Our diet was fairly normal, until the late 1960s-early 1970s, when the “health foods” movement really started to gain momentum.
We used to be able to eat ice cream once a week. When I was really little, my mother would sometimes give me a dime to take to the grocery store up the street to buy candy. And so on. Then she discovered the “health food” movement, and everything changed. Instead of chocolate, we got carob (gag). It was bad, because we no longer could eat normal food, but everyone else still was.
And now, it is still really hard to partake of treats moderately... I just want to eat them until I am stuffed. So I buy a single small bar and eat it at home, to avoid the temptation. I’m not obese now, but I once weighed over 200 pounds (at 5’3”).
We had the same childhood! I can remember when we had doughnuts in the house and then one day my mother discovered something about “health food.” She also bought a book by somebody called Rachel Carson. The world fell in. We had brewer’s yeast for lunch and carob bars for dessert. I buried most of this food in the back yard when I could get away from her.
Remember how terrible the packaging was for health food in those days and how you had to travel miles to find the store? And all the owners were communists?! And how all the children had a Ring Ding at lunch and you got disgusting plain yogurt dripping on your brown paper bag? Everything but everything was put through the deflavorizer.
We have an interesting book here - there’s another freeper here who had this problem.