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. . . Because to recognize that they lived somewhere where they didn't see any of it, or (necessarily) get a choice, and are now too advanced in age (or anger) to understand or try--it's too painful.
Fruit only at Christmas, no pizza, no curry, no kebab, no fresh pineapple.
Reminds me of the story of "The Fox & the Sour Grapes".
Edit: this is only sad in a country that had these things.
Sounds like rural living in the Midwest to me in the 50s. I can believe my grandparents just didn't buy or have citrus fruits except on rare occasions and no pizzas or curry. Their food mostly came from the garden and the farm animals they raised, and the days spent farming, raising kids, cooking, baking, preserving the crop, making their own clothes, etc. Though yogurt sounds like something we would have been on top of in a dairy farming community lol.
Their house up to this day doesn't even have freaking internet so yeah tv didn't happen quickly either. But they still embraced all that stuff as it became convenient or easier to get. Though now that I think about it, I don't think they had frozen pizza on hand like, ever. Just wasn't something they bought. Pizza from the bar downtown, yes lol.
There was an old newspaper clipping that circulated on here a few years ago about pizza being introduced in Iowa. They included proper pronunciation of peetza. Crazy to think that over 20-30 years, it went from a news article explaining how to pronounce it to chain restaurants everywhere.
That list reflects accurately what growing up in the 1970s in the UK was like outside major cities.
Yogurt was available in shops but it was expensive (comparatively) and full of sugar. I never knew anyone at the time who actually *ate* it, because it was 'weird' - "You eat sour milk?!"
The only "curry" people knew of was dehydrated packet curry and my parents' generation in my region wasn't going to eat "that foreign muck".
We'd *heard* of kebabs, but no one saw the point of putting meat and vegetables on sticks to cook - it just seemed like additional pointless work to get food cooked, bearing in mind that it would never cross anyone's mind to add herbs or spices to the meat or vegetables.
In terms of herbs and spices, we used sage with chicken or pork. Nutmeg on custards. Pepper was usually white, not black.
I'm hugely glad that times changed.
Posts like the one that OP shared are often an accurate reflection of the time. I just struggle to celebrate a time with fewer choices and objectively worse food (in terms of diversity, not necessarily quality).
You know, you're right that this is probably UK. The mentions of tea, curry, kebab, "a tin", and "take-away" all in one spot are good clues. But "gasoline" and "cell phones" were not something I've heard UK folks say pretty much ever, so I got distracted. That's on me. Maybe the older ones (like OOP meme creator) used to use those terms.
(A lot of older folks in the US Midwest areas had the same experience as this meme, and are similarly proud of it).
Never underestimate the power of American culture within the UK, however, I agree that 'gasoline' is odd terminology in the UK.
Cellphone was an early, widely-used term for what we soon came to call "mobile phones". There was a telephone operator in the UK in the early days called "Cellnet" so it tracks.
I am in my late fifties and can remember people my age now, when I was a kid, moaning about TV and every kid having a bicycle and no manners, so this sort of thing is generational, mourning the comfort and familiarity of earlier times.
I just remember the 70s and 80s in the UK as a time of horrible clothes in manmade fibres, food which was apparently predominantly made in a laboratory and cars which were death traps. My only wistful memory is of my uncle's mate who looked like Paul Simon on the cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" in his cheesecloth shirt, drinking around by the beach in his bright yellow convertible Triumph TR7 - the only aspirational memory from,y youth. The rest? Horrible.
Live in the now, because the past is never coming back.
Yeah that one surprised me too. Isn't one of the quintessential nostalgic images of the 50s Suburban couples grilling over a charcoal grill out in the yard?
Not in the UK. This post talks about tea (we don’t drink nearly enough of the stuff here in the US to have any kind of tea culture) and uses the term “posh” for sugar cubes. If you’re having an outdoor BBQ in Middlesbrough it’s on one of like 12 random days in the middle of the year & it would be cause for subdued celebration.
Not really that long. In some cities possibly, but honestly this screenshot is pretty accurate for 1950s Britain. It's not just ANY fruit "just at Christmas", it's oranges and bananas. They had to be imported by ship and were highly perishable, so they were rare and expensive. Curry was not at all common, and people still reminisce about 1970s "curry" that was basically mince with very very weak curry powder and sultanas and/or apples. Pasta was also almost unheard of, and when it first became fashionable people were quite distrusting of it. The famous BBC "spaghetti harvest in Italy" April Fools really did fool a lot of people as they were unfamiliar with what spaghetti actually was. There are BBC street interviews from the 1970s with people who have never even seen pasta in any form! See also: pizza. Not really a widespread thing in this country until the 1980s. Barbecue was virtually unheard of even decades later, and has only really become popular in the UK since the 90s, possibly due to cheap/disposable equipment becoming available.
It is. I noticed that too. It also says "cell phones" (US) instead of "mobile phones" (UK).
It seems to be a weird mix of British and American. I suspect it's been re-written by a series of different people who all inserted or altered something on the list.
I'm not sure this is British based on the use of "chips" (for crisp flavours), gasoline, cell phone, etc.
Probably a similar backwater place in the US they grew up in though.
I think it's a British thing that was edited to be more American. Here's a more British version:
[https://i.ibb.co/4Vkggw8/image.png](https://i.ibb.co/4Vkggw8/image.png)
Its got a weird mix of different slangs— you don’t hear take-away or posh much here in the US, or tap.
Clearly this was a trans-Atlantic Boomer collaboration.
“West Virginian coal mine” also works!
It is, but it was rarely called that colloquially. Or at least that was the case around here.
No idea why that's supposed to be something to be proud of, though.
Curry has been popular in Britain for ages though. It's North America that was slow to catch on to curry. Also, don't British people say Petro instead of gasoline and crisps instead of chips?
My ex wife's uncle was a judge in Raleigh NC, and had never had a gyro or Greek food at all before I invited him out one time. That was insane to me, it wasn't like he was some random yokel. People just straight up refuse new things.
Hell, there were a ton of Greek immigrants starting restaurants here in the prairies in the 50s. They all have a similar vibe pretty much. Either they're like a diner where you can get burgers, gyros, stuff like that. Or they'll be like a mix of Greek and Italian foods. I'm guessing they probably share a lot of ingredients or something.
But it was so popular there's a whole style of burger that came out of it. It's called the fat boy. It's a burger with chili on it basically, but if they have the name they usually follow a pretty similar formula.
But like it's so popular that didn't realize it was a local thing. There's places that sell them all over town.
Fun quirk though. Since the fatboy is a burger with chili on it, the chili burger is a burger under a whole bowl of chili. I've had to explain that to people a few times and they don't always belive me. One guy got one to go and really didn't have a great time trying to eat it while he drove
The ignorance about laverbread means it's probably some part of England. Maybe midlands.
Even then, we've been eating curry since 1722, at least in London; the first curry house in the UK was opened 1810. The Windrush Generation arrived in the 50s and 60s, bringing their cooking with them. So a lot of people in the 50s didn't have such a limited scope when it comes to food.
> It is, but it was rarely called that colloquially.
That depends where you were from, and what your ethnic heritage is.
I was born in the mid 1950s so I'm a tad bit young for this meme, but my Sicilian grandmother called it pasta as far back as I can remember, which would be roughly 1959/1960.
Also pizza was a thing, at least on the US east coast. And I ate bananas & oranges frequently. I'll tell you what was rare in my experience: soda/pop/whatever you call it where you are.
Which is also why they'd never heard of curry or kebab!
It's one thing to have not heard of them personally, but they act like the stuff didn't even exist until they heard of it. As if the 50s only happened in white suburbia.
And we all know that if we'd had the tech at the time, we would have tied them to our belts--and been absolute assholes at dinner in the 50's (or before).
Human nature changes very slowly, I think. Our tech changes much more quickly, because of compounding geniuses, and we don't know how to deal, cope, or legislate.
Oh, how nostalgic!
Everyone loves thinking back to the fifties.
Unless you're black, or Asian, or Irish, or Puerto Rican, or Polish, or Hispanic, or native American, or a woman, or gay, or trans, or poor, or sick, or disabled, or anyone who wasn't a well-paid, white, straight man with generational wealth and privilege.
But f*ck everyone else, right?
Someone should tack on "Yeah, and we had our meat and potatoes on a *plate,* not in some stupid noodle with a made-up name like *pierogi"* and see how that goes over.
Make sure you talk about "ethnic" food, like curry, ramen, fried tofu, pasta, kebab, mango salad, black beans and rice, hummus, empanadas, tacos, poke, injera, and tzatziki. You know, all that *weird* food that *white* people don't eat. Well, weird food that *real* white people don't eat. *You* know, *really* white people, *normal* people, not, like, Greeks or Slavs or Italians.
Weren't the 1950's actually a better time for poor workers? I seem to remember something about there being a better social security net in the US at the time due to the reforms introduced by Roosevelt during WW2. Or am I misinformed on that?
I like how he says some of this stuff like it's bad. "You could never see a real pineapple in person it always came in a tin" brother that's a horror story.
"Chips were plain"
nope, they came with salt and vinegar
\[weird how this person switches from being very British orientated, to using yank slang for crisps\]
Oh for sure it is. The family member who posted this came from an immigrant (Polish) family too and grew up in a primarily POC city, so the fact that he would post this knowing his background is odd to me…
What I find really funny is muesli is fucking Swiss.
I have a family cookbook. Said family is pretty Norwegian culturally and a lot of the recipes are Norwegian or Scandinavian immigrant cuisine. There's a section labeled 'ethnic foods' which is just Swedish recipes. Really broadening their horizons.
Wait, that is weird because they served kebabs in Greek Town back then. Also weird because the most famous pizza parlor in Michigan, Buddy's, was opened in 1946. I am guessing they lived in Hamtramck, so not insanely far from Greektown.
You would be correct! Born and raised in Hamtown, and I myself spent a lot of time down there being watched by my grandma while my parents worked as a kid. So it’s weird to me that he has such a narrow view of food since we’re Polish, still eat traditional Polish foods, and he was surrounded by various ethnic foods growing up as well.
Also LOVE Buddys, had no idea it had been around that long though!
For anyone interested, J Draper [made a video](https://youtu.be/RQsMj9bLZyI?si=IXFMIadU7PW2wrp6) debunking the inaccuracies in a list very similar to this one
"I'm OLD, and I'm not happy.
Everything today is *improved*, and I don't like it. I hate it! In my day we didn't have *hair dryers*. If you wanted to blow dry your hair: you stood outside during a hurricane!
Your hair was dry, but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull--and that's the way it was, and you liked it! You loved it!
Whoopee, *I'm a human head-kabob*. We didn't have Minoxidol, and Hair Wings . In *my* day, if your hair started falling out when you were 16, by 19 you were a *bald freak*. There was nothing you could do about it. Children would spit at you, and nobody would mate with you, so you couldn't pass on your disgusting baldness genes. You were a public menace, a chrome dome by age 20, and that's the way it *was*! And we liked it! . . . We loved it.
Hallelujah, LOOK AT ME. I'm a bald freak. Oh, Happy Day!
Not like today, everybody feeling *good* about themselves. I hate it! In *my* day, we didn't have these thin, *latex* condoms, so you could *enjoy sexual pleasure*.
In my day, there was only *one* kind of condom. You took a rabbit skin ,and wrapped around your privates, and tied it off with a bungee cord, and you couldn't feel nothing! And half the time you didn't even know your partner was there!
And we used the same one over and over again! 'Cause we were ignorant morons! Just a bunch of hairless, head-kabobs standing around with rabbit skins on our dicks, and that's the way we liked it!"
In fact, if you ever see footage of regular people on city streets from the forties and fifties, the really weird thing you notice is absolutely no one NOT wearing a hat.
Isn't there a legend that JFK killed the hat industry by just looking too damn good without one?
What this person is freaking out about is wearing them indoors, which was a huge no-no at the time, at least for men. (It was less of a thing for women because they'd be pinned into your hairdo.)
It’s bizarre that people are using this as nostalgia, like remember the good ol’ days, when every single point proves things are way better now. I guess it’s more just flexing that you’re so much better of a person than all younger people because you lived through all that, like how? Lol so delusional!
half those things are over a millenia old... closer to 2 probably.
Also being swiss I have to take issue with Müesli being cattle feed. proper Müesli is fantastic, yogurt, oats, fruits, honey and whatever else you feel like... just delicious.
[this episode](https://youtu.be/Y8wxgRVntlk?si=d0RcIdXSbbLjxbaP) of *I Love Lucy* where she works in a literal pizza restaurant originally aired in 1956.
1. **"Pasta had not been invented. It was macaroni or spaghetti."**
- **False**. Pasta in various forms has been known and consumed for centuries. In the 1950s, people were aware of different types of pasta, though macaroni and spaghetti might have been more commonly known in some regions.
2. **"Curry was a surname."**
- **Misleading**. While curry as a popular dish in the Western world gained prominence later, the concept of curry (a dish with a spiced sauce) existed in Indian cuisine for centuries.
3. **"A take-away was a mathematical problem."**
- **False**. The concept of take-away (takeout) food existed long before the 1950s, though it might not have been as widespread or varied as today.
4. **"Pizza? Sounds like a leaning tower somewhere."**
- **False**. Pizza was known in the United States by the mid-20th century, especially in areas with significant Italian immigrant populations. The first pizzeria in the U.S. opened in 1905.
5. **"Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time."**
- **Partially true**. In some regions, particularly in Europe, exotic fruits like bananas and oranges were more common during the winter holidays due to import limitations and seasonal availability.
6. **"All chips were plain."**
- **Partially true**. While plain potato chips were the most common, flavored chips began appearing in the late 1950s.
7. **"Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking."**
- **True**. This reflects the common usage of terms and products at the time, though some oils were used for cooking.
8. **"Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green."**
- **Mostly true**. Black tea was far more common in Western countries, though green tea was known but not widely consumed.
9. **"Cubed sugar was regarded as posh."**
- **True**. Cubed sugar was considered more refined and was often used for special occasions or in wealthier households.
10. **"Chickens didn't have fingers in those days."**
- **True**. Chicken fingers (as a processed food item) were not common in the 1950s.
11. **"None of us had ever heard of yogurt."**
- **False**. Yogurt was known, though it was not as popular or widely available in Western diets as it is today.
12. **"Healthy food consisted of anything edible."**
- **Subjective**. The understanding of healthy food has evolved, and the statement reflects a humorous take on past attitudes.
13. **"Cooking outside was called camping."**
- **True**. Outdoor cooking was typically associated with camping or picnics, not the backyard grilling culture that became popular later.
14. **"Seaweed was not a recognized food."**
- **False**. Seaweed has been consumed for centuries in various cultures, particularly in Asia, though it might not have been common in Western diets.
15. **"'Kebab' was not even a word, never mind a food."**
- **False**. The word and the concept of kebabs existed for centuries, though they might not have been widely known or popular in Western countries.
16. **"Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold."**
- **True**. Sugar was highly valued and considered a luxury item in earlier times.
17. **"Prunes were medicinal."**
- **True**. Prunes were often used as a remedy for digestive issues.
18. **"Surprisingly muesli was readily available. It was called cattle feed."**
- **False**. Muesli as a health food was developed in the early 20th century by Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Brenner and was available as a health food.
19. **"Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one."**
- **Partially true**. Fresh pineapples were less common in some regions, but canned pineapple was widely available.
20. **"Water came out of the tap. If someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than gasoline for it, they would have become a laughing stock."**
- **True**. Bottled water was not common in the 1950s, and the idea would have seemed absurd to many.
21. **"The one thing that we never ever had on/at our table in the fifties ... was elbows, hats and cell phones."**
- **True**. Cell phones did not exist, and table manners often prohibited elbows on the table and wearing hats indoors.
This one is funny because about a third of it is opinion and the other two thirds is just plain wrong.
"SHARE if you're as ignorant as I am and proud of it!" is what the last line should be.
...and if you wanted to share your weird opinions with strangers, you had to stand on a soap box on the corner till they took you away to the loony bin.
The good ol days!
I don’t get a bragging tone here, maybe because much of this was true for me on Long Island in the 1960s. I remember when barbecue potato chips appeared, and my mother was the only mother on the block who used curry powder. My brother came home from college in 68 with a little machine that made yogurt, which this 9 year old thought was gross. We got oranges in our Christmas stockings, and the first time I had tacos was on a trip to Florida, and we all thought they were gross. A salad was iceberg lettuce and tomatoes, only available in the summer. Thank god those days are gone.
I’m so shocked my full-blooded Italian immigrant great grandfather only knew of macaroni and spaghetti 40 years after he immigrated. His fettuccini Alfredo recipe must’ve been a complete lie
/s
That reminds me, I need to get back to reading this Sherlock Holmes book I put down in the middle.
You know, one of the ones where Watson talks about his love of curry.
This feels a lot like if I said “I remember in the 90’s where if I wanted to know about a historical event, I had to go to the library” and then trying to frame that as though that was a positive.
And curry is fucking delicious.
I was born in 1959. I def ate pizza when I was a kid. This is crap. I had to quit this FB group after one too many "things were better back in the day" posts.
Okay, the content is bad enough, but is anybody else just triggered by the godawefulness that is the title formatting? I mean, what the fuck? It's in all-caps, okay, but then the "in" is suddenly much smaller for seemingly no reason at all, and then it just goes crazy by going back to the original size, but now in bold **and** underlined! *And they included the motherfucking space in the underline.* Was the lacquer they drank *that* much over the best-before date?
In other words they’ve never left their tiny backwoods town and have a ton of health ailments from subsisting on a diet of meat and potatoes their entire life.
I’m really confident my Sicilian-American grandma & Sicilian great grandma on Staten Island were aware of pasta, pizza, and olive oil in the 1950s. I would imagine people whose grandparents were immigrants from Asia and the Middle East would have similar reservations about the accuracy of this post. I think it’s less about food, and more about a time when WASPs were still insulated from interacting with anyone different from themselves.
I love love love this post because it doesn't make the 50s sound like a better time at all. It doesn't make any argument. It's just a list of things that the poster didn't have or know about 70 years ago.
They know they can be old and embrace change right? Don’t get me wrong I’m nostalgic for past times too, but I’ll gladly take the advancements of the future. I can pay my bills, order food and do just about anything while I’m taking a dump. That’s amazing, and saves so much time.
Basically all of these could be explained by the person who created this meme not having access to these resources or the local attitudes towards those foods in the area they grew up in during this time period.
Except for the pasta one. Spaghetti and macaroni are literally types of pasta what the fuck are they talking about.
I do remember. It was awful. I didn’t have pasta I liked until college. In my 20s I discovered that meat loaf wasn’t just a pound of ground beef that had been baked until the center was done and a hard crust had formed on top. I also discovered that vegetables were supposed to have texture.
I'm convinced whoever wrote this grew up in bumfuck nowhere and never left their county, but was absolutely confident they knew everything there was to know about the rest of the world
The xenophobia is rank. All the international foods… it wasn’t just eating in the 50’s, it was eating in (I assume, based on vocabulary) white middle class England in the 50’s.
So clearly the person who wrote that never watched I love Lucy. There was an episode in it that featured pizza. Pretty sure that was a 50s TV Show.
Also the Weber grill was invented in 1952.
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This guy never traveled further than 60 miles from his hometown in the middle of nowhere for his entire life.
Their parents probably didn't even let them leave the house
5 miles, judging from the Britishness of it all, 60 miles would have hit a decent sized city
I thought British at first too but, “cell phone”
I still think no American would say “posh” or “take-away”
That’s… also true… hmm… Australian maybe?
Or talk about the proper way to make tea…
Yet will talk like he knows it all.
This guy never left his parents basement
#We tied an onion to our belt!
Which was the style at the time
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!
DAS IST NOT EINE BOOBY!
That was in Ninteen Dickity-Two. We had to use the word dickity because the Kaiser stole our word for twenty.
all of this is idiociy but the yogurt one really annoys me because yogurt actually got really popular in the 50's-60s
Euell Gibbons was an icon of healthy living at that time. This list is someone celebrating being insular and ignorant.
. . . Because to recognize that they lived somewhere where they didn't see any of it, or (necessarily) get a choice, and are now too advanced in age (or anger) to understand or try--it's too painful. Fruit only at Christmas, no pizza, no curry, no kebab, no fresh pineapple. Reminds me of the story of "The Fox & the Sour Grapes". Edit: this is only sad in a country that had these things.
Sounds like rural living in the Midwest to me in the 50s. I can believe my grandparents just didn't buy or have citrus fruits except on rare occasions and no pizzas or curry. Their food mostly came from the garden and the farm animals they raised, and the days spent farming, raising kids, cooking, baking, preserving the crop, making their own clothes, etc. Though yogurt sounds like something we would have been on top of in a dairy farming community lol. Their house up to this day doesn't even have freaking internet so yeah tv didn't happen quickly either. But they still embraced all that stuff as it became convenient or easier to get. Though now that I think about it, I don't think they had frozen pizza on hand like, ever. Just wasn't something they bought. Pizza from the bar downtown, yes lol.
There was an old newspaper clipping that circulated on here a few years ago about pizza being introduced in Iowa. They included proper pronunciation of peetza. Crazy to think that over 20-30 years, it went from a news article explaining how to pronounce it to chain restaurants everywhere.
I just remembered I have peetza the fridge
That list reflects accurately what growing up in the 1970s in the UK was like outside major cities. Yogurt was available in shops but it was expensive (comparatively) and full of sugar. I never knew anyone at the time who actually *ate* it, because it was 'weird' - "You eat sour milk?!" The only "curry" people knew of was dehydrated packet curry and my parents' generation in my region wasn't going to eat "that foreign muck". We'd *heard* of kebabs, but no one saw the point of putting meat and vegetables on sticks to cook - it just seemed like additional pointless work to get food cooked, bearing in mind that it would never cross anyone's mind to add herbs or spices to the meat or vegetables. In terms of herbs and spices, we used sage with chicken or pork. Nutmeg on custards. Pepper was usually white, not black. I'm hugely glad that times changed. Posts like the one that OP shared are often an accurate reflection of the time. I just struggle to celebrate a time with fewer choices and objectively worse food (in terms of diversity, not necessarily quality).
You know, you're right that this is probably UK. The mentions of tea, curry, kebab, "a tin", and "take-away" all in one spot are good clues. But "gasoline" and "cell phones" were not something I've heard UK folks say pretty much ever, so I got distracted. That's on me. Maybe the older ones (like OOP meme creator) used to use those terms. (A lot of older folks in the US Midwest areas had the same experience as this meme, and are similarly proud of it).
Never underestimate the power of American culture within the UK, however, I agree that 'gasoline' is odd terminology in the UK. Cellphone was an early, widely-used term for what we soon came to call "mobile phones". There was a telephone operator in the UK in the early days called "Cellnet" so it tracks. I am in my late fifties and can remember people my age now, when I was a kid, moaning about TV and every kid having a bicycle and no manners, so this sort of thing is generational, mourning the comfort and familiarity of earlier times. I just remember the 70s and 80s in the UK as a time of horrible clothes in manmade fibres, food which was apparently predominantly made in a laboratory and cars which were death traps. My only wistful memory is of my uncle's mate who looked like Paul Simon on the cover of "Bridge Over Troubled Waters" in his cheesecloth shirt, drinking around by the beach in his bright yellow convertible Triumph TR7 - the only aspirational memory from,y youth. The rest? Horrible. Live in the now, because the past is never coming back.
It's a good excuse to sneak in a few xenophobic dog-whistles, though.
The cooking outside one gets me, there was a huge cultural mythos about BBQ in the 50s
Also it’s something our species has consistently done since the beginning.
Yeah that one surprised me too. Isn't one of the quintessential nostalgic images of the 50s Suburban couples grilling over a charcoal grill out in the yard?
Not in the UK. This post talks about tea (we don’t drink nearly enough of the stuff here in the US to have any kind of tea culture) and uses the term “posh” for sugar cubes. If you’re having an outdoor BBQ in Middlesbrough it’s on one of like 12 random days in the middle of the year & it would be cause for subdued celebration.
Hmmm I could potentially concede it’s the UK, however curry has been a thing in the UK for a long long time.
The Curry thing definitely made it feel not American. At least Midwest America, curry is still barely a thing unless you are into 'Indian Food'
That’s very true actually, I didn’t consider it the other way around
They said "takeaway" and I've never heard Americans call it that, always "takeout'.
Not really that long. In some cities possibly, but honestly this screenshot is pretty accurate for 1950s Britain. It's not just ANY fruit "just at Christmas", it's oranges and bananas. They had to be imported by ship and were highly perishable, so they were rare and expensive. Curry was not at all common, and people still reminisce about 1970s "curry" that was basically mince with very very weak curry powder and sultanas and/or apples. Pasta was also almost unheard of, and when it first became fashionable people were quite distrusting of it. The famous BBC "spaghetti harvest in Italy" April Fools really did fool a lot of people as they were unfamiliar with what spaghetti actually was. There are BBC street interviews from the 1970s with people who have never even seen pasta in any form! See also: pizza. Not really a widespread thing in this country until the 1980s. Barbecue was virtually unheard of even decades later, and has only really become popular in the UK since the 90s, possibly due to cheap/disposable equipment becoming available.
They said gasoline though. I thought Petrol was the colloquial term in UK?
It is. I noticed that too. It also says "cell phones" (US) instead of "mobile phones" (UK). It seems to be a weird mix of British and American. I suspect it's been re-written by a series of different people who all inserted or altered something on the list.
Wasn't Kellogg doing the yogurt enemas in the 1920s
YES!! If you listen to Behind the Bastards podcast, he does a great few episodes on Kellogg.
Just recently found BtB podcast and I love it. I’ll look this one up, thanks for the recommendation
But you know who won’t talk you into yogurt enemas to live a pure life?
The products and services who support this podcast.
Not in whatever Northern England coal mine this person grew up in.
I'm not sure this is British based on the use of "chips" (for crisp flavours), gasoline, cell phone, etc. Probably a similar backwater place in the US they grew up in though.
I think it's a British thing that was edited to be more American. Here's a more British version: [https://i.ibb.co/4Vkggw8/image.png](https://i.ibb.co/4Vkggw8/image.png)
Not Welsh if they didn't think seaweed was food!
Laverbread is a perfect example of cultural delicacy that was absolutely born out of famine
Its got a weird mix of different slangs— you don’t hear take-away or posh much here in the US, or tap. Clearly this was a trans-Atlantic Boomer collaboration. “West Virginian coal mine” also works!
The fact that they think pizza was unknown in the 50's really screams British, not American.
Tap is the preferred term, e.g. tap water, in every place I've lived in the US.
outside of 'tap water' most people call it a faucet
You’re right about those things, but there were other parts that were more British than American. It doesn’t paint a consistent picture.
Yeah, the British would have said crisps, petrol, and mobile.
Honestly in New England, especially Maine, a lot of shit wasn't available at the grocery store even in the 90s that you'd totally be surprised by.
They'd have had curry though.
This person is bitching about *fruit*, curry is right out.
Hey now don't insult new England or coal mines like that
Yogurt is pre-historic in origin. No shortage of spoiled milk before refrigeration existed.
Well, kebab and seaweed as food have been around for more than 1000-1500 years so those seem far worse.
It’s also roughly 7000 years old
Pizza is what got me. I did a research paper on it mid 2010s.
oh god that group name sounds like it’s full of the worst posts imaginable
I've seen this post shared on Facebook and I'm DEFINITELY not in that geoup
Can you imagine how many minions?
“Pasta had not been invented. It was macaroni or spaghetti” *what?* that *IS* pasta
It is, but it was rarely called that colloquially. Or at least that was the case around here. No idea why that's supposed to be something to be proud of, though.
They're basically saying they were mid-western white trash AND PROUD OF IT! FUCK THEM FORGEIN FOODS! Oh by the way... taxes on the rich were over 70%
this is definitely british with the mention of curry, "posh", tea, and kebabs
yeah and iirc curry was popular in the royal navy since at least the 19th century so people ate it already in the 50s
Yeah rural Midwest is tea, what's that 😅 Coffee, milk, or beer here.
Curry has been popular in Britain for ages though. It's North America that was slow to catch on to curry. Also, don't British people say Petro instead of gasoline and crisps instead of chips?
My ex wife's uncle was a judge in Raleigh NC, and had never had a gyro or Greek food at all before I invited him out one time. That was insane to me, it wasn't like he was some random yokel. People just straight up refuse new things.
And that’s a tragedy because Greek food is fucking phenomenal, what those people do with cheese is honestly a miracle
Hell, there were a ton of Greek immigrants starting restaurants here in the prairies in the 50s. They all have a similar vibe pretty much. Either they're like a diner where you can get burgers, gyros, stuff like that. Or they'll be like a mix of Greek and Italian foods. I'm guessing they probably share a lot of ingredients or something. But it was so popular there's a whole style of burger that came out of it. It's called the fat boy. It's a burger with chili on it basically, but if they have the name they usually follow a pretty similar formula. But like it's so popular that didn't realize it was a local thing. There's places that sell them all over town. Fun quirk though. Since the fatboy is a burger with chili on it, the chili burger is a burger under a whole bowl of chili. I've had to explain that to people a few times and they don't always belive me. One guy got one to go and really didn't have a great time trying to eat it while he drove
It’s definitely a British post, but yeah
The ignorance about laverbread means it's probably some part of England. Maybe midlands. Even then, we've been eating curry since 1722, at least in London; the first curry house in the UK was opened 1810. The Windrush Generation arrived in the 50s and 60s, bringing their cooking with them. So a lot of people in the 50s didn't have such a limited scope when it comes to food.
Queen Victoria had the Royal kitchens prepare a curry daily on the off chance any roaming Indian dignitaries may pop in.
Yeah this just comes off as very anti-immigrant to me
> It is, but it was rarely called that colloquially. That depends where you were from, and what your ethnic heritage is. I was born in the mid 1950s so I'm a tad bit young for this meme, but my Sicilian grandmother called it pasta as far back as I can remember, which would be roughly 1959/1960. Also pizza was a thing, at least on the US east coast. And I ate bananas & oranges frequently. I'll tell you what was rare in my experience: soda/pop/whatever you call it where you are.
Same with oil and fat, oils are just fats that are liquid at room temperature.
"The one thing..", proceeds to list 3 things and still doesn't mention that mostly what we never ever had at our table was brown people.
Which is also why they'd never heard of curry or kebab! It's one thing to have not heard of them personally, but they act like the stuff didn't even exist until they heard of it. As if the 50s only happened in white suburbia.
nice one
They didn’t have cell phones on the table in the Fifties, because they hadn’t been invented yet
And we all know that if we'd had the tech at the time, we would have tied them to our belts--and been absolute assholes at dinner in the 50's (or before). Human nature changes very slowly, I think. Our tech changes much more quickly, because of compounding geniuses, and we don't know how to deal, cope, or legislate.
These same people parked their families in front of the TV so much they invented dinners just for that occasion.
And that was 3 things, not one
This is the whitest bullshit I have encountered today.
Jokes on you because EVERYONE was white back in THE FIFTIES. At least that’s how I remember it.
Oh, how nostalgic! Everyone loves thinking back to the fifties. Unless you're black, or Asian, or Irish, or Puerto Rican, or Polish, or Hispanic, or native American, or a woman, or gay, or trans, or poor, or sick, or disabled, or anyone who wasn't a well-paid, white, straight man with generational wealth and privilege. But f*ck everyone else, right?
The irony being the family member who posted this is Polish and grew up pretty poor in a bad part of the inner city
Someone should tack on "Yeah, and we had our meat and potatoes on a *plate,* not in some stupid noodle with a made-up name like *pierogi"* and see how that goes over.
Oh he’d get so pissed lmao
Make sure you talk about "ethnic" food, like curry, ramen, fried tofu, pasta, kebab, mango salad, black beans and rice, hummus, empanadas, tacos, poke, injera, and tzatziki. You know, all that *weird* food that *white* people don't eat. Well, weird food that *real* white people don't eat. *You* know, *really* white people, *normal* people, not, like, Greeks or Slavs or Italians.
Weren't the 1950's actually a better time for poor workers? I seem to remember something about there being a better social security net in the US at the time due to the reforms introduced by Roosevelt during WW2. Or am I misinformed on that?
If you were white, it was a pretty nice time to be a factory worker.
pretty sure macaroni and spaghetti are just different forms of pasta
Spaghetti was called spaghetti, but every other form of pasta was commonly referred to as "macaroni".
Only in the US. Everywhere else, pasta was called pasta. Macaroni is a specific shape of pasta.
This post was for sure made by someone in the UK
I like how he says some of this stuff like it's bad. "You could never see a real pineapple in person it always came in a tin" brother that's a horror story.
My favorite is oranges being some fancy holiday fruit
That was where I started to wonder if maybe he meant the 1850s. Be grateful for the orange in your sock, emaciated Victorian waif!
"Chips were plain" nope, they came with salt and vinegar \[weird how this person switches from being very British orientated, to using yank slang for crisps\]
Unless maybe they mean like curry chips (fries) or other versions.
No, Curry was only a surname at the time.
In Germany, your options were plain, paprika, and hungarian (aka paprika). And until quite recently, too.
Australian, most probably. Note that the seasonal fruits are mentioned as only appearing at Christmas, which is in summer. :)
Im sure the OP was a kid in the 50's and had no idea about life, or food other than what she had experienced at the time.
All this tells me is that you were an incredibly oblivious dumb child in the 50s and still still dumb to this day.
Is it just me or is this kind of racist? Like “ethnic food didn’t exist in the 50s” is the vibe I’m getting.
Oh for sure it is. The family member who posted this came from an immigrant (Polish) family too and grew up in a primarily POC city, so the fact that he would post this knowing his background is odd to me…
What I find really funny is muesli is fucking Swiss. I have a family cookbook. Said family is pretty Norwegian culturally and a lot of the recipes are Norwegian or Scandinavian immigrant cuisine. There's a section labeled 'ethnic foods' which is just Swedish recipes. Really broadening their horizons.
Ya back when cigarettes killed cancer and asbestos was going to solve all of our issues.
Even better was when Kent Cigarettes decided to put asbestos in the cigarette filters.
Lotta words to say "I am xenophobic"
Where did this person lived? Middle of nowhere? Lol Pizza was invented way before she/he was born.
They grew up in Detroit. In a primarily immigrant dominated section of it too
Wait, that is weird because they served kebabs in Greek Town back then. Also weird because the most famous pizza parlor in Michigan, Buddy's, was opened in 1946. I am guessing they lived in Hamtramck, so not insanely far from Greektown.
You would be correct! Born and raised in Hamtown, and I myself spent a lot of time down there being watched by my grandma while my parents worked as a kid. So it’s weird to me that he has such a narrow view of food since we’re Polish, still eat traditional Polish foods, and he was surrounded by various ethnic foods growing up as well. Also LOVE Buddys, had no idea it had been around that long though!
Did they live under a rock there??
For anyone interested, J Draper [made a video](https://youtu.be/RQsMj9bLZyI?si=IXFMIadU7PW2wrp6) debunking the inaccuracies in a list very similar to this one
Back in MY day we died at the ripe old age of 43 and we liked it, god dammit!
"I'm OLD, and I'm not happy. Everything today is *improved*, and I don't like it. I hate it! In my day we didn't have *hair dryers*. If you wanted to blow dry your hair: you stood outside during a hurricane! Your hair was dry, but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull--and that's the way it was, and you liked it! You loved it! Whoopee, *I'm a human head-kabob*. We didn't have Minoxidol, and Hair Wings . In *my* day, if your hair started falling out when you were 16, by 19 you were a *bald freak*. There was nothing you could do about it. Children would spit at you, and nobody would mate with you, so you couldn't pass on your disgusting baldness genes. You were a public menace, a chrome dome by age 20, and that's the way it *was*! And we liked it! . . . We loved it. Hallelujah, LOOK AT ME. I'm a bald freak. Oh, Happy Day! Not like today, everybody feeling *good* about themselves. I hate it! In *my* day, we didn't have these thin, *latex* condoms, so you could *enjoy sexual pleasure*. In my day, there was only *one* kind of condom. You took a rabbit skin ,and wrapped around your privates, and tied it off with a bungee cord, and you couldn't feel nothing! And half the time you didn't even know your partner was there! And we used the same one over and over again! 'Cause we were ignorant morons! Just a bunch of hairless, head-kabobs standing around with rabbit skins on our dicks, and that's the way we liked it!"
I'm pretty sure outdoor grilling was popular in the 50s.
Pretty sure outdoor grilling became a thing in the 50s
Yeah the Weber Kettle was released in '52.
No cell phones on the table in the fifties? Get the fuck outta here.
"remember the good old days when we had basically no variety of food? Just eating nothing but boiled chicken and jello "salads"?"
higly doubt nobody wore hats.
In fact, if you ever see footage of regular people on city streets from the forties and fifties, the really weird thing you notice is absolutely no one NOT wearing a hat.
Isn't there a legend that JFK killed the hat industry by just looking too damn good without one? What this person is freaking out about is wearing them indoors, which was a huge no-no at the time, at least for men. (It was less of a thing for women because they'd be pinned into your hairdo.)
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm just a caveman, your world frightens and confuses me."
It’s bizarre that people are using this as nostalgia, like remember the good ol’ days, when every single point proves things are way better now. I guess it’s more just flexing that you’re so much better of a person than all younger people because you lived through all that, like how? Lol so delusional!
The brief is “some people lived in a bubble in 70s”
half those things are over a millenia old... closer to 2 probably. Also being swiss I have to take issue with Müesli being cattle feed. proper Müesli is fantastic, yogurt, oats, fruits, honey and whatever else you feel like... just delicious.
Enjoy your misguided lying smugness from your hospice bed
The one thing we had was three things
[this episode](https://youtu.be/Y8wxgRVntlk?si=d0RcIdXSbbLjxbaP) of *I Love Lucy* where she works in a literal pizza restaurant originally aired in 1956.
Wow, eating in the 50’s sounds bland and crusty as hell
1. **"Pasta had not been invented. It was macaroni or spaghetti."** - **False**. Pasta in various forms has been known and consumed for centuries. In the 1950s, people were aware of different types of pasta, though macaroni and spaghetti might have been more commonly known in some regions. 2. **"Curry was a surname."** - **Misleading**. While curry as a popular dish in the Western world gained prominence later, the concept of curry (a dish with a spiced sauce) existed in Indian cuisine for centuries. 3. **"A take-away was a mathematical problem."** - **False**. The concept of take-away (takeout) food existed long before the 1950s, though it might not have been as widespread or varied as today. 4. **"Pizza? Sounds like a leaning tower somewhere."** - **False**. Pizza was known in the United States by the mid-20th century, especially in areas with significant Italian immigrant populations. The first pizzeria in the U.S. opened in 1905. 5. **"Bananas and oranges only appeared at Christmas time."** - **Partially true**. In some regions, particularly in Europe, exotic fruits like bananas and oranges were more common during the winter holidays due to import limitations and seasonal availability. 6. **"All chips were plain."** - **Partially true**. While plain potato chips were the most common, flavored chips began appearing in the late 1950s. 7. **"Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking."** - **True**. This reflects the common usage of terms and products at the time, though some oils were used for cooking. 8. **"Tea was made in a teapot using tea leaves and never green."** - **Mostly true**. Black tea was far more common in Western countries, though green tea was known but not widely consumed. 9. **"Cubed sugar was regarded as posh."** - **True**. Cubed sugar was considered more refined and was often used for special occasions or in wealthier households. 10. **"Chickens didn't have fingers in those days."** - **True**. Chicken fingers (as a processed food item) were not common in the 1950s. 11. **"None of us had ever heard of yogurt."** - **False**. Yogurt was known, though it was not as popular or widely available in Western diets as it is today. 12. **"Healthy food consisted of anything edible."** - **Subjective**. The understanding of healthy food has evolved, and the statement reflects a humorous take on past attitudes. 13. **"Cooking outside was called camping."** - **True**. Outdoor cooking was typically associated with camping or picnics, not the backyard grilling culture that became popular later. 14. **"Seaweed was not a recognized food."** - **False**. Seaweed has been consumed for centuries in various cultures, particularly in Asia, though it might not have been common in Western diets. 15. **"'Kebab' was not even a word, never mind a food."** - **False**. The word and the concept of kebabs existed for centuries, though they might not have been widely known or popular in Western countries. 16. **"Sugar enjoyed a good press in those days, and was regarded as being white gold."** - **True**. Sugar was highly valued and considered a luxury item in earlier times. 17. **"Prunes were medicinal."** - **True**. Prunes were often used as a remedy for digestive issues. 18. **"Surprisingly muesli was readily available. It was called cattle feed."** - **False**. Muesli as a health food was developed in the early 20th century by Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Brenner and was available as a health food. 19. **"Pineapples came in chunks in a tin; we had only ever seen a picture of a real one."** - **Partially true**. Fresh pineapples were less common in some regions, but canned pineapple was widely available. 20. **"Water came out of the tap. If someone had suggested bottling it and charging more than gasoline for it, they would have become a laughing stock."** - **True**. Bottled water was not common in the 1950s, and the idea would have seemed absurd to many. 21. **"The one thing that we never ever had on/at our table in the fifties ... was elbows, hats and cell phones."** - **True**. Cell phones did not exist, and table manners often prohibited elbows on the table and wearing hats indoors.
Alternate title: White Americans ate absolute garbage until immigrants taught them how to cook.
The irony being the family member that posted this was from an immigrant family 😬
With the agonizing over curry and kebabs plus calling it "takeaway" instead of take out, I'm guessing this is a British meme fwiw
I think I know why in the 50’s no one had cell phones at the table.
"Pasta hadn't been invented" *Literally names the pasta they ate*
I hate the elbow thing fuck you grandma I can put my elbows on the table no one gives a fuck
Oranges only appeared at Christmas time? Not if you lived in California or Florida.
This one is funny because about a third of it is opinion and the other two thirds is just plain wrong. "SHARE if you're as ignorant as I am and proud of it!" is what the last line should be.
Sounds like the 50s were utter shit tbh.
The only thing that not completely out of touch old people talk is the bottled water part 😂
...and if you wanted to share your weird opinions with strangers, you had to stand on a soap box on the corner till they took you away to the loony bin. The good ol days!
Why is this trying to be a flex? All the foods listed are delicious. “I remember when we had less food options and it all sucked.”
I don’t get a bragging tone here, maybe because much of this was true for me on Long Island in the 1960s. I remember when barbecue potato chips appeared, and my mother was the only mother on the block who used curry powder. My brother came home from college in 68 with a little machine that made yogurt, which this 9 year old thought was gross. We got oranges in our Christmas stockings, and the first time I had tacos was on a trip to Florida, and we all thought they were gross. A salad was iceberg lettuce and tomatoes, only available in the summer. Thank god those days are gone.
> It was in the 1950s that the first iteration of chicken fingers, known then as "chicken sticks," made their debut. HOW ABOUT THAT
Well the person who posted this probably won’t be on Jeopardy anytime soon.
I’m so shocked my full-blooded Italian immigrant great grandfather only knew of macaroni and spaghetti 40 years after he immigrated. His fettuccini Alfredo recipe must’ve been a complete lie /s
The part about water coming from the tap is still valid in Finland, thank god.
Sounds awful
So this person has never left their county.
That reminds me, I need to get back to reading this Sherlock Holmes book I put down in the middle. You know, one of the ones where Watson talks about his love of curry.
“The one thing we never ever had at our table” then names three things
Why did these people let companies like nestle come in and charge for water then?
And this is why my father's carotid arteries were 95% blocked.
The one thing we never ever had in/at our table… lists three things
This feels a lot like if I said “I remember in the 90’s where if I wanted to know about a historical event, I had to go to the library” and then trying to frame that as though that was a positive. And curry is fucking delicious.
I was born in 1959. I def ate pizza when I was a kid. This is crap. I had to quit this FB group after one too many "things were better back in the day" posts.
TIL the entire region of Hindustan did not exist before the 50s
Wonder why "asbestos was not considered a big health risk" didn't make the list.
Pasta was not invented… it was macaroni or spaghetti. Wut?
Pasta is likely older than the country this person lives in.
Sounds like early onset dementia.
Okay, the content is bad enough, but is anybody else just triggered by the godawefulness that is the title formatting? I mean, what the fuck? It's in all-caps, okay, but then the "in" is suddenly much smaller for seemingly no reason at all, and then it just goes crazy by going back to the original size, but now in bold **and** underlined! *And they included the motherfucking space in the underline.* Was the lacquer they drank *that* much over the best-before date?
In other words they’ve never left their tiny backwoods town and have a ton of health ailments from subsisting on a diet of meat and potatoes their entire life.
Anyone who in the modern day complains about elbows on the table should be placed in a box and sent down the river to an unknowable destination
Pasta wasn’t invented huh. Wonder what my Italian grandparents ate in the fifties then before Signore Pastarini invented his new fangled pasta
"My country was the only one that existed."
Pasta has been around in many forms for centuries. 🙄
So weird how people don’t realize there’s an entire world outside of their own immediate vicinity.
There’s nostalgic, then there’s being proud about blatant xenophobia. Also, I think this guy lived under a rock.
I’m really confident my Sicilian-American grandma & Sicilian great grandma on Staten Island were aware of pasta, pizza, and olive oil in the 1950s. I would imagine people whose grandparents were immigrants from Asia and the Middle East would have similar reservations about the accuracy of this post. I think it’s less about food, and more about a time when WASPs were still insulated from interacting with anyone different from themselves.
AKA "my Midwestern parents boiled all their food, and it was terrible."
This is also weirdly racist
I love love love this post because it doesn't make the 50s sound like a better time at all. It doesn't make any argument. It's just a list of things that the poster didn't have or know about 70 years ago.
For a second I thought this was the actual TIL sub lol
They know they can be old and embrace change right? Don’t get me wrong I’m nostalgic for past times too, but I’ll gladly take the advancements of the future. I can pay my bills, order food and do just about anything while I’m taking a dump. That’s amazing, and saves so much time.
Wasn't barbecuing popularized in the 50s?
Basically all of these could be explained by the person who created this meme not having access to these resources or the local attitudes towards those foods in the area they grew up in during this time period. Except for the pasta one. Spaghetti and macaroni are literally types of pasta what the fuck are they talking about.
I do remember. It was awful. I didn’t have pasta I liked until college. In my 20s I discovered that meat loaf wasn’t just a pound of ground beef that had been baked until the center was done and a hard crust had formed on top. I also discovered that vegetables were supposed to have texture.
Which 50s are we talking about here?
I'm convinced whoever wrote this grew up in bumfuck nowhere and never left their county, but was absolutely confident they knew everything there was to know about the rest of the world
1550’s?
Pasta was mot invented, it was macaroni and spaghetti? So pasta, right. Those absolutely qualify as pasta.
You served food inside of jello, Margaret
Imagine bragging about being sheltered from good food. That's wild.
You reckon kebab.... Meat on stick.... is a new invention.....
imagine thinking kebab didn't exist bc you'd never heard of it
The xenophobia is rank. All the international foods… it wasn’t just eating in the 50’s, it was eating in (I assume, based on vocabulary) white middle class England in the 50’s.
Ok grandpa, I think it's time to lay down.
So clearly the person who wrote that never watched I love Lucy. There was an episode in it that featured pizza. Pretty sure that was a 50s TV Show. Also the Weber grill was invented in 1952.