In the early '60's, I remember maybe one fat person for say, every 15-20 people. Now it's the other way round!
People ate whatever they wanted to.
I vividly remember the words of my old grandmother, when the younger generation started talking about low-fat diets. She would say, "your body is like a machine. It needs lubrication to keep the parts moving."
She would then figuratively prescribe changing the bacon fat every 300 hours.
You're right. I really never thought about it. But, when I was in high school and college almost everyone was thin (normal, not skin-and-bones). I recall that we almost never had snacks like Colas, packaged sweets and chips. A "Coke" was a treat that we got at the "service station" when on vacation or on a Sunday drive. (Sometimes we bought a small bag of salted peanuts and dropped some in the Coke bottle. Why did we do that?) If we had desert or a snack, it was homemade. We ate three pretty good meals a day and almost always ate at regular times with the whole family present. We were extremely active children, never occurred to us not to be active.
Carolyn
People also tended to die younger , and the reason they could eat anything was A. Everything they ate wasn't loaded with corn syrup, and B.Peoples lifestyles were more physical, which meant they burned off more calories on a regular basis.and C. people actually took time to prepare homemade meals out of fresh ingredients instead of something from a can or vending machine which has much less nutritional value. I believe that all of this has to do with the modern pace of life which is toooo fast!. Hurry, hurry, no time to eat right, but plenty of time to be sick later.
CC