never saw asparagus, Brussels sprouts, artichoke, hummus, sushi until I was in college. 

I don't fault anyone for being raised how I was. My parents were very young, we were poor, and we lived rurally. There were a lot of kids and my dad worked long hours. We didn't even know what we didn't know. 

Edited January 7 by Brittany1116

[almondbutterandjelly]

I was eleven in the mid-80s.  Breakfast:  Cereal (generic Rice Krispies or generic puffed wheat) with a spoonful of sugar and skim milk.  Lunch:  Whatever the cafeteria served at school.  Meat, veg, roll, potato.  Dinner:  Plain baked chicken breast, baked potato, canned green veg like spinach or peas.

Snacks were apples or saltine crackers.  We got one bag of chips for the family each week.  I got to choose that every other week.  My brother picked Doritos.  I picked generic cheese puffs or pretzels.

[Wheres Toto]

My mother was big on no preservatives, no artificial colors or flavors or anything in an attempt to help my brothers adhd.   Plus we were pretty much poverty level at that age so few treats. 

Mom cooked from scratch, homemade chili, eggrolls stuffed with vegetables, etc.  Lunches were generally sandwiches, on wheat bread.  Peanut butter and jelly, tuna fish (for my brother, I can't stand tuna fish).   School lunches in middle school would be sub sandwiches or pizza usually.  

[Condessa]

1997, California

Breakfast--a low-sugar whole grain cereal with skim milk, maybe a banana

Lunch--paper bag lunch for school with peanut butter & jelly sandwich on whole wheat, carrot sticks, an apple or orange, maybe a granola bar or cookie.  water from the drinking fountain

Dinner--dijon chicken, wheat bread to dip in the sauce, romaine salad.  dessert on Sunday night only

Edited January 7 by Condessa

[Pawz4me]

1974. No significant budget constraints. 
 

Breakfast—Anything from cold cereal (Cornflakes or Raisin Bean, usually) to eggs, bacon/sausage/ham, grits, canned biscuits or toast.  Sometimes sausage gravy and canned biscuits. L’Eggo waffles. My brother loved Pop Tarts but I don’t believe I’ve ever eaten one. 
 

Lunch—Whatever the school served. I don’t remember much except it was never very good. I probably didn’t eat much. At home—sandwiches or leftovers. 
 

Dinner—Some sort of meat with a starch and usually multiple veggies, either commercially canned or fresh from the garden, depending on the season. 
 

My mother loved to bake so there was always cake or pie and store bought ice cream for dessert or snacking any time we wanted, and as much as we wanted. Fruit was always available, but mostly apples and bananas. Sometimes pears and oranges. 

[mommyoffive]

I feel dumb.  I have no idea what I ate as a kid, I have no memory of that.

[Carol in Cal.]

11 for me was in the late 1960s.

I would have had cold cereal for breakfast, milk on the side.  Sugar or a sugary cereal like Frosted Flakes.

For lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white or Roman Meal bread, a small apple or orange (from the bags of smaller produce), a mini box of raisins, and half of a candy bar.  

For dinner, a serving of a casserole like Hamburger Helper or a Sunset cookbook casserole, or chicken—a piece of chicken, mashed potato buds, and chicken gravy, and a serving of frozen veggies or canned corn.  Or a couple of slices of hot or cold roast beef, baked potato with butter and sour cream, and the same veggies.  A small bowl of ice cream with chocolate syrup for dessert.  Sometimes we had an iceberg lettuce salad instead of the veggie, and I liked that a lot better, but my parents were suspicious of the nutritional quality of that.  Sometimes my mom would make spaghetti, which seemed vaguely exotic and was a treat—Golden Grain noodles, an envelope of seasoning mix to sprinkle on the ground beef, and some tomato sauce.

On weekends we had either pancakes or waffles for one of the dinners, because my dad would make those.  And for the other dinner we would have hamburgers that he would barbeque outside.  These were never more than 4 to a pound.  Often 5 or even 6.

We only went out to eat occasionally.  We would go to a fancy restaurant if my dad got a raise or a promotion.  We had fancy meals for holidays and birthdays—often at my grandmother’s house, but sometimes at a restaurant.  Those were the best tasting meals all year and were really special occasions.  Since we lived in San Francisco, our restaurant meals were pretty varied—Fisherman’s Wharf places, where I loved the shellfish, a Swedish spread place, Chinese food (we were always the only White people eating dim sum as it was not well known), and outstanding Italian food.

 

[Brittany1116]

6 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

I feel dumb.  I have no idea what I ate as a kid, I have no memory of that.

I know my grandmothers both cooked a ton of different dishes and my mom had 7-10 stand-bys but I could only muster a few when typing. 😉

[math teacher]

We had things like beef roast with potatoes, carrots, onion, and celery, grilled chicken, fried fish. My father worked shift work, so when he was home, we had good meals. I remember snacks like chocolate milk and cheezits. No fresh fruit  and fresh vegetables during garden season only. I was probably grown before I ate broccoli or cauliflower. 

[kathyl]

It would have been in the late 60's.

Breakfast - some kind of cooked cereal like grits or oatmeal, eggs, milk

Lunch - Sometimes we brought our lunch, sometimes we bought the school lunch.  From home, it was stuff like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and fruit, etc.  At school, it was some kind of meat, some kind of veggies, bread, tiny carton of milk, and sometimes a tiny thing of ice cream.  I hated milk and ice cream so I didn't usually eat those.  Also, the school always served fish on Friday which I loved.  🙂 

Supper - My mother would manage to burn some kind of meat which none of us kids would want to eat.  The only dish she could make well that we'd all eat was gumbo.  And she never made enough ... She also made some kind of veggies.  And rice, which we all ate.  She didn't do potatoes.  Always rice.  Occasionally pasta (spaghetti).  And chili over rice.  But we all hated beans.

Dessert - sometimes, but not usually.  Unless I made something, which I might do on the weekends if I had time.  And if my mother let me into the kitchen ...

 

My parents didn't buy junk food back then.  No cokes, no candy, no chips, nothing.  Except for my mother who would buy ice cream and hide it in the freezer and pull it out after we kids went to bed.  Mostly, though, she made her own ice cream, which I hated because she used eggs and fresh peaches in it.  

And the only time we went out to eat was when my parents did their once-a-month grocery shopping in a nearby city.  They would take us to a hamburger place called Kelly's and we all sat in the car and ate.  There were hardly any fast food places in our area back then, so Kelly's was it.

When we went to visit our relatives in Louisiana, we got to eat really well-cooked, tasty, homemade food.  My mother just didn't inherit the cooking gene, I guess.  😜

 

Edited January 7 by kathyl

[PeterPan]

breakfast-My mother always made us a nice breakfast, but I think it was because she couldn't afford cereal, lol. We usually had some kind of grain cooked in the pressure cooker served with honey from the welfare food the neighbors wouldn't eat.

lunch-tuna fish sandwich on homemade bread (I made it!) with fresh sprouts that we grew, 2 cookies, and I think maybe sometimes something snacky but I'm not sure about that. That would have been luxurious to have had chips.

snack after school-I used to steal cheese from the frig but she'd yell at me. All the cheese (an 8 oz block) was portioned to last the three of us two weeks. Sometimes the neighbors gave us their welfare cheese btw but that wasn't in the frig.

dinner-typical meal was tacos using beef. We put mayo on them and I didn't realize till much later that that was not normal, that most people use sour cream.

There was no bedtime snack but we did make snickerdoodles (cookies) some days.

Looking at it now, that seems kinda trim, oh my. She had this worry about us being overweight and was trying to stretch the budget. I don't remember being hungry particularly, except for stealing cheese and trying to eat the entire batch of the cookies. I still have problems with cookies because I can just sit there eating the whole batch. We got candy for holidays so that bolstered our diets.

[MrsMommy]

1990, Chicago suburbs.

Cereal for breakfast. I usually took a lunch that was probably a PBJ on white bread, a piece of fruit, and maybe a baggie of chips? I think we *had* to drink milk at school, so I probably had that with lunch even though I hated it. Sometimes I had a juice box in my lunch, too. I went to a private school, and they didn't start providing hot lunches on a regular basis until I was in junior high...I occasionally bought my lunch once they started offering that.

Dinner...I don't know. There were a lot of casseroles. Sometimes TV dinners. I remember pork roasts that I disliked, served with an iceberg lettuce salad that I also disliked. There were sometimes pork chop or chicken breasts that were baked in some kind of cream of something soup. Fresh vegetables sometimes, but maybe more often frozen? You know that line Captain America has that's something like "Food is better now. Everything was boiled in the 40s."? I feel like a lot of the food I ate was boiled.

We probably went out to dinner more than was average back then, and by the time I was in high school, we ate out a lot. Not fast food (although there was some of that too), but sit-down, both casual and more formal places. Looking back on that, I'm shocked, because we would get an appetizer (sometimes to share, sometimes we each had our own), a main course with soup or salad, and dessert, too! On the rare occasions my family goes out to eat now (a few times a year), we might get one appetizer for all of us, dinners, and never dessert!

One thing I do know...I'm pretty sure the only water I drank in the 80s and early 90s came from a garden hose!

[Indigo Blue]

These are things I remember having on hand throughout a long stretch of years of growing up. 
 

Tang, pudding cups, boxed mac and cheese, lots of Coke, dry cereal and milk. Frozen pizza crusts that we’d make into pizza at home. Salmon patties, broccoli, hamburger patties. (Lots of hamburger that I refused to eat, which got me in lots of trouble). Lots of sandwiches. School lunches. 
 

Still, I think our dinners weren’t the worst thing we could have eaten. They were relatively decent and pretty much the norm. 
 

But we did not have near as many places to buy things like huge calzones, milk shakes in giant sizes, huge pastries, etc. We would get an ice cream sundae once in awhile. It was far from healthy as compared to WFPB, but it did not seem to be as bad as what I see now. 

We would go get Pizza Hut sometimes. It was just a few slices of pizza. Now, you have to resist all the other things besides the pizza. The cheesy bread sticks, stuffed crust, brownies, dessert pizza, pudding, and more. And all the fast food places are doing things like this. They want to separate you from your money and find more and more enticing ways to do it in the process, all the while trashing your health. Sorry. I’m ranting now. 

 

 

[livetoread]

I was raised vegetarian. Both of my parents were good cooks and my father had a big vegetable garden. We always celebrated the first tomato of the season and Dad would grow interesting squashes etc. Neither Mom nor Dad preserved much though. Cooking vegetables well was important to the meal, so I rarely got bad vegetables, whether fresh or frozen. Desert was for weekends. We all liked food enough to want to put some effort into our cooking, and other members were appreciative eaters, so that helped encourage us to learn to cook as well. We grew up with some favorites, but Mom was always trying new things as well since Dad liked that.

My father liked ethnic food and would take us, even as young kids, to all sorts of different types of restaurants, though in our midwest area, there weren't many at first. I remember him driving us about an hour to a bigger city just to go to a new Indian restaurant. I was about seven and I loved it. We traveled internationally a fair amount too, so I got exposed to different foods then. We could have been more healthy - we ate a lot of cheese and pasta, for example - but overall our tastes were set for homemade, healthy food with lots of vegetables, lots of variety, and lots of flavor. 

Oh, and breakfast was usually leftovers because that's what we liked. We rarely had sugary cereal around and I wasn't a big fan of the healthier cereal, so I'd rather reheat whatever our protein was the night before than eat traditional breakfast food.

 

[scholastica]

I got lucky. My mom was an early re-adopter of breastfeeding which led to her getting hooked up with LaLeche League. That led to her being more “crunchy” than many in her generation. We had a huge garden when I was a kid. We also did a lot of pick your own fruits. She canned so many things, so we always had so much produce around. We usually ate hot cereal for breakfast, had to take our lunch which would be PB&J or tuna or something like that and dinner was usually a meat, a starch and vegetables, all cooked at home. We rarely ate out. She eventually went back to work full time and introduced more ultra-processed foods into the house to save time.

[Arcadia]

That would be 6th grade, 1984 for me. Breakfast is a half boiled egg and a cup of milo at 6am on school days. On non school days, I have a second breakfast at the food court very near my childhood home with my mom if she isn’t working the hospital morning shift.

Lunch is at the school cafeteria if we stay back in school for activities and we pay for whatever we want. Else I go to my aunt’s home for lunch which is Chinese food with lots of dishes since she cooks for eleven of us.

Dinner is at my aunt’s home. Supper is DIY with whatever is at home. I could cook something if I want to but I was usually eating whatever is convenient while doing homework. So more likely to be eating biscuits or buns.

ETA:

We didn’t have a food budget issue and we ate out often. My aunt’s and my family all avoid beef because of religion so we don’t serve beef at home. As youngsters, we could eat beef when we are out if we want to. 

Edited January 7 by Arcadia

[HomeAgain]

1980s, California farmland.  Low income.

Breakfast: oatmeal with milk and brown sugar. Possibly cheerios with milk and sugar.

Bagged lunch for school: 2-3 slices of Carl Buddig-like generic brand lunch meat with Miracle Whip on whole wheat bread, carrot sticks, hard boiled egg with a twist of salt in the corner of the plastic bag, blondie or cookie made that morning, tortilla chips made that morning. A Hug drink (those awful plastic barrels).

Or - lunch at home: peanut butter sandwich or leftovers, homemade yogurt with canned peaches or homemade jam.

Snack: popcorn, bread and butter with green tomato relish, fresh raw veggies or fruits, or whatever I made. FlavorAid or unsweetened sun tea to drink all day.

Dinner: tacos.  Homemade corn shells fried on the stove, ground meat, cheese, onions, lettuce, tomatoes, sauce, sour cream. My mom would make a bean soup, too, that was a staple in my childhood.  Mostly beans, broth, onions, spices.  Served with cornbread.

No desserts after dinner.  Bought desserts were a rarity until the discount bread store opened. My parents believed that if we wanted sweets, we should go through the experience of mixing, baking, waiting.satiating the senses so that we'd eat less of it in one sitting when it was ready.

 

I didn't eat most cooked vegetables until I was an adult and I was a very picky eater as a child, so you don't see a whole lot of raw ones, either, in what I was fed.   My diet is pretty awful compared to what my 13yo eats on a daily basis.

[Melissa in Australia]

Age 11 low income family. 8 children plus various extras sort of like foster children

Breakfast  oat porridge

Lunch Vegemite sandwich. 

Tea  mum bought a side of lamb every few weeks. One day we had roast, the next  leaf over roast warmed in gravy or Shepard's pie next  several days stew made from bone. Then a few days of lamb chops. We had a lot of very watery stew.  Occasional minced beef fried with onion, or corned beef, occasionally smoked cod. Sunday we had canned baked beans on toast.  She wasn't a very good cook or creative. I remember we had MacDonald's once in my entire childhood w all thought it pretty discusting .We had fish and chips lots just after birth of next sibling..that would have been the days Dad came home from work and mum was frazzled and hadn't cooked. For veggies we had either boiled cabbage or cauliflower, lots of onions, carrots and either peas or beans. 

Desert every night. Was way to fill up hungry kids. It was either self saucing  baked chocolate pudding, stewed fruit and custard like  rhubarb, plums or apples, a plain cake or sago

The very first time we had broccoli or capsicum was when I learned about how to cook these in cooking class at school.

Edited January 7 by Melissa in Australia

[kathyl]

Oh, and my lack of experience with food really showed up when I began dating.  One guy took me to a local pizza place.  The pizza came out and I had no idea what to do with it because I had never eaten pizza in my life.  Or cheese.  My parents didn't buy cheese either.  The guy showed me how to eat it.  I nibbled and left most of it.

On another date (different guy) he asked me where I wanted to go eat.  I didn't know, so he asked me if I liked "t-bone steaks".  With a blank look, I said "What's that?"  He took me to MacDonalds.

Then, when I married dh, he ate cheese on everything.  On grits, in eggs, on sandwiches, on all of it.  And meat at every meal - sausage, bacon ... lunchmeats, tuna ... pork, chicken, beef, liver ...  Blech!!

I think I was better off eating how we ate in the 50's and 60's. 

Edited January 7 by kathyl

[Mrs Tiggywinkle Again]

11 for me was 1992-1993. My birthday is late in the year.  This was the year that one of my siblings was born at 22 weeks gestation spending 6 months in the hospital starting early in the year, and another sibling died late the same year.  So for much of that particular year we not only were dirt poor with maxed out stressed parents, but a lot of people brought  dinners and we ate a lot at my grandpa’s restaurant because he didn’t charge us for food and it was easy.

So that’s an odd year in my life.  However, a normal year would be:

Breakfast: Oatmeal or cornmeal mush

Lunch: Sandwiches, usually peanut butter and jelly. Carrot or celery sticks if that was in the budget that week. Sometimes leftovers.

Dinners:  if my dad cooked, it was pancakes or grilled cheese and tomato soup.  My mom made a lot of casseroles, mostly based around whatever vegetables she was able to grow and can for that year, and pasta.  She had a huge garden, it was around an acre large, and canned hundreds and hundreds of cans of fruit and vegetables every year. When I was a kid I thought she just really enjoyed it, but since she doesn’t do it anymore I think it’s because they really had too many kids and not enough income, but just enough income not to get food stamps(they did qualify for WIC and the food giveaways the church did).

Meat was inconsistent based on what they could afford and what was in the free food giveaway at the church that month.  If we had meat it was usually chicken breasts or ground beef from the tube.  My mom for all her faults is a very good cook, so she always made whatever it was taste good.  We ate a lot of bean casseroles which I still make. We had very very little processed foods and almost never ate out.

snacks: Saltines with peanut butter spread on them or have another PBJ sandwich. Leftovers, if there were any, were fair game.  

Honestly, I had no idea we were poor until I was in high school. And now my parents are wealthy but seem to have no idea that they’re wealthy other than my mom’s extremely expensive kitchen overhaul.  It’s a weird world.


 

Edited January 7 by Mrs Tiggywinkle Again

[Tap]

Our years varied greatly. 

0-6yo or so...my dad was an avid outdoorsman, so we usually had venison, other game meat or fish. My parents butchered our meat, so there was a huge freezer in the basement that was generally full.  We had a large garden, or my mom picked from local gardens and then preserved/canned/froze fruits/veg.  We had store bought bread/crackers etc but the bulk of our diet was fresh or hand processed in our own kitchen. All treats were hand made except for a rare exception. We did go out for pizza periodically.  

When I was about 1st grade, my mom when to work in real estate. There were 5 of us kids. My parents were remodeling and selling houses plus their day jobs. I remember more convenience foods, but probably 50-75% the same as above. I do remember some TV dinners. frozen pot pies, cheeze whiz etc.

When I was in 5th grade we started traveling and lived in a small camp trailer. Mostly processed foods or meat/veg that was bought in the store that day. No home canned/processed anymore. We ate out more during these years but it was also now just my parents, one sister and myself. I don't remember many homemade treats because cooking in a camp trailer isn't super easy for that when you can just buy a bag of cookies at the store. 

Highschool, we moved back to the same house I grew up in.  Life was back to more fresh foods, but my dad was hunting less so maybe one venison a year, and some fish every once in a while. My mom was pretty fussy about buying meat from butcher shops, so the quality was still high. My mom wasn't canning really anymore, the garden was gone, but still ate probably 30% fresh. The meat was fresh, veggies were sometimes fresh, but the rest was canned and box side dishes like Stove Top Stuffing/Rice-a-Roni type items. 

 

The format was pretty much the same all the years, even though the ingredients changed in quality.

All thru the years, breakfast was pretty typical American foods. Cereal, oatmeal, cream of wheat, French toast, pancakes etc. 

Lunch was often sandwich or left overs.

Dinner was a meat, two veg and a carb side.

There were a few snacks around, but definitely not a lot. Most likely told to have some cheese/crackers, yogurt etc. Not chips or other junk food.

There was generally an option for a dessert, but it was limited in quantity. If my mom made cookies, you were told how many you were allotted. If you had more, you were taking someone elses. 

Sweetened drinks every once in a while, but rare. 

 

 

 

[alisoncooks]

11 was 1991. Prime junk years.

Breakfast: cereal (fruit loops, frosted mini wheats), milk…or none at all.

Lunch: at school, things like pizza or other fairly gross, institutional foods. If I was home: meat and sides. Beef, chicken, seafood. Typical American fare (spaghetti, burgers, etc, but probably more seafood than typical because of our proximity to the water)

Dinner: my mom cooked a big noon meal for my farmer dad, so I’d have leftovers for my evening meal. Or a can of tuna, Chef Boyardee, etc. 

Snacks: less than what my friends got but still things like chips, Swiss Rolls, oatmeal cream cookies (Little Debbie) 

Eating out: pretty rare. Probably around this age is where we would go out with friends for lunch after church on Sunday. But not every week, and it wasn’t fast food but a local buffet-type place. 

[Corraleno]

That would have been late 60s, and we were dirt poor, so breakfast was whatever cereal was cheapest that week with milk that was half store-bought milk and half reconstituted powdered milk. Lunch would be either PBJ or just grape jelly on the cheapest white bread from the outlet store, and a thermos of KoolAid. Sometimes I'd get a small apple or a banana, but often it was just a sandwich and Koolaid. Dinner was usually some form of cheap meat (like "cube steak") overcooked to shoe leather, with either white rice or potatoes, and canned veg (usually string beans or peas).  Sometimes we'd just have pancakes for dinner if my mother ran out of grocery money before the end of the month. The only local fast food place at that time was Burger Chef, and we could only eat there on our birthday.

[Pam in CT]

1970s, mother was a high school teacher who had to be *at her desk* by 7:15 am.  My grandfather, who lived with us, shepherded me and my brother (whose schools started later) through the morning and out to the bus stop.

Breakfast: we always HAD eggs / milk / OJ / basic fruit etc in the fridge, and by 11 I *could* have made a hot breakfast if I'd wanted to, but even then I wasn't a morning person and it was all I could do to choke down a bowl of cereal.  On weekends my dad always made eggs or waffles or pancakes.

Lunch: during school, some rubber chicken / salisbury "steak" / pot roast sort of thing, with some kind of potato / rice sort of side, with a canned fruit cup.  On weekends / summer, proper sandwiches on reasonably good bread with good cold cuts, lettuce, mayo, cheese.

Snack: after school my grandfather would make a pot of tea, which he drank in a glass, and we'd play cards for at least an hour before starting homework. I don't specifically remember snack, but I really liked toast with cinnamon sugar in those days and would not be surprised if I had that just about every day too.

Dinner: after retiring my mom became a much better cook, but in those days she was pretty busy and got home pretty late, and there was a lot of Hamburger Helper, frozen or canned veggies, and (god forgive us all) instant potatoes / minute rice and etc.

 

 

[bookbard]

I was 11 in the mid 80s in Australia

Breakfast - toast (white bread) with margarine and vegemite. I drank water, didn't like juice.

Recess - likely fruit (apple) and perhaps a homemade piece of cake or similar. My mother was at home with the younger kids (big family) and did bake.

Lunch - likely to be a vegemite sandwich or a chicken sandwich using leftover chicken. 

Afternoon tea - might be pikelets or similar if Mum had baked.

Dinner - Tended to be meat and veg, so chops and boiled veg such as peas, zucchini. Ugh. 

Before bed if we were hungry - apples.

[ScoutTN]

I was 11 in 1977. Single parent household; mom was a teacher. Money was often tight.

B’fast: hot or cold (cheerios or chex or raisin bran. No Lucky Charms or Captain Crunch in our house.)  with milk, fruit. (I would not eat eggs as a child.) PB toast was a favorite.

Lunch: packed from home - sandwich or soup, veggies, chips, fruit, home baked treat like gingerbread or pound cake. Milk.

Snacks: fruit, cheese, bread, sometimes a homebaked treat. 

Dinner - sometimes good, veggie heavy homemade, but sometimes box m&c or frozen pot pies or hamburger helper. 

We usually had a garden and summers were very veggie-filled. Dessert was often seasonal fruit or homemade with a fruit ingredient. We almost never ate out, though my paternal grandparents often took us to the country club on weekends and my stepmother ordered pizza a couple weekends a month. 
 

No soft drinks! No store bought cookies. No chips except for lunch boxes. Whole wheat bread, homebaked in the summers when mom had more time. 

My mom didn’t make lots of casseroles. Little rice, some pasta, plenty of potatoes and bread.

She knew what was good and enjoyed cooking healthy food, but reality was that lack of energy, time, and money sometimes made the decisions.

Edited January 7 by ScoutTN

[regentrude]

Breakfast: oatmeal with milk
2nd breakfast at school: whole-grain rye bread with cheese, apple
lunch: potatoes and veggie and perhaps scrambled egg; once a week hamburger or brat; Saturdays veggie soup of pasta with tomato sauce; Sundays a roast or other cut of meat plus potatoes plus veg
afternoon snack: roll with jam
dinner: whole-grain rye bread with cheese; perhaps carrots or a salad

The only produce available in my country in winter was potatoes, cabbages, carrots, apples, onions, leeks. 
Once or twice a season we were able to buy bananas and oranges, the amount rationed per family.

I never saw bell peppers, broccoli, avocado, fennel, zucchini, squash, and many other veggies until I was in my 20s. They didn't exist.

[Kassia]

When I was 11, my mom had me in Weight Watchers and we would starve and binge together.  So my meals were either cottage cheese with cinnamon and Sweet N Low three times a day OR a ton of junk food - I mostly remember m&ms and fast food at that age.  When I was a teen, she'd take me to the Mexican restaurant for giant strawberry margaritas and huge plates of loaded nachos.  Rarely anything normal in the middle, but I think I had meals like:

breakfast:  Quaker instant oats - plain

lunch - some kind of meat sandwich and...?  I don't remember.  I used to eat my friends' lunches because I was always hungry and they had junk food that I wasn't allowed to have.  My BFF's mom started packing stuff for me.  😛  

dinner - meat and vegetable, maybe potatoes  

ETA - I just remembered that my parents ate out a lot, so I guess we did that or maybe they ate out and I had something at home?  I really can't remember much.  I do remember them getting deli sandwiches and I'd get a tub of pepperoni and just have that for dinner sometimes.  

 

 

 

 

Edited January 8 by Kassia

[cjzimmer1]

11 would have been early 80's for me.

Breakfast if we ate it was cold cereal.  My mom was not a morning person so we were on our own which really was just fine since the kids weren't morning people either so breakfast just wasn't a common thing at our house.  Milk was an option but we got milk from my grandparents cow and it was not homogenized.  The cream was lumpy because it was cold and no amount of shaking would mix it in.  I ate dry cereal as I couldn't stand the milk.

Lunch at school was usually things like this weird rectangular pizza slice, homemade mac and cheese (that was probably one of the most disgusting foods I've even been forced to eat in my life), other weirdly processed foods.  By that point they had done away with the creamed corn that the lunch lady would walk around with a pot of it in her hand and put a scoop on everyone's plate whether they wanted it or not.  On the non creamed corn day is was some other equally repulsive canned veggie.  I grew up with frozen veggies and have never been able to stomach any kind of canned veggie.  

Supper at least 3-4 days a week we had roasted chicken (my dad raised poultry so there was never any shortage). Naked potatoes (my name for the peeled boiled chunks of russets potatoes we were served nearly every day of our childhood.  No butter (as we didn't have that) and no salt because 9 times out of 10 my mom forgot to add it.  I loved baked potatoes and especially the peel but my dad didn't like baked or the peel so we never got to eat them any other way than boiled.  For veggies it was either fresh veggies from the garden or frozen veggies that we had put away.  We had a huge asparagus patch so ate a lot of that.  My dad was also friends with local farmers so when they would harvest peas for example, he'd go over with 4 or 5 5 gallon buckets and they would fill them up.  He'd bring them home and everyone worked to clean them up and get them in the freezer, corn also arrived whenever they were harvesting.  We grew tomatoes, cucumbers, pepper onions and beans that were all put away for winter.  We would have pot roast once a month or so.  How much beef we had depended on when my grandparents had a cow butchered. But my dad also raised rabbits, turkey, geese, ducks and when I was really little pigeons so those other proteins were rotated around the chicken that we mostly ate. Milk was also offered but I avoided it whenever possible as it was just as bad to drink as it was to put on cereal. 

[Farrar]

These are interesting!

Age 11, late 1980's, North Carolina

Breakfast
Frozen waffles
Fruit
Apple juice

Lunch, bag lunch, made by me in the morning
Plain cheese on wheat
chips
red grapes
Hostess snack cake... which (no one vomit)... I would put ketchup on to gross out everyone at the lunch table and relish in their reactions

Snack
Bacon and eggs and cheese, probably... this was an afternoon meal I made for myself often around that age
More fruit
More apple juice (I seriously went through that stuff)

Dinner, made by me for myself and my brother - I was in charge of all grocery shopping and all meals
Roast chicken
Broccoli for him (but I wouldn't eat it)
Baked potatoes

Yes, I know, my diet was abysmal. It's not my mother's fault. She reeeeeaaaallly tried.
 

[Annie G]

I was 11 in 1971

Breakfast was some kind of carb- toast, or Cheerios usually. We usually had frozen orange juice but I rarely drank it. 

Lunch was a packed lunch. Bologna and miracle whip on a Roman Meal bread, a baggie of Fritos, and carton of milk bought at school. 
Snacks were usually crackers like Triscuits or chips ahoy cookies, or Fritos. I liked to mix miracle whip and ketchup to make dip for Fritos. Peanut butter on Friday instead of bologna. 

Dinner was something like meatloaf, mashed potatoes mom made, and some kind of canned vegetable.  On Fridays it was ALWAYS Mac and cheese made w boiled macaroni, velveeta, and milk baked in the oven til the cheese turned brown and crispy. 
 

Very few fresh veggies or fresh fruit.  We ate out rarely. 

[Farrar]

The eating out question is interesting. I was in charge of the food, so actually, middle school were prime eat out years. I would get my grandmother to send me money for the Golden Corral. I would walk my much younger brother through the woods and up to the strip mall and I'd get myself chicken tenders and him the kid's salad bar option. I think it was like $6 for both of us. He would go wild and eat everything. I'd sit there with a book. It was hands down my best food budget hack in those years. It was just before Golden Corral became the giant buffet of everything, when it was transitioning from more of a traditional steakhouse to that.

We also always ate out after church in those years. We'd go to church and then go to the  cafeteria at the mall after, often with my mother and her boyfriend and she'd get him to pay for everything. So that was her food hack to get us all fed. That place was super surreal in my mind and then later David Sedaris wrote a story about working there and it all seemed to make weird sense.

[denarii]

Grew up in the 90s in northern Canada as one of 5 kids. My mom was a pretty crunchy SAHM when I was young so we ate a lot of veggies, beans, whole wheat bread. She cooked everything from scratch, canned her own produce, bought what little meat we did get in bulk from farmers, made yogurt on the radiator 😂.

When I was 10 she went to work part time and still gardened but didn't can as much. She used to buy flats of fruit canned in juice to last us all winter rather than buy the fruit and can it herself. More store bread. We started eating cereal when it was on sale rather than a big pot of oatmeal for breakfast. Frozen juice. 

When I was a teenager she started working full time and we had more convenience foods but she always had a garden and her cooking style of lots of veggies and very little meat stayed. 

My husband is the same age as me, grew up in the next town over. His mom was a SAHM for his entire life. She gardened a little but almost every was sidekick noodles, stove top stuffing, tang orange drink etc. 

[historically accurate]

I'm not 100% sure, but I remember some:

Breakfast was usually some sort of sugary cereal (Fruity Pepples, Fruit Loops, Cap'n Crunch, etc) with milk, although my brother ate his dry. Lunch was a cheese or bologna sandwich, chips and a little debbie cake or public school offering (pizza is about all I remember of school lunches though). I don't remember snacks, but we probably had something. I know some dinners (when my parents weren't working nights, then we had babysitters) were like spaghetti or breakfast (French toast or pancakes). 

When we got to be teens, my dad cooked more often and we had meatloaf and lots of casseroles. My mom never really learned how to cook.

My brother probably would've been diagnosed with ARFID today so we ate what he could tolerate. Veggies made him throw up, so they were few and far between.

[teachermom2834]

So much junk. Sugary cereals were the best it got for breakfast. Donuts, cookies, ice cream. Whatever we wanted.

Packed lunch at school was those little fake cheese product and crackers with a plastic red stick in them and then chips and a Little Debbie cake or those cheap pecan rolls. As an alternative to the fake cheese/cracker package we might have a fake cheese and cracker sandwich cracker or peanut butter cracker package. That was the protein part of our meal. I think the drink was usually those little hugs (the barrels that were like 10/$1).

Dinners were typical to the time with casseroles or pot pie type things but always homemade. We did get pizza at least twice a week though. 
 

Always ice cream for bedtime snacks. And no limits on anything. Everyone was obese.

My mom was a big couponer/sale shopper. We used to spend all day Saturday driving from store to store working all the deals. So the prevailing requirement for what we ate was price. 
 

 

[AmandaVT]

11 in 88. Let me think. 

I have no memory of breakfast, but I would guess cereal or instant oatmeal (maple and brown sugar!) My mom only bought "boring" cereals - cheerios, rice krispies, crispix. Nothing with sugar. 

Lunch - by 11 I packed my own because my mom was a terrible lunch packer. (american cheese on wheat bread with mayo, mealy apple and a warm juicy juice box that invariably squished the sandwich). I went to a tiny grammar school so I would have made a sandwich, a juice box and that's probably it unless we had the "good" apples. 

After school snack - Kudos bars or dunkaroos or something like that. 

Dinner - ugh, we'd always have the box of frozen veg that would get microwaved. I hated the mixed veggies (still do). Then something like chicken and rice, pasta w/ meat sauce, that kind of thing. Steak and potato once a week. Sometimes casseroles or enchiladas. My mom and my aunt took an "ethnic" cooking class around this time, so she'd make things from that. 

Dessert - whatever the "in" cookie/ice cream was? My mom would get the snackwells when those were popular. I remember various frozen yogurts when that was in. If we ate our dumb microwaved veggies, we could eat dessert, so my brother and I got really good at hiding them. I'm betting there are still dried out lima beans in some of the plants in the dining room. We both love veggies as adults, just not microwaved frozen veggies. And I still won't touch lima beans or mixed veggies from a bag. 

[Terabith]

Age 11.....

Breakfast:  Carnation Breakfast Bar and glass of milk.  

Lunch:  peanut butter sandwich, apple or bag of chips, Little Debbie snack cake, milk (chocolate milk on Fridays).  If the school cafeteria had something "good," like the rectangular pizza, I'd buy that day.

Dinner:  often some kind of chicken and pasta and overboiled broccoli.  Probably coke to drink.  Cookies or something for dessert.  If I hated what was for dinner, I'd make myself another peanut butter sandwich.  I ate a TON of peanut butter.

There were several classes of coke in there.  My mom was a terrible cook.  We did eat out several times a week.  Usually at least twice.  Sometimes more.

There was, however, absolutely no salt in our house.  Or seasoning other than Mrs. Dash.  Or butter or really any kind of fat.  I got to college and thought the cafeteria food was amazing.

I also had this weird random nausea thing that was probably anxiety because it disappeared as soon as I went to college, but I threw up (and sometimes had diarrhea) at least once every day, usually in the mornings.  I ate very small portions at dinner because if I ate more, I would get nauseous.  Peanut butter sandwiches were the only thing I reliably could eat without feeling ill.  

Edited January 8 by Terabith

[iamonlyone]

Age 11, 1977:

Breakfast: My mom would cook what we wanted, but I always opted for a slice of toasted homemade zucchini, banana or pumpkin bread (usually with margarine) and milk (unpasturized straight from the dairy, as my aunt and uncle owned a dairy).

I was one of the few kids who chose to take my lunch to school: Half a sandwich (whole wheat bread, usually braunschweiger or tuna salad, homemade applesauce and a homemade "energy cookie" -- sweetened with some honey, lots of protein, grains, raisins, etc.).

After school snack: Homemade sweets like rhubarb dump cake, lemon peanut butter bars, "energy cookies" or other low-sugar, whole grain cookie varieties my mom found recipes for. (I remember one was coconut with sunflower seeds and chocolate chips.)

Dinner: Lots of veggies from my mom's garden, maybe spaghetti squash with homemade red sauce, vegetable curry, turkey burgers, pilaf, tacos. Those are the things I remember eating the most (oh, sometimes roast beef dinner on Sundays), but there was a lot of variety ... ham and navy bean soup. Oh, and always more milk.

We did not eat out.

Wow, I miss having someone cook good food for me!

[Ali in OR]

Age 11 in the later 70's in 6th grade. My mom had 4 kids in 5 years, and we were kind of on our own for breakfast and lunch--Mom slept in. I remember making my lunch at a pretty early age--my first grade teacher commented on my lunch of 1 slice of American cheese (which I folded into quarters) on 4 saltine crackers as "diet food". Anyway, I would say my bag lunches I made myself were typically a bologna sandwich or other lunch meat or a PBJ. I don't remember sides, I don't remember a drink--I think we just used the water fountain at school (no one had water bottles in those days).

Breakfast was always cold cereal, typically corn flakes, cheerios, or rice krispies. When I was really young I remember that milk was delivered to our house and whoever was up first would go to the door and bring in the 4 half-gallon cartons. And we 4 kids just poured our own cereal and put way too much sugar on it.

After school snack for me was often toast. Or cereal again. We loved cereal.

My mom could cook pretty well. Dad was into organic gardening and we had a huge garden. We had salad with dinner every night and it was a kid's job to make it. Typically iceberg lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and Italian dressing (Good Season which we made in the cruet). Favorite dinners were ground beef tacos with home-fried shells or Mom's spaghetti with meat sauce (or similar pasta and meat sauce casserole). Other dinners were something like pork chops or lamb chops, rice-a-roni, and a vegetable which Mom probably cooked fine, I just hated all veggies other than corn and salad.

Sometimes we had ice cream for dessert. There was a McDonalds in town and once in awhile if Mom and Dad were going out we got that. But usually if they were going out it was "Kraft dinner" which was Kraft macaroni and cheese and hot dogs (another favorite). Birthday kid always got to pick the restaurant (so that's 4 times a year) plus we also ate out when returning from a week-long backpacking trip. Best tasting food of our lives after a week of freeze-dried meals! We occasionally went to a favorite local pizza place, but always dine-in--pizza wasn't a take-out thing.

[EKS]

Late 1970s.

Breakfast:  OJ, milk, whole wheat English muffin with margarine.  Sometimes a hard boiled egg.

Lunch: Some sort of sandwich on whole wheat (tuna, bologna, cheese, not peanut butter) and a piece of fruit.  If I was lucky, a cookie too.

Dinner:  Some sort of meat, some sort of vegetable, salad.  Fruit for dessert.  Occasionally ice cream.

[Bambam]

age 11 - IL, mid 70s.

Breakfast we were on our own - so usually PB sandwich with reconstituted orange juice or hershey's cocoa chocolate milk. 

Lunch - Mom usually made - either a sandwich or leftovers from the night before.  Often it was bologna. Nasty foul stuff. I bought a couple of slices at the deli to let my kids taste it - and they thought it was evil too. During the summers, we kids at home (mom at work) usually had a Campbells soup. My favorite was bean-n-bacon - which my middle sister hated with a passion. 

Supper - usually something with hamburger. I was the first one home, and the only one who could make dinner if the family was to eat together (older sisters off to work, Dad off to college (worked during the day, took night classes), mom worked semi-late). Spaghetti, sloppy joes, chili, hamburger helper - basically that is all I could do - something with hamburger! We always had a garden in the summer, so plenty of tomatoes, green beans, corn, radishes. If there was a salad, it was iceberg lettuce.  Weekends mom would cook real food - fried chicken, roast, steak, etc.  But, wait, I think we had navy beans regularly one night a week too. Often mom made yeast rolls (lovely!) to go with them. There might have been a little in them but not much. There wasn't a lot of money to go around, so my mom was excellent at stretching meals - I grew up thinking everyone had beans in their chili and sloppy joes.  We had leftovers regularly but Mom usually managed to find ways to sorta disguise them.

We rarely went out to eat. As I got older - maybe 15?16? we used to sometimes go out for pizza. If we were traveling to see relatives, we might stop at a fast food type place. 

We did get Pepsi and store bought candy once a week though. My dad would clean an office building on Friday or Saturday nights - and the whole family went with him, and we had a little party at the end - split two Pepsis (5 people) and a small bag of mixed chocolates. 

[wendyroo]

Early '90s, rural midwest.

Breakfast - Cereal, mostly Frosted Miniwheats or Honey Nut Cheerios. Always 2% milk.

Lunch - Either packed or at school. Packed would be PBJ on white bread, chips, apple sauce and a few cookies. School lunch always seemed to be pizza - taco pizza, tortilla pizza, breakfast pizza, regular pizza, etc. - they might have served fruits and vegetables, but I didn't eat them. 

Snack - Cookies

Dinner - Chicken nuggets, tater tots, and the ubiquitous frozen vegetable mix: peas, corn, carrots and lima beans...plus always a glass of milk.

Bedtime snack - ice cream 

[Ausmumof3]

Breakfast - box cereal and UHT ultralight milk

lunch - two slices of homemade bread with nothing in it (my choice. School lunches weren’t a thing and the cold lamb didn’t taste nice by lunchtime, and I doubt my mum had ever even thought of buying peanut butter)

recess snack - an apple

afternoon snack - fruit only

dinner - lamb chops or some variation on that from a side of lamb with boiled vegetable. No salt because mum didn’t think it was healthy and mashed potato was made with skim milk. 

dessert - home preserved peaches or other fruit and a small spoon of vanilla ice cream - this was the reward for making your way through the boiled vegetables and sometimes this took me about an hour and a half to get to!

Mum was really paranoid about us getting fat so everything was skim milk and we weren’t allowed any packaged snacks and she didn’t bake except fruit cake for my Dad. 

[wintermom]

I'm feeling like a typical North American kid looking at most people's descriptions.

Western Canada, urban, 1970s

Breakfast - toast and peanut butter, cereal, or instant hot oatmeal, sometimes there was juice

Lunch - (No school lunchrooms ever available) cheese and crackers, carrots and fruit (I didn't like sandwiches)

Dinner - Homemade mostly from scratch, a varitey of meats, canned, frozen or fresh veg, often potatoes as dad grew up on a farm and potatoes and bread were a 'must' at dinner.

Dessert - not daily but pretty frequent, usually canned fruit, pudding or ice cream

Snacks - popcorn, cheese, crackers, fruit, pop (soda)

We didn't eat out very often. For special occassions it would be going to a nice Chinese restaurant. I loved those times!

Edited January 8 by wintermom

[saraha]

1985

My mom is a picky eater and was very controlling. If she didn’t like it, no one could possibly like it and everything we ate had to be exactly as she would eat it, and we ate all processed foods. If we had homemade subs, all of our subs were exactly the same, down to the orange French dressing we all had to have and were never allowed mustard or mayonnaise. I thought I didn’t like subs til the first time I went to a subway with a friends family… not a single sub had orange French dressing! Turns out I don’t like orange French dressing but absolutely love sub sandwiches.

Breakfast- toast or cereal

Lunch- always packed, bologna and American cheese or pb and j, baggie of Bettermade brand potato chips and school chocolate milk. I didn’t have a bought school lunch til jr high. If we went on a field trip, same sandwich and chips, but we got a can of generic pop wrapped in aluminum foil 😆 During the summer (if she had a man) lunch was a myriad of frozen food that we could heat up ourselves. That was the absolute best in our minds. Everyday it was frozen pizza or pot pies or fish sticks or whatever we picked out that she approved. We would agonize or the frozen TV dinners as we got to pick our own. If she didn’t have a man, it was bologna or pb and j.

Dinner- one of five dinners, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, fried chicken and Lipton side dishes, refried bean and mozzarella cheese burritos, tacos in Ortega hard shells, spaghetti. Veg was canned green beans or corn or iceberg lettuce salad with orange French dressing. 

When I started going to friends houses in jr high, I ate like a pig if given the chance. I had never had until an adult or at a friends broccoli, celery, green peppers, mayonnaise, steak, any kind of seafood, grilled chicken, pork chops, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, sweet potatoes, zucchini, pumpkin or any squash, oranges, fresh peaches and pears, cantaloupe, spinach, mushrooms, avocado, beans other than refried, lunchmeat other than bologna or when my grandmother gave us pickle pimento loaf twice a year when we visited and I don’t even know what else. Dh was absolutely shocked at what I had never had before and he was definitely the product of people who only ate “country” food or processed food. There are still a whole lot of foods I have never had, but that’s because I have never had the budget to get too crazy. One time we tried Camembert cheese because youngest ds loved the show miraculous and would not stop begging for it. We didn’t like it, haha.

I didn’t make the same mistake with my kids, my oldest kids discovered foods along with me and the younger ones don’t know any different. The younger ones are much more adventurous eaters because of it.

My sister and I are both interested cooks who are pretty adept. My mom is regularly disgusted at things we talk about trying or making and always says with disgust “I didn’t teach you that” she would tell older kids, until I caught her in the act, “I’m sorry your mommy makes you eat things like that. I would never make you eat things like that.”

Edited January 8 by saraha

[lauraw4321]

Interesting!

1992. 
 

breakfast - toaster strudels with icing

lunch - I think I ate in the cafeteria. I only remember pizza and burgers. 
 

snack - Gatorade and recees’ peanut butter cup. Nearly daily from my grandfather when he picked me up from school. 
 

Dinner - 50% fast food, 50% cooked at home. Meals were spaghetti with meat sauce and salad. Vegetable beef soup. Beef patties, instant potatoes and canned peas or green beans. 
 

I don’t remember fresh fruit or veggies much at all other than occasional iceberg salads.