My Mom's Childhood Diet vs. Mine [How We Were Influenced] Food For Thought

When I was growing up, I loved junk food. I loved candy. I also loved Fridays, because every Friday, my family and I would hang out, sit around the TV, make some popcorn, have some snacks, and watch TGI Fridays. I don't know if any of you guys remember Family Matters, but I loved it. Stay tuned for a whole new season of TGIF, starting off with Full House. It's TGIF time, and it's hardly a bore. I started thinking back on my memories of growing up, and the birthday parties, and pinatas, and cake, and ice cream, and going to movies. Like, there's so many different things that I experienced that happened to revolve around junk food and candy. And I'm wondering if any of you guys can relate. Now, I don't think my mom realized how much I lived on candy growing up. It became so normalized. So in this video, we're gonna have a little chat with her. I'm gonna interview her, and just have a chat about what her diet was like as she grew up, and how it compares to now. When you grew up, what were your meals like? We all sat around the breakfast table and the supper table, as they call it. What we ate was meat, potatoes, vegetables. And I can recall that, unless we cleaned, we cannot get up from the table unless we clean our plates. How important milk is, for one thing. We had a milkman that would come every morning and leave bottles of milk and then thick cream on top. So breakfast was basically cereal, like Cheerios or Corn Flakes, with sugar and fresh milk. How much sugar did you guys add? A good tablespoon, and on oatmeal also. We also had bacon and eggs. That's generally on the weekend. And the other important thing that I learned in, as I recall, grade school and high school was the wonderful food pyramid. How important vegetables are, how important grain is, bread. I forgot all the whole circle. But it's all balanced. To me, now that I'm an adult, older adult, I know the big difference in that. Were they recommending specific types of grains and breads and stuff? Bread was a really big thing back in the day, except I've been researching it this morning, and I cannot believe the stuff that I discovered. We mainly had white bread, and that was probably the worst to have. I believe it was like 50 cents a loaf, even. But it was white bread, and that's what I ate all the time. But what I gotta tell you is, in the 70s when I was in high school, I've only known one teenager in my senior class that was overweight. There was no obesity like it is today. Do you remember being in Thailand? That's the main time when it became obvious to me that we have a problem. I never noticed it, because you're just used to it. I didn't notice it until living in Thailand and then coming back here, and then it becomes obvious that there's a problem. Also in Thailand, the women, everybody, I don't see any overweight people. What I do remember, Holly, I don't know if you do, because we lived there a year and a half, there is a scale everywhere in front of a 7-Eleven in the malls, and they're always weighing themselves. Oh, I remember that so well, I was afraid to go on it. But anyways, I don't think I've ever seen an overweight Thai person. Oh no, they're there. They have them, too. Yeah, they do, I guess. A fraction of what it is here. Yeah, it's just very rare, and they get a really hard time if they are having weight issues, people are very blunt in Thailand. Very rude, but not, they're just blunt. Sometimes it's a bit much and a little, they might think that you're fat and you might actually not be. So when I was an exchange student there, one of my Thai host moms, she would tell me all the time, that's really inappropriate, actually, but she would tell me that I was fat, and I weighed the same as her. I was the same size as her, and she would tell me, like, ooh, and mock mock. She would basically, in Thai, tell me I was fat, and it bothered me, and I said back to her, like, we're the same size, so I don't know. I wonder how she reacted to that. But that's our culture, they just are very blunt, they don't know that they're hurting feelings or whatever. She didn't really hurt me, it was just annoying. Well, it would be annoying to me if somebody kept saying that, because you wouldn't say that here, even if they're very happy. So you were talking about bread being popular. I was looking through some documents, the dietary guidelines, and in the 1970s, the 1977 Dietary Goals for the United States were released, and I just want to share one thing from that. I mentioned it to you earlier. They said, contrary to what most people think, bread in large amounts is an ideal food in a weight-reducing regimen. Yeah, and that slightly overweight young men lost weight in a painless and practically effortless manner when they included 12 slices of bread per day in their program. Oh my goodness. It's the same document that's recommending against having fats. All those carbohydrates in bread turn to sugar. They recommend carbohydrates there in place of having fats. As a child, we saved the bacon grease, and we'd put that cold on our warm bread, a toast. So you'd have a big coffee can underneath the sink with bacon grease, and we'd use that for, instead of butter, because that was expensive, and that's when margarine came out. For people who eat carbs and they want popcorn, if you can't have dairy, I used to use bacon grease instead of butter for my popcorn. I'm not sure how that would taste, but it doesn't sound- It tastes like bacon and popcorn. Well, I put bacon grease, it's a good teaspoon and two teaspoons in my coffee if I don't have butter, because I've been using that. Yeah, I don't want to do that. That's worse. I don't see it because I got a cap over it, so I don't taste it. What do you think about the way we've normalized eating junk food? Because most of my good childhood memories are revolving around junk food. Every time you go to the movie, it's so exciting to go to the movie, and it was probably just because of the candy, and then all the birthday parties and pinatas and cake and ice cream and Halloween. Everything's always been about candy. Even at school, when I was in grade school, they would reward us with candy. And Halloween is coming up. They already have it all in the stores, all the candy. And you said you used to go to dime stores? When I was young, oh, about a quarter mile through the woods behind our house is a railroad track. I walked down there a good mile, and there's a dime store on the side road. Candy cigarettes, the taffy, the suckers, the gum. That was worth the walk. I remember that very well. You also had the candy thing. Yeah, I don't think you know how much candy I ate sometimes. I lived on candy. That's all I ate sometimes for days was taffy and stuff. Yeah, I would go to the gas station, and the guy would give me taffy and candy for free. Oh, you got it for free, okay. I know. You know how desperate I was? I told him I would stock the shelves if he would pay me in candy, and he did. You brought back a memory, Holly. When I used to go to the doctor when I was a kid, they'd give you a sucker when you leave. Oh my gosh. Did you ever have that? I remember that. They'd give you a sucker. They used to do that at the bank, too. They would always give me, yeah, I remember that in Arizona. They would give me a sucker at the bank, and then at the grocery store, they would give me a free cookie. Do you remember that in Arizona? Yes, yes, yeah. Oh, is that terrible, and I think back to this stuff now. I remember also when I was growing up, you went through a low, not just you, I did, too. We were brainwashed that low fat was the most important thing ever. Stay away from fat, so you're using margarine and all whatever, and then low fat everything, and calories, that's what I remember was ingrained in my brain, and I would buy 100 calorie Oreo cookies in little individual packets. I mean, it was a box of them, because I actually thought that was supposed to be good for me because it was low calorie and low fat. Anything about sugar or terrible, toxic ingredients, still to this day, when I'm making something and there's a lot of fat, like if I'm making a roast, a part of me wants to get rid of the, like I really don't anymore, but I'm so brainwashed from when I was growing up that I feel like I need to dispose of the fat. No longer. I don't do it. Now it's my favorite part of meat. I ask Bill, I'll take his, and he won't eat it, because you actually have a craving for it. I just spent so much money on buying chicken skins because of craving that, and I feel like you could make other, you could use it and put meat in it and make something really weird. What do you think about this idea that fat makes you fat? Because you, did you ever think that? And what do you think? Of course, I grew up thinking that. Terrible. They never said anything about a McDonald's or French fries. Those are okay. But meat is terrible. And then even in the last couple of decades, you're going to have a cardiac arrest. You're going to have a heart issue. Since we fixed our technical difficulties, it would be fun to do a video in the future, near future, and talk to you about- Yeah, like, because I want to talk to you more about what you're doing and what's helped you with your health and diet, because that's not really what this video is about, but it's really interesting to hear what you've experienced over the last, like, what is it, six months? Six months, yeah. And I'd say about three to four months on keto. Well, I'm going to be hitting a year. I just wish I would have marked when I started. You're doing really great with everything, with the fitness too. And you seem like you have so much energy. You seem like you have more energy than me, for sure. Considering, Holly, I only had four hours of sleep last night, I'm surprised. And we're heading out in a few minutes, so. Thank you so much for doing this short little video with me. It's just so much fun, because I've never done one of these before. I know, and I'm glad it's all working out, all the technical side. Yeah, it was all my fault. I messed everything up, and I'm sorry. All I had to do was Chrome instead of Firefox. Yeah, okay, well, I learned. If you like this video, please check out one of these videos next.