|
|
|
|
|
|
by Izkata
742 days ago
|
|
|
> From what I've read, in the 1960's, the average plate size was 75% of what it is today. Most people don't measure the amount of food they put in a plate. They eyeball how "full" the plate appears. Increase the plate size, and you increase your food consumption. Don't forget parents making their kids eat everything on their plate so they don't waste food. It was so normal and common in the 90s (and maybe earlier) it became a stereotype. |
|
|
Normal much earlier than the 90s. In the 80s this was “there are starving kids in Africa so you can’t waste your food”.
In the late 70s I went to a primary school where children were not allowed to go out to play at lunchtime if they didn’t clear their plates and eat the pudding/dessert/whatever. Compelled eating, with almost no choice in meal.
They had been doing that since the 1940s, when state-provided school dinners became law, and all through rationing, when really only children got “more than enough” food.
In the UK, rationing lasted so long after the war that many first time parents in the 70s and into the eighties had experienced life under rationing during their childhood.
In my parents’ case, they both had memories of rationing starting, and my father was in his mid twenties when it finally ended.
During the rationing era, food waste and getting more food than you were entitled to were crimes punishable by imprisonment, and wasting food remained a major social faux pas until the 90s.