No restrictions. Balanced meals (protein, starch, veggie, fruit) . Packaged snacks here and there, but they were treats. Pop was never in the house but it was fine if we went out to eat, which was only about once a month. I didn't like pop anyway. My dad is a meat cutter by trade so we always had freezers full of good meat. But meat only for dinner; breakfast and lunch was usually vegetarian unless we're talking bacon/sausage on the weekends.
We had relatively typical Midwestern meals (meat- vegetable- potato) but we were the junk food house. Our friends LOVED coming to our house for slumber parties because we had the Sam's Club packs of Oreos, candy bars, sugar cereal, chips, etc. As long as we ate our meals, snacks were unrestricted. I'm not sure why, but none of us are overweight and we don't have issues with things like diabetes. Lucky genes, I guess.
What's interesting is that unrestricted access to junk as a kid seems to have had the reverse effect on me as an adult. I do still like Baked Ruffles and Sour Patch Kids, but they're not an every day thing. Last night, I wanted some Sour Patch Kids. I ate two and I was done. That said, if you put a cheese plate in front of me today, I'll devour it.
My mom has been trying to lose weight my entire life (really, her entire life) but somehow I never internalized any of that to my own self image or eating. We ate a lot of homegrown farm food - meat, potatoes, vegetables. Awful Kraft pizza mix from a box. Mac n cheese. Nothing adventurous unless I cooked it in high school. I did learn how to cook from her, though, and how to improvise ingredients when we didn't have them (you don't run to the store when you live rurally). Our only rule was that you had to finish one box of sugar cereal before we bought a new kind, lol.
I have pretty balanced eating habits as an adult, so we're doing roughly the same things with our kids. Few rules, no pressure to eat, but trying to expose them to more kinds of foods because meat-potato-boiled vegetable is too boring for us. DS is crazy thin (still hasn't hit 30 lb at 3.5 years), so if he wants to slather bread with butter, good on him.
No real rules on types of food allowed. I do remember that dinner was always at least a protein, green vegetable and a starch. I still follow that guideline when I plan our meals.
I think we grew up relatively normal food-variety wise. My mom was really into recipes and meal planning BUT she's not really a good cook. She only ever boiled stuff- no roasting, making interesting sauces, sautéing w/o making things hella bland, etc. To be fair, this was before lots of cooking shows and we never had cable. She also grew up really poor with 8 siblings so having options in general for a meal was high rolling for her. Also my stepdad will literally eat anything.
There are a few meals I will not having again. Tuna cheeseys remind me of their divorce too much. Beef stew and "shit on a shingle" were fine but to me were just weird to me for some reason- maybe she just made them bad.
My Dad and stepmom were VERY BAD - think of every way 2 working parents can skimp on effort and that was their meals. Chicken nuggets, instant potatoes, canned fruit, and a salad of just lettuce with ranch dressing. This was not for lack of money, either.
As an adult I have a pretty adventurous palate. But college and early adulthood was a huge transition for me food wise.
Oh we never really had candy in the house save for after a holiday. We had cookies for school lunches and maybe ice cream for an evening dessert. That stuff was usually really limited due to 3 kids in one house and 5 in the other.
When I was in college (may have been drinking), friends of mine found out that I had never had meat and dragged me to Louie's Lunch, alleged home of the first hamburger. I had a cheeseburger and called my parents around 2 in the morning and asked "What the fuck were you thinking??" I've eaten meat ever since.
"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies-"God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
My parents rarely let us have sugar and we ate the thickest, whole wheatiest bread ever (with PB that you had to stir). To this day I hate wheat bread and natural PB.
We had no restrictions, and a variety of choices. We ate breakfast and dinner as a family, and you ate what was served. But I never had to finish a plate. The only thing I had to finish was my milk, which I hated. Still not a huge fan, but will drink it willingly. There was always lots of fruit in the house, my snack of choice. To this day, I think I eat pretty balanced. DH is more restrictive with the girls--interesting to me, because he had a lot of restrictions, yet I eat better than he does now. So I think my way is better.
We were not allowed to have sugar cereal as a kid, and to this day I can't stomach it. Just Cheerios, Rice Krispies, and Corn Flakes.
We ate a lot of basic meat-potatoes-vegetable meals growing up (with most of the vegetables being canned), or pasta with jarred sauce. My mom didn't like garlic so we never had it in the house, and the only seafood we ate was fish sticks during Lent. She didn't like rare meat, so all our meat was dried out and overcooked. We almost never had white rice and never had brown rice, and I didn't know what things like quinoa or cous cous were until I was in my late 20s. We were allowed to drink soda with dinner when we were young, then one day our parents said we could only have water or milk with dinner. I still like soda but I don't buy it very often because then I binge on it.
My mom was/is not a good cook, and she's a picky eater, so I was a picky kid as well. Nothing spicy, no "ethnic" foods other than basic Chinese takeout. She still acts like I'm all fancy if I put out something like a cheese plate or mention that I got Thai food for lunch.
Once I was old enough to go out for my own meals and cook for myself, it was amazing how good food could actually taste. Today I'm a pretty good cook, I love fresh fruit and vegetables, and I'm willing to try almost anything. I started dating my Italian-American husband in college, and when I moved out and bought my first jar of Ragu he was absolutely aghast. Stratch-made sauce from then on. I didn't know what fresh mozzarella was until we started dating.
My parents fat-shamed me, even back when I was not fat at all, so that led to a lot of binge-eating and sneaking treats. I figured that I was a fat fuck no matter what I did, so it didn't really matter, right? It caught up with me once I got to college - my metabolism slowed down and I had the means to get my own food. I've just gotten more and more overweight/obese since then. I still feel ashamed when I go out to lunch during and order something unhealthy ... I'm terrified of my coworkers seeing me and judging me. Often I've parked my car in the furthest corner of the lot to eat whatever unhealthy thing I bought. My brother and sister are very trim and work out, although they still eat junk food once in a while, and my sister is a vegetarian.
My mom, who has ALWAYS been rail-thin, once told me (very matter-of-factly, without a hint of sadness or realizing how fucked up it was) that her own mother would tape a picture of a circus Fat Lady to the fridge and write my mom's name on it to discourage her from eating. Suddenly it all made sense.
We rarely had soda or other sugary drinks, really only for parties and the rare occasions we order pizza.
After I left home, I was eating in a cafeteria setting daily. I always choose soda to drink since when I was a kid I took soda at any opportunity.
After about a week of drinking soda at lunch and dinner, I started to not feel very well. Not sick, just kind of lethargic and sluggish. I was trying to figure out why I felt so bad, and it dawned on me that I had been drinking a lot of soda. I cut soda back to an occasional drink and felt much better.
That experience has definitely helped me to be mindful of how eating makes me feel.
My mother put us all on Feingold because of my crazy sister. I still tend to be a scratch cook.
LOL, when DS was in 3rd grade we did a cub scout overnight on a ship where the mess officer offered him a choice of Wishbone Ranch or Creamy Italian for his salad. DS asked if he had an Balsamic. The guy held up the bottles and said "just these". DS looked gobsmacked and said "Salad dressing? It comes isn bottles???" My scout-friends have not let me live this down.
My parents rarely let us have sugar and we ate the thickest, whole wheatiest bread ever (with PB that you had to stir). To this day I hate wheat bread and natural PB.
YES! I had the same experience growing up. I hate natural PB but I love good wheat breads now.
In my house as a kid, there was enough to eat for meals but very few snacks. When I got old enough to babysit, I used the money I earned to buy all of the snacks. So I'm a snack binger now.
What about snacks while babysitting? Oh this one house always had Oreos and Cheetos. I'm sure that's why I was only getting $4/hr for 2 kids - because I ate most of their Cheetos.
I grew up on a ranch, so I ate a lot of meat and potatoes. I didn't know it then but I ate what would be considered grass fed, organic beef. We ate a lot of canned veggies because my mom grew a large garden in the summer and canned. Most of the food I ate growing up was made from scratch, mainly because we didn't have options. We still ate sugary cereals on occasion. And we got delivery from the Schwann's man once a month so we would get things like chicken patties and ice cream. We rarely had fast food because there wasn't any close, so maybe ate McDonald's once or twice a year. My mom would drive me and and a few friends once a month to the nearest Pizza Hut about an hour away to get our Bookit pizza's. My diet wasn't varied but I think it was pretty healthy.
In my house as a kid, there was enough to eat for meals but very few snacks. When I got old enough to babysit, I used the money I earned to buy all of the snacks. So I'm a snack binger now.
What about snacks while babysitting? Oh this one house always had Oreos and Cheetos. I'm sure that's why I was only getting $4/hr for 2 kids - because I ate most of their Cheetos.
I drank all the juice when I was babysitting. We only ever had koolaid and the milk was for breakfast. So if I got to a house and they had juice, oh yes, that was awesome.
My mom didn't eat four legged meat when I was growing up. Still doesn't often. So things like meatloaf and pork chops were totally exotic foods to me. Which is kinda hilarious but that's about it in terms of unusual restrictions. So no real backlash. I still like turkey and chicken. Pork chops are meh, but we eat a lot of sausage, pulled pork and pork loin. And ham. I dont' eat much beef because it's expensive. So really not much has changed.
She pretty much never bought sugary cereal, but I didn't have a problem with that. I'd try them at my friend's houses, but frosted flakes was about as much as I could handle before it just wasn't yummy to me. I still love chex and raisin bran and all of those.
My dad is actually a good cook, but our meals were pretty basic, semi-processed, meat-and-starch style dinners from the 80s/early 90s, since we all got home around 6 and my brother and I had activities some nights. It was pretty varied and not terrible, but not super interesting or health-nut or anything.
From the menus I remember, we would have tacos (what I call gringo tacos, which were hard corn shells, ground beef, cheese, lettuce, tomato and hot sauce, sometimes sour cream), baked chicken patty sandwiches, pork chops, chicken nuggets/fingers, spaghetti with jarred sauce, stir fry, steak, stuffed chicken breast. We often had a green salad on the side. When I was in elementary and middle school my dad's payday was every other Thursday and we'd go to pizza hut.
My dad does make really good lasagna and soup (french onion and turkey rice). Everything he makes is really well seasoned, although my parents ALWAYS made meat well-done or medium-well.
My dad's mom was also a great cook, but she was a 1950s housewife, so cans of pork and beans or campbells soup were common for lunch at her house, and miracle whip, and cool whip, and margarine (we definitely ate a lot of country crock). My grandma made fabulous desserts, and if she didn't have pie or cake or something, we were allowed to have ice cream once a day at her house!
I've been a vegetarian for about 10 years, and there was a time my brother was vegan for a bit under a year, so I think my dad was probably wondering where he went wrong.
I have apparently loved vegetables since I was a baby, though.