What food did they eat in 1960's?

Answer 1

I was a child in the 1060s and a teenager in the 1970s, so I guess I'm one decade too young to really answer this question. On the other hand, my brother was born in 1950, so I guess I can answer.

It depends on the economic class and ethic background of the teenager. When I was young, my friends often ate food items that I didn't and vice versa because our parents came from different parts of the country--and ancestors from different countries. The teenager in the 60s usually ate breakfast and dinner at home and ate what they parents served. Some parents served junk food as snacks like potato chips and pop--I had a friend whose parents did this. But mostly, like at my house, the only time you have chips and pop where at picnics and potluck dinners. Food was seasonal, you didn't eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter (unless you lived in Florida or California, where the stuff grows year round) unless you were wealthy enough to afford out of season produce. In the winter, we ate a lot of canned vegetables and frozen Orange Juice. There weren't a lot of frozen foods and most people didn't have freezers. There were only a few supermarkets and they were much smaller than the ones we have today and locally owned. We had milk delivered by the milkman, brought meat at the butcher shop, and in the summer, our vegetables at the farmer's market. For the most part, we ate casseroles, meat loaf, spaghetti (sometimes with meat balls but not usually), pinto beans and corn bread, tuna fish cakes (made mostly with leftover mashed potatoes and the tuna as a flavoring) , sometimes just potato cakes (same but without the tuna fish) and lots of chicken. The chicken was usually fried but pan fried we didn't use a lot of fat to cook it. And it was at least half the size of todays chicken, a breast today is anywhere for twice to three times larger than a chicken breast in the 1960s! Most of the meals containing meat were casseroles, or what today is called a one-pot with the meat and the vegeatable and starch combined in one dish. We never heard the word vegetarian, but as a matter of economics most people had meatless meals once or twice a week, sometimes more if the spaghetti didn't have meatballs. In my household mac and cheese was considered a main dish, but at my friend's house it was a side dish.

When out of the house, the teenager ate whatever they could afford that their parents wouldn't serve. In my case, that was french fries. I ate my first fast food meal about age 10, in the late 1960s. the thing about fast food in the 1960s is that there weren't large chains about. the Burger joints were small chains like BBF (I forgot what the letters stood for) or individually owned places. the regular burger that most people ate is now the burger that's in the kids meals and the regular french fry is the now the kid's fry--the serving sizes were a lot smaller. The standard bottle of pop was only 8 ounces--not 20! There were still a lot of diners still open in the 60s. McCroys and Green's department stores had a lunch counter that teenagers sometimes stopped at after school--at lunch the business people who worked downtown ate there.

Let's not forget about the donut shoppe. In the 1960s and early 1970s it was the kids that hung out there, not the cops. :-) there wasn't as much variety though, filled donuts and chocolate glazed were the special donuts and powdered and glazed were the everyday donuts.

You'll get different answers from different parts of the country. The main thing is that people, including teenagers ate more traditionally and ate regional foods. Also as I said the sizes were smaller, so outside of the house teenagers ate burgers and fries and donuts and candy, but all the sizes were smaller so they actually ate a lot less than it sounds.

Answer 2

Mostly meat and gravy dinners no greasy takeaways!