Maybe it's just me, but shopping sure has changed

Based on how the three girls were dressed (boys rarely went grocery shopping with mom in the late 50s - women's work, you know), it was almost certainly a post-church shopping trip.

The outfits may look beautiful in photos, but the shoes weren't nearly as comfy as sneakers, the petticoats underneath scratched up your legs, everything had to be ironed, and you'd better be super careful not to mess up your clothes lest you get scolded. Or worse.
Been there, done that. No thanks to a return trip to 1958.

The family in the modern photo is a sad indictment of modern food choices. Evolutionary speaking, for thousands of years the humans with the best survival rates ate the highest density calorie foods and expended as little energy as possible to obtain it.

Today's food producers take advantage of this (now extremely detrimental) aspect of human DNA and quite intentionally attract us to foods with high levels of sodium, fat and sugars along with "convenience", i.e., from package to plate in 10 minutes or less.

Now add in the extraordinary, disproportionate fear nearly all adults have that their children will be snatched from the street by a stranger, so unsupervised outdoor time is almost nil for kids today. Therefore kids sit nearly motionless in front of video games for hour after hour, with parents' approval. They say with a tinge of regret, "At least I know where he is..." and leave it at that.

It's no wonder most developed countries share the obesity crisis woes.
 
I get the message that they're trying to show but, believe me, there were plenty of fat kids and grown-ups back in the 30's and 40's when I was a kid and there's a mix today. The fat boys usually got picked on or had their a$$e$ kicked. Without TV, playing outside was the only other option. Walking or bycycling to your friend house was the only way to get there. Moms weren't taxi drivers back then.

And I never recall ethnicity (that someone mentioned) having much to do with it? It seemed to run in some families and not in others. Practically no one "played" at the gyms, once they left school. More physical effort was, of necessity, put into daily life,
 

DaveA said:
I get the message that they're trying to show but, believe me, there were plenty of fat kids and grown-ups back in the 30's and 40's when I was a kid and there's a mix today. The fat boys usually got picked on or had their a$$e$ kicked. Without TV, playing outside was the only other option. Walking or bycycling to your friend house was the only way to get there. Moms weren't taxi drivers back then.

And I never recall ethnicity (that someone mentioned) having much to do with it? It seemed to run in some families and not in others. Practically no one "played" at the gyms, once they left school. More physical effort was, of necessity, put into daily life,
Click to expand...
Outside the Port Authority in NYC, where all the out of town buses leave & arrive, there is a life size statue of Ralph Kramden, bus driver (Jackie Gleason) a fat man. He is nowhere near as fat as fat men are today. While I was commiserating with Ralph, "regular" guys passed us by and they were WAY Bigger.
Ralph Kramden Statue – New York, New York - Atlas Obscura

Ralph Kramden Statue, Port Authority Bus Terminal, NYC Stock Photo - Alamy
 
The rest of the story? One of the youngsters in the photo on the left is the parent/ grandparent of the people in the photo on the right.
 
The photo on the right makes me sad. Obviously, both the mother and child are overweight. Unless the child has a physical infirmity that inhibits her, she should be able to walk and not be riding. Neither the mother nor the child look very happy. The scene is sad and disturbing. I don't find anything about it humorous.

As far as the judgmental and unkind comments some people have made about the weight of the mother and child in this thread, there must be something else on the forum that they can laugh at and make fun of. Recently, when one of our members stated that he/she needed to lose weight, he/she was offered kind words of support. I wonder how he/she would feel if, instead, they were ridiculed?
 
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Portion sizes are so big today, which doesn't help the problem. I bought fries at a food place in Salem, MA a month ago, they only had one size. It was a HUGE amount, I think literally it must have been equivalent to two entire big potatoes. They were hot, fresh, delicious, and although I didn't manage to eat all of them, I ate maybe four times as many as I would have been perfectly happy with if they'd given me a reasonable amount.
 
In the 50's when I was a teen I can only remember one boy in our neighborhood that was fat. Now looking back I think it was genetic because both his parents were heavy. If not doing home work doing the school year we all played outside until it was dark, he was right there with us running & playing. School was a few blocks away so walking to & from school was normal. There were about 12 of us the same age so it wasn't until we went to junior high that our group were apart. We didn't make fun of him but when we were in junior high & split up he was picked on. Not a lot of fat or over weight/heavy kids were in junior high or high school. As I remember there were about 600 seniors when I graduated.

All that to say times were different back then. Now it's more common to see overweight/fat/obese outnumbering people with healthy weight. One thing I've noticed is at food courts in malls there are a lot of fat people. Even when leaving the food court they typically have some kind of junk food in one hand & a large soft drink in the other.

No surprise there are a LOT of life threatening issues associated with excess weight. But like smoking & drinking the choice to be health conscious about food when there is so much information available is ignored . And yes I'm sure everyone knows that weight can be an issue that isn't related to food consumption.
 
I blame Milton Friedman and his free market economic policies that have been adapted by every president since the '70s. Before we adapted his ideology, everybody was fit and healthy. Now look at us.

NOTE: That was a joke.
 
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I don't like going into town around 10.30 am. This is when the teenage kids (12-16) from the academy have a mid-morning break. They swarm into the nearby Tesco and several other shops and emerge with hands full of pastries, chocolate bars etc... However...
Very few are overweight. Most look fit, healthy and are generally well mannered. I'm not sure where they get the money, though.
 

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