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

[Melissa in Australia]

I think I was 15 the first time I had pizza

[bookbard]

13 minutes ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I think I was 15 the first time I had pizza

All the fast food places didn't reach our way till I was in my teens. Reading @Ausmumof3 meals sounds familiar. I went crazy when I left home and went to university and had access to all the junk! 

[Resilient]

We came home for lunch grades 1-6, OR Mom packed my Lunch.  
 

butter sandwiches or butter-and American cheese(1slice).   (White but not wonder bread). Banana or apple.  Graham crackers .  3 cents for milk.  
if we came home, grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell tomato soup. 
 

Mom was an athlete and an award-winning journalist.  She mastered about 20 meals but was not a cook. And she always burned SOMETHING.  She mastered:

lasagne, chicken and dumplings, 
chicken and rice, meatloaf, pot roast and root veggies, grilled cheese sandwiches, corn on the cob, donuts, pumpkin bread, burgers, a shockingly great baloney/ cheese/pickle mashup sandwich, camping cooking, and everything involving ice cream. 
Other than that, she brought home 15 + trophies in athletic and professional recognition.  

[SKL]

I turned 11 in 1977.

Breakfast:  a bowl of Cheerios with milk and sugar.  Sometimes we had raisins or bananas to put on top of the cereal.

Lunch:  we qualified for subsidized school lunches that year.  The lunch ladies would cook a meal in the school kitchen.  We were required to eat all of it, including the milk, even if it was spoiled.  😕  A sample might be beef stroganoff with noodles, boiled green beans with too much black pepper, peach turnover or a burnt peanut butter cookie, and 8 ounces of white milk.

(When we didn't qualify for subsidized lunches, we would pack one or two sandwiches - either bologna or pbj - and still drink the school milk.)

Dinner: my brother (then aged 12/13) was the cook most days.  We had home cooked meals each day including meat, starch, and veggie.  An example would be roast chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, canned corn, and a glass of milk.  Sometimes we would have canned fruit for dessert.  Sometimes it was simpler, e.g. Kraft mac & cheese, hotdogs, and canned veggie.  More often, something with pasta, ground beef, and tomatoes.

[frogger]

2 hours ago, bookbard said:

All the fast food places didn't reach our way till I was in my teens. Reading @Ausmumof3 meals sounds familiar. I went crazy when I left home and went to university and had access to all the junk! 

 

This describes my son to a T. He obtained a job and drives himself and now eats a ton of junk. He is usually too full for homecooked meals now. 😕

[Ausmumof3]

3 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

I think I was 15 the first time I had pizza

After my Mum died as a teen, Dad used to go to this “Aussie Pizza House” where you could buy a pizza for $3.95 every Thursday night. I think that was my first experience with pizza (other than the homemade type my mum made on birthdays which was like scone dough base with pineapple ham and cheddar cheese 

Having said all that I didn’t feel deprived. We grew a tonne of stuff and in summer could just pig out on fresh stone fruit etc. mum also went through a juice phase where I had almost unlimited access to grape juice from concentrate which was probably horrible for my health but at that time it was thought to be healthy 

[VickiMNE]

I was eleven in 1970 in a family with more disposable income than most here it seems.

Breakfast:  cereals, oj, toast, eggs--we fixed our own breakfasts at that age because Mom was working.

Lunch:  School (elementary) or Sandwiches with veggie sticks.  Occasional chips.

Dinner:  meat, salad (fresh lettuce with a few extra veggies--I made it from scratch every night with homemade dressing in the bowl), veggie side, starch side (bread or potatoes or rice--never all at once unless Thanksgiving).  Rarely dessert.  Veggies were often frozen--more variety that way.  Very rarely did we have casseroles.  

Being in California and avid readers of Sunset Magazine, we ate more adventurous meals than many.  We went out to dinner every Friday night to celebrate the end of the week.

Definitely had some processed foods in the pantry--poptarts and such but they weren't served regularly.  Parents were big diet soda drinkers, though, in the mistaken belief that it was healthier.  Same with margarine vs. butter.

[Eos]

I don't remember many specifics but my mom was also a Sunset magazine reader and early Bon Appetit adopter so we had some pretty experimental meals. 11 in 1976.

Breakfast was cereal and milk, toast, sometimes store-bought crumpets with honey and something called Russian Caravan tea. Omelettes with veggies and French toast. I learned to make omelettes from my grandfather, who taught my mom as well.

Lunches were at school and I was embarrassed by her sending weird things like peanut butter rolled up in lettuce instead of a normal sandwich.  Mayo and alfalfa sprouts when she was in a sprouting phase. Always an apple.

Dinner was often meat, rice or potatoes, fresh cooked veggies, salad but she also made a fair amount of curries which she believed must always be served with little sides of peanuts, coconut, and raisins.  I do remember having a standoff with my oldest sister vs our parents when we refused to eat our required three bites of lentils one night.  We sat at the table for hours not eating them.  I didn't try lentils again until I was about 30 and of course loved them.  

We always ate homemade and my parents were very judgmental about "store-bought" food.  We had a big garden and fruit trees so ate a lot of fruit  - apples, cherries, plums - for snacks. Mom made yogurt and butchered her own chickens but I would never eat chicken when it was ours because they were my job to feed and I loved them - which I laugh about now that organic chicken is so expensive.  I still can't bring myself to raise meat birds though.

We rarely ate out but it was almost always Chinese food if we did. I remember some of the best ever meals were at Grange halls.

We weren't allowed to have candy except on Sunday which of course meant we spent most waking hours trying to find it.  Mom always made a super yummy dessert for my dad on his birthday called Chocolate Icebox Cake that was made with ladyfingers, chocolate, and whipped cream but otherwise we didn't have dessert except Junket or her homemade stewed fruit which we all loved.  Junket is like vanilla flavored milk-based jello mmmmm.

Edited January 8 by Eos

[DawnM]

I was at boarding school.   

Breakfast:   Soggy pancakes, maybe eggs, tea

Tea Time: Tea, some sort of biscuit/cookie/cracker

Lunch: possibly pizza roll ups (handmade) 

Dinner: Chicken stew with rice or cornmeal, some sort of vegetable and some sort of dessert (hot pudding was a staple)

When I was at home for holiday:

Breakfast: Whatever you made yourself (my mom grew up in the Southern US and Africa had a lot of corn, so she made an "African" version of grits that we had a lot, it was courser and thicker, but it was still like grits.)

Tea Time: Tea and something snacky

Lunch/Dinner:   Our main meal at home growing up was lunch.  We had what most would consider dinner with a full hot meal.   That could be anything, but once a week we had curry, my favorite meal.   African curry can be made with beef or chicken and has a host of toppings on top like coconut, peanuts, tomatoes, bananas, dried fruit, peppers, etc....

Supper: usually soup and a sandwich, what most of us have in the US for lunch.

[73349]

Breakfast: Cold cereal like Fruity Pebbles or Honey Nut Cheerios and milk. Probably every day in the year except Easter and Christmas. ETA: Actually in winter sometimes I'd have two packets of flavored instant oatmeal instead. Either way, I was very hungry by lunch.

Lunch: Peanut butter and marshmallow fluff on white bread, an apple, and probably some other snack like a baggie of chips. Carton of milk from school.

Afternoon snack: Usually cookies (I liked Chips Ahoy), which my mom capped at three, and probably Kool-Aid. We didn't have apple juice until a little later (WIC qualification the following year).

Dinner: Shake-and-bake chicken drumsticks or bone-in pork chops, Minute Rice, broccoli or another vegetable cooked from frozen; or spaghetti and meat sauce with garlic bread; sometimes homemade chicken stew. More milk.

We lived on around half an acre in a New England suburb, but did not garden. We got pizza or Chinese food approximately once after each sibling was born; I don't even know where the restaurants were in that town.

I'd spend one day each weekend with my dad, or if he'd already moved farther away every other weekend. So lunch was a cheeseburger Happy Meal from McDonald's unless we went to my grandparents' house, in which case it was something like beef with potatoes and carrots.

Edited January 8 by 73349

[Pawz4me]

Reading through the responses has made me realize that we probably ate out a lot more than many on here. This was during the 60's and 70's. I have no memory of a time when we didn't go out to eat at least once a week, and I'm pretty sure several more times wasn't unusual. And we weren't at all unusual in our family or among my friends' families. It was normal.

[gingersmom]

8 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

Reading through the responses has made me realize that we probably ate out a lot more than many on here. This was during the 60's and 70's. I have no memory of a time when we didn't go out to eat at least once a week, and I'm pretty sure several more times wasn't unusual. And we weren't at all unusual in our family or among my friends' families. It was normal.

We ate out a ton because my mother hated to cook and what she did cook no one wanted to eat (besides my father).

[sweet2ndchance]

I turned 11 in 1990. We lived in Phoenix then. Single income middle class family.

Breakfast: Anything from cold cereal to toaster strudel to eggs and toast to pancakes and sausage to canned cinnamon rolls to instant oatmeal. My mom went through a spell of making Jiffy Mix muffins everyday for a while about this time. She almost always made breakfast for us at this time on school days. Saturday mornings it was cold cereal and cartoons (I specifically remember having "Nintendo" cereal but whatever sugary cereal we picked at the store is what we had). Sundays we went out to Denny's or IHOP for breakfast a lot.

Lunch: School Lunch most of the time. We had a choice of two entrees everyday then there were veggies and a dessert. Pizza was a choice every Friday with salad, orange slices and jello. The other days varied from chicken nuggets to stirfry to stew to ham and cheese sandwiches. The school cafeteria also had a salad bar where you could make your own salad and a snack bar where you could buy all kinds of junk food. I was only allowed to eat from the snack bar on my birthday. My parents volunteered daily at the school so they were always aware of what I was doing for lunch and doing in general at school.

Dinner: Chicken and Broccoli stirfry was a favorite dinner. Spaghetti, beef tips and noodles (similar to stroganoff), grilled burgers or shishkabobs, occasionally we'd have Hamburger Helper. Pasta dinners always had a side salad. Every dinner had a meat, a starch and vegetable side. We ate out at least once a week. Usually Olive Garden, Black Angus Steakhouse, Red Lobster or some other "sit down" restaurant. We'd do fast food on trips and outings.

My parents had this weird thing where they refused to buy store brand anything. Everything had to be name brand. My dad once told me it was because he grew eating store brands and he didn't want his kids to have to "suffer" like that.  I also remember asking for "brown bread" once because I had it at school and liked it and my mom told me no because brown bread was for poor people and we weren't poor.....🤔 my parents had issues with not ever appearing to be poor.

[BeachGal]

I was 11 in the 70s.

For breakfast I would eat the largest, glossiest apple I could buy at a grocery store that I walked past on my way to school usually with the money I’d collect from the newspaper box. I had our town’s morning paper route at 10 and 11.

Lunch was a pb&j sandwich and a carton of milk. My siblings and I took care of our own breakfasts and lunches starting in 1st grade and we often made dinner for our family as well. I have very few memories of my mom cooking but she also had long hours at work. We were latchkey kids.

Dinner for me was often cheese and eggs that was nuked, bread and “healthy” margarine. Sometimes we’d make pork chops, roast beef, potatoes and canned green beans, kidney beans and corn. Chicken was a rare treat back then. This was before Frank Perdue. We used Crisco and corn oil, also because it was thought to be healthier than butter.

Cereal was corn flakes. For birthdays my mom would buy us a box of cake mix and we would make a cake ourselves and then eat it with friends and family. She was not into baking at all. We had almost no candies, cookies or ice cream in our house except at Christmas. There was an old man who dressed up as Santa who would deliver a paper bag of candies and an orange to the kids in our (small) town. I have very fond memories of him.

[Serenade]

I turned 11 in 1974.  Breakfast could be any kind of cold cereal or maybe a hot one like grits or oatmeal.  Sometimes my mom would make a soft boiled egg for us, too.  Maybe we'd have a grapefruit on the side or banana in the cereal.  Lunch was pretty much always some kind of sandwich brought to school, along with a piece of fruit and a couple of cookies. We'd buy our milk at school, which was probably a dime when I was 11.  For supper it was likely that we'd have venison in some fashion (my dad was a hunter) along with a fresh vegetable or salad, and some kind of starch.  We usually had a small dessert after supper. (This was in the US, in the state of North Carolina.)

Edited January 8 by Serenade

[dsmith]

Breakfast during the week was usually cereal or cream of wheat, possible oatmeal. On the weekends it was bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc. My dad usually made lunches for us, usually a sandwich - pbj, tuna, deli meat and cheese. He'd also pack 3 cookies and a banana or other piece of fruit. I remember when my dad was sick, my  mom took over for a month, and made me cream cheese and jelly sandwiches every day. The thought of cream cheese and jelly makes me nauseous now! On occasion I would get a school lunch on Fridays because it was pizza day. In high school I usually got lunch from the cafeteria, but junior and senior year I got out early and ate at home. Dinner was usually homecooked by my dad, but he did on occasion use things like hamburger helper, or he would create his own version of it. We had a large family, so we ate a lot of ground beef dishes, mashed potatoes, breakfast for dinner, tacos, pork chops, etc. It was usually a meat, a starch and a veggie every night. I didn't have steak until I moved out. He did do london broil, sliced thin on garlic toast - that was a favorite occasional meal. I didn't go to a fast food restaurant until high school. We did go to the local hot dog place every time my parents sold a house. 

Edited January 8 by dsmith

[Ellie]

I don't remember, except that we didn't do "snacks" as an indentifiable small meal. I think I did cold cereal for most breakfasts (during the week, anyway); when I took my lunch it was likely to be PBJ; not much fresh fruit or veggies (I have a theory about that, but it's another story); limited options for supper (another story) but likely to include mashed potatoes or rice, with gravy, and a basic meat or fried chicken, and buttermilk biscuits (not sure what the British equivalent would be). Never, ever salad. Rarely desserts.

[Clarita]

Breakfast: Cereal or cake (specifically Swiss rolls) 

Lunch: I did school lunch. My school contracted out the food and mostly it was food from fast food places I ate a lot of taco bell bean and cheese burritos.

Dinner: My mom didn't like to cook. We ate out a lot, Chinese food. 

My kids definitely ate healthier than what I did as a child (90's - 2000's). Although I think the 80's and 90's were the pinnacle of food abundance and unhealthiness.

[Pam in CT]

My mom left the house before 7 every morning to get to work, and she worked long days and was surely tired by the time she got home, and used a lot of processed convenience foods that I never used. I *feel* like my kids ate "healthier" than my brother and I did growing up... that is my sense of the telescoped bits I recall... but I dunno that an objective observer recording fully would concur.

She had a strong, and to this day defensible IMO, nutritional theory of what "dinner" should constitute -- a protein, a vegetable, a starch, a "salad." We got all four parts just about every dinner. Yes, maybe the chicken was baked in Cream of Whatever Cambells, yes the potatoes were instant, probably the vegetable was frozen mush, maybe the "salad" was half a canned peach with a dollop of cottage cheese (? this absolutely counted as our "salad").  But all four components just about every dinner.

We ate cereal for breakfast during the week, but not the too-overtly-sugary things (rice kripsies, regular cheerios, chex).  The overtly-sugary things were labeled Vacation Cereal, which we were allowed to have as a special treat on our annual camping trips (from the individual portion boxes!!!  with milk right there in the box!!!) or at my grandparents' house. (A tradition and labeling I carried on with my own kids.)

Aside from cinnamon toast (me), more cereal (my brother), apples (always a bowl on the counter), and very occasionally cheese and crackers (if my father was going to be Very late -- like, after 7:30p, and we were waiting for him to have dinner), we didn't snack. 

One soda on Sunday night; otherwise milk or water.

But, we were allowed dessert after dinner so long as we ate it.  My brother had his immediately after; I waited until just before bed when I had a bowl of chocolate ice cream with caramel or fudge, every.single.night.

We could do worse.

My kids had more variety, less processed things from boxes, many more (and more freedom to choose between) snacks, and we went out most Sunday nights throughout their growing-up years.  But I'm not REALLY sure that their overall nutrition was better.

[AmandaVT]

7 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

Reading through the responses has made me realize that we probably ate out a lot more than many on here. This was during the 60's and 70's. I have no memory of a time when we didn't go out to eat at least once a week, and I'm pretty sure several more times wasn't unusual. And we weren't at all unusual in our family or among my friends' families. It was normal.

I remember my parents going out a lot. They went to friends' houses for murder mystery parties, out to dinner/movies, regular dinner parties, etc. My brother and I would be home with the babysitter a few times a month. We would go out as a family, too. Not quite weekly, maybe monthly? Dinner and a movie was a regular night out. The only times we were allowed fast food were at Burger King after the dentist's (30 min after when we were allowed to eat again). And McDonalds after doctor's appointments if we had to get a shot. To this day, I associate doctor/dentist appointments with getting a treat. Now I stop at Dunkin after dentist appointments for a cold brew!

[MercyA]

Age 11, 1985. Middle class single income family.

Breakfast: dry cereal, milk, orange or grape juice

Lunch at school: either a school lunch (sandwich/pizza/main dish, canned fruit, canned or jarred vegetables, pudding/cookie/ice cream, milk) OR a sack lunch (peanut butter sandwich, apple, chips, cookies, milk)

Snack: cookies or ice cream with juice or milk

Dinner: homemade casserole/pork chops/meatloaf, homemade muffins or sliced store-bought bread, plain cooked vegetables and/or potatoes, applesauce/raw carrots/tossed salad, cookies or sometimes a special homemade dessert

Snack: bowl of dry cereal with milk

Ate out perhaps once a month at Arby's or Ponderosa Steakhouse. Went to A&W Restaurant for fries or a sweet roll and a soft drink on Friday afternoons to celebrate the weekend. 🙂 

[Arcadia]

For junk food at that age, I had potato chips rarely, Pocky often, Calbee prawn crackers occasionally. I have many food stalls near my home and near my school so it was easy for me to buy chinese buns, samosas, asian Indian sardine puffs, all kinds of curry puffs, Portuguese egg tarts (pastel de nata) when I wanted a food treat. 
My aunt would bring my cousins and I to KFC when we go to the movies because it is next to the cinema. We would also sometimes go to A&W for the root beer float, coney hot dogs and curly fries.

Edited January 8 by Arcadia
weird formatting

[Ginevra]

I was 11 in the early 80’s. 
 

Breakfast was nearly always cold cereal. Not especially healthy ones, but also, whatever was very cheap. So, usually: Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Shredded Wheat, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Grapenuts, Corn Puffs. Sometimes showings from more expensive sugar cereals: Golden Grahams, Corn Pops, Honeycomb, Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes. 
 

Sometimes we had toasted cheese (white bread, velveeta cheese). 
 

Lunch: Always a packed lunch, except Fridays, when I was allowed to get the horrible .75 pizza. (Or “pizza”.) Most kids would also get an ice cream sandwich with the leftover quarter but I was not permitted to do that; the leftover quarters could buy another pizza next month. 
 

Packed lunch was usually a sandwich, usually peanut butter and jelly. Sometimes was Velveeta cheese on white bread. In the summer, we had lettuce and tomato. We very infrequently had lunch meat; if we did it was generally the cheapest boiled ham or bologna. Sometimes a thermos of Cambells chicken noodle soup instead of a sandwich. I usually did not get a snack with my sandwich. My mom did not buy any kind of chips or cookies. My best friend always had a Little Debbie or Hostess cake in her lunch, which she shared with me. Around holidays, I might get some sugar cookies or homemade cake in my lunch. 
 

Dinner was not very healthy, either. When I was 11, it was most often one of the following: Tacos; La Choy canned Chow Mein with Minute rice; Beef Stew (my dads favorite); spaghetti; hot dogs on a bed of macaroni and cheese (yes, reallly!); Spam with pineapples; Waikiki Meatballs (delicious; I still make this); roast beef (my mom always cooked this soooo dry!); Chef Boyardee Pizza Kits. Also, my parents did not make a formal dinner ever night, so lots of times, dinner was whatever individual frozen meal you were willing to cook. We had a lot of “cooking bags” - forerunner to microwave meals: drop the plastic-sealed food into a pan of boiling water to heat. 
 

The beverage we drank 24-7 was Kool-aid. My mom got something like 20 packets for a dollar, so that was what we drank all the time. 
 

My father nearly never cooked; if he ever did, it was regarded as some kind of amazing concession he was making. Very old-fashioned notions of who does what tasks in the home. My mom, though, was not a good cook and her primary goal was to feed us all as cheaply as possible. We were very definitely undernourished in both quantity and quality. Once I was an independent adult, I began eating very differently from how I grew up. I make very few recipes that my mother made and actually am more likely to cook something my grandmother made than my mom. 
 

Other miscellany: we never had real butter; always margarine. We never had any bread except white. Vegetable oil was always corn oil. We did not eat many fresh vegetables or fruits, except perhaps in the summer when garden produce was available. “Fruit” usually meant canned fruit cocktail, canned peaches or pears, or mushy, mealy apples. Mom shopped for groceries on “payday,” which was every two weeks. She would go to the bank, then go to the grocery. We often had slim pickings the second week because five kids fought over the “good” food the first week and starved on the leftovers the second week. Definitely low amounts of money played a major role in our inadequate food. 
 

Mom bought two gallons of milk every two weeks and when it was exhausted, it stayed gone. So this meant if you wanted milk on your cereal after the first few days since shopping day, it was reconstituted dry milk. Often, we didn’t have that either. 
 

Our daily food was of poor nutritional quality but one difference in the world today is that we almost never ate food outside the home. We did not go to McDonalds except on vacation and we only went on vacation once every 5 or so years. If any of us went someplace like, say, a baseball field, we were rarely or never allowed to buy concessions, sodas, or candy. 
 

[SKL]

If you ask my kids how they ate when younger, you would hear whines about how I made them eat organics, whole fruits and veggies, and "honey wheat" bread (a soft, lighter mix of white and whole flour), until they realized that if they looked askance at that, one of the aunties would give them something more fun.

I see people above saying they ate "badly," but that's just how kids ate in those days for the most part.  It sounds reasonable to me, especially considering that most of us weren't rich.  I think my folks did their best, all things considered.  We all seem to have grown up fine.  I know that's cliche, but how many people do you know whose health is horrible, chiefly because their folks fed them white carbs and margarine when they were 11?  Growing kids have amazing metabolism.

I think it's a much bigger deal that kids move a lot less than they used to.  Maybe we should have a thread about that.

[KungFuPanda]

I was 11 in the mid 80s. My mother cooked most things from scratch. I thought everyone only got convenience foods while camping. 🤣

Breakfast - warm cereals or bacon and eggs. Peanut butter/banana toast in a pinch. 
 

Lunch- sandwiches, fruit, milk in a thermos, and a sweet snack. If we did school lunch it was made from scratch at the school, including the bread, and it was good. 
 

Dinner - meat, potatoes, bread, veggies . . . fresh veg in the summer and home canned or frozen in the winter. I think we had beef more often than chicken because my parents were raised with chickens and were over it. Dad usually had at least one deer in the freezer each year so we had a variety of venison meals. 
 

Snacks were cakes, pies, and homemade cookies. We did get to drink koolaid sometimes (kids  ever got soda). Sometimes we had ice cream/floats and ice pops in the summer. 
 

ETA: I grew up in southern WV. We had gravy and biscuits EVERY weekend. We also had pinto beans cooked with salt pork, cornbread, spring onions, and greens fairly often. We had a lot of different bean meals . . . Lima, great northern, cranberry, green, etc. I don’t think I ever tasted a chickpea until adulthood. 

Edited January 8 by KungFuPanda

[Harriet Vane]

Everything in my childhood came from a box or a can.

Breakfast--sugared cereal with milk

Lunch--White bread sandwich with that highly-processed, super-thin Buddig meat and mayonnaise. My mother tried to require us to eat fruit--many times I ate an apple or a carrot or an orange. Other times I secretly threw out the fruit. There were often chips or pretzels or a packaged cookie or two. On Sundays we had a "fancy" lunch that included everything I've already mentioned plus Ramen noodle soup. 

Dinner--Typical American stuff. Casseroles. Basic spaghetti. Shake and bake chicken. If it was summer, perhaps hamburgers or hot dogs. We always had a side of a canned vegetable. Often my mom also made mashed potatoes from a box of potato flakes. 

 

As an adult, I have gone as far away from the boxes and cans of my childhood as I possibly can. I cook from scratch most of the time. Now that I am dairy free and gluten free it's even healthier--lots of lean meats and fruit and veggies and salads. Tons of whole grains. I started cooking properly in high school and the flavor was so much better, I never really looked back. 

[Terabith]

I forgot about alfalfa sprouts!  We often had them when I was a kid, and I put them on peanut butter sandwiches, sometimes with a bit of honey.  They might have been my primary vegetable growing up!

[JennyD]

I am so impressed by all of you who can remember your childhoods in such detail!   I have only scattered memories of what I (probably?) ate at age 11.   in fairness, I was an exceptionally picky eater who more or less survived on peanut butter sandwiches until my teen years, so mostly I'm trying to remember things that I didn't eat.

Late 1970s, one-income family in suburban NJ.  

Reconstituted orange juice and nonfat milk made from the dried powder.  School lunches -- grilled cheese and PB&J on the white bread that my mother would never ever buy.  My mom had all of the Adele Davis books (does anyone else remember those?) so at home, it was natural peanut butter and honey on whole wheat bread.   I vaguely recall that our family meals were somewhere at the intersection of 70s health food (see, Adele Davis, above) and very limited funds (RIP No Frills brand)  -- pasta, salad, presumably some sort of cooked vegetable, the occasional hamburger, liver and onions, converted rice.  (Remarkably, the only one of the above that I would eat was the liver.) 

Friday nights were special: challah, roast chicken pieces coated with bread crumbs, salad, and a cookie from the bakery.    Sometimes, especially if my grandparents were visiting, my mom would make a beef tongue.  

On rare occasions my brother and I were allowed to each buy a carob bar from the health food store.  And when my grandparents came my grandpa would take us to Dairy Queen and we could get sundaes (!)  My mom didn't even seem to mind that it spoiled our appetites for dinner, which felt like a miracle.  

 

 

 

[Faith-manor]

Three things very much affected my eating habits as children, and what mom served.

1st: my father seemed to have hyperactive taste buds that detected pretty much every herb and spice as bitter or bizarrely spicey. He liked only two things on his food. Black pepper and salt. My mother deferred to him and as a result our food was so bland it was absolutely gross. Imagine being 5 years old and still getting what was essentially gerber baby food out of a jar. 

2nd: He had an expensive hobby - really expensive - that was not particularly affordable at their income level so the household budget, including groceries, was too low. He did not give two hoots about food either so long as there was enough of whatever gross, bland thing to go around, he was fine.

3rd: My mom worked tirelessly in his business, and it wasn't like the misogynistic prick helped at home, so her burden was great, and time was short. As a result, a typical meal was an  unseasoned small amount of ground beef, a bland sauce like plain, canned tomatoes, or a couple pats of margarine (far cheaper than real butter), or a milk gravy with no flavoring, and pasta, a bowl of DelMonte peas warmed in the microwave, and then an iceberg lettuce salad with a little grated carrot, and vinegar and oil. If we said we didn't like the vinegar and oil, and would prefer something else, we were told to shut up and eat. Mom didn't say it. He did.

Mom packed our lunches, and a typical was a peanut butter, no jelly sandwich, a bag of chips, and a cookie with a little tupperware container that had some applesauce in it. We were given the 10c or whatever it was at the time to buy milk at school.

As a result, I grew up without a lot of fresh fruit in the house, a lot of very cheap convenience foods, and no idea that vegetables could taste good, and not have the texture of paste.

It took me a long time, and exposure to a lot of different ways of preparing vegetables and whole grains to develop a better palette. What I have discovered is I love savory, savory, savory, and I like a little heat. Peppers are divine, many kinds though I don't gravitate towards the insanely hot varieties. Green beans are now a favorite vegetable. I don't like steamed broccoli, but I do love it roasted in the oven with garlic and red pepper flake. I have ways I like to fix Brussels sprouts - a vegetable I had literally never seen prior to leaving for college, and many ways I like to have salad. I only enjoy, for the most part, the fruits that are on the tart side and NOT mushy, bananas make me gag. So I also do not enjoy squash or avocado.

My dad has been gone for 7 years now, and amazingly, mom's cooking had improved greatly!

Edited January 9 by Faith-manor
Autocorrect believes I don't mean what I type 😠

[popmom]

On 1/7/2024 at 4:47 PM, Corraleno said:

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.

Our only fast food was also Burger Chef and we only ate there on Halloween. 🙂 I didn’t know it was a chain. 

1981: I was on the reduced cost plan at school, so I ate a hot breakfast (10 cents) and lunch (15 cents) everyday there—which was much better than what I ate at home for breakfast and lunch. At home, breakfast was rice crispies or cheerios with skim milk. My mother would sprinkle sugar on my younger siblings’ but I hated sugar in my milk. I did sometimes drizzle honey on my Cheerios. Lunch was stuff like spaghettios, bologna sandwich, kool aid to drink. Supper—my mother cooked every night. Rotation of spaghetti, bbq chicken, meatloaf, hamburgers, fish sticks… She was good to offer a good variety of veggies—mostly canned or frozen. An occasional tossed salad. Sweet iced tea to drink. Bedtime snack was more cold cereal. 

I never drank plain water. Milk, kool aid, or sweet tea. I still struggle mightily to drink plain water. 😕

 

Edited January 9 by popmom

[SKL]

2 hours ago, Faith-manor said:

Three things very much affected my eating habits as children, and what mom served.

1st: my father seemed to have hyperactive taste buds that detected pretty much every herb and spice as bitter or bizarrely spicey. He liked only two things on his food. Black pepper and salt. My mother deferred to him and as a result our food was so bland it was absolutely gross. Imagine being 5 years old and still getting what was essentially gerber baby food out of a jar. 

2nd: He had an expensive hobby - really expensive - that was not particularly affordable at their income level so the household budget, including groceries, was too low. He did not give two hoots about food either so long as there was enough of whatever gross, bland thing to go around, he was fine.

3rd: My mom worked tirelessly in his business, and it wasn't like the misogynistic prick helped at home, so her burden was great, and time was short. As a result, a typical meal was an in seasoned small amount of ground beef a bland, sweet sauce like plain, canned tomatoes, or a couple pats of margarine (far cheaper than real butter), or a milk gravy with no flavoring, and pasta, a bowl of DelMonte peas warmed in the microwave, and then an iceberg lettuce salad with a little grades carrot, and vinegar and oil. If we said we didn't like the vinegar and oil, and would prefer something else, we were told to shut up and eat. Mom didn't say it. He did.

Mom packed our lunches, and a typical was a peanut butter, no jelly, sandwich, a bag of chips, and a cookie with a little Tupperware contained that had some applesauce in it. We were given the 10c or whatever it was at the time to buy milk at school.

As a result, I grew up without a lot of fresh fruit in the house, a lot of very cheap convenience foods, and no idea that vegetables could taste good, and not have the texture of paste.

It took me a long time, and exposure to a lot of different ways of preparing vegetables and whole grains to develop a better palette. What I have discovered is I love savory, savory, savory, and I like a little heat. Peppers are divine, many kinds though I don't gravitate towards the insanely hot varieties. Green beans are now a favorite vegetable. I don't like steamed broccoli, but I do love it roasted in the oven with garlic and red pepper flake. I have ways I like to fix Brussels sprouts - a vegetable I had literally never seen prior to leaving for college, and many ways I like to have salad. I only enjoy, for the most part, the fruits that are on the tart side and NOT mushy, bananas make me gag. So I also do not enjoy squash or avocado.

My dad has been gone for 7 years now, and amazingly, mom's cooking had improved greatly!

You and I would not get along.  I hate everything you love (food-wise), and you hate everything I love.  😛

My kids don't like what I like either.  It's the main reason why I quit bothering to cook.  (My kids are able and welcome to cook all they like!)

[KungFuPanda]

I think I can remember what we ate because there wasn’t a huge variety. It was basic country food and the meals came up often on rotation. My parents were good cooks, but we didn’t have the variety of international foods that city kids grew up with. The food was good, but the ingredients and types of spices were limited. 
 

My parents had a Mama D’s cookbook so we would occasionally get homemade pizzas or pasta sauces. I also remember a brief pepper steak obsession my dad developed in the late 80s. 

[Kalmia]

Eleven would have been very early in the 80s for me. My mother had stayed home until my younger sister went to school and had made all our food from scratch, gardened, and canned before that (partly from not having much money and partly from loving cooking). After my mother went to work full time, the family had more money and my mom had less energy so convenience food started creeping in. I was a very picky eater, very picky with a no-touching rule and texture rules for food. So I will say that my mother and father and sister would be eating normal foods such as scrambled eggs, casseroles, sandwiches, pasta dishes, salads, soup, pies, pizza, meat with sauces, stir-fries (maybe, that might have happened in the later 80s), salads, etc. I, on the other hand, ate a very small variety of food despite my mother's best efforts: 

Breakfast: Cheerios or Wheaties, toast, and milk. On weekends, homemade pancakes or waffles. 

Lunch: Canned tuna or fried chicken strip, peanut butter crackers, carrot sticks, celery sticks, lettuce (all vegetables separate), Devil Dog (wrapped Hostess? type cake), grape juice

Dinner: Pork chop, chicken breast, steak or hamburger, corn on the cob, oven fries, dinner roll, apple, milk

Desserts: Ice cream, popcorn, homemade chocolate cake, brownies, or fudge.

The late 80s diet advice completely wrecked my Mom's delicious old-fashioned bacon-grease and butter southern cooking. Canola oil, margarine, trans fats, low-fat milk, high carb, she fell for it all... and they all gained weight, except me. (I saved my weight gain for adulthood.)

Up until that time we only ate out if we were driving halfway across the country to visit relatives. Late 80s, if Mom was exhausted from work, takeout might come home once a week. 

I do remember that in elementary school in the 70s, the lunch ladies cooked everything from scratch (none of which I would eat.)

Edited January 10 by Kalmia

[Resilient]

I forgot to add breakfast. Two slices of bacon and any sugar-laden cereal. My choice was Sugar-Frosted Flakes.  They’re grrrrrrreat!  My sister was more of a Lucky Charms gal.
 

We also consumed our fair share of Cap’n Crunch, and later, his offspring Quisp and Quake…which is a primary example of the power of marketing.  

[KeriJ]

Breakfast was cold cereal with milk, frozen orange juice, generic Flintstone vitamins. 

Lunch was half of a cold cut sandwich with Miracle Whip or pb&j, chips, cookies, sugar free kool-aid.

Snack: Ritz crackers and cheese

Dinner: some type of casserole, canned green beans, Jiffy muffin, canned pears, pudding with Cool Whip, and milk.

My dad died of heart disease when he was 56. I vowed to eat differently and we really have.