There is no embarrassment in wanting to share with you an interesting anecdote published in a major British national newspaper – so here we go:

Eating in the 1950s

Pasta hadn’t been invented

Curry was a surname

A Takeaway was a mathematical problem

Pizza was a leaning tower

All Crisps were plain, the only choice was salt

A Chinese chippy was a foreign carpenter

Rice was a milk pudding, never part of a dinner

Oil was for lubricating, fat was for cooking

Tea was made in a teapot, using leaves, and never green

Coffee was Camp, and came in a bottle

Cubed sugar was posh

Healthy food was anything edible

People who didn’t peel potatoes were lazy

Indian Restaurants were only found in India

Cooking outside was called camping

Seaweed wasn’t food

‘Kebab’ wasn’t even a word never mind a food

Prunes were medicinal

Muesli was readily available, but called cattle feed

Water came out of the tap. Bottling it and charging more than petrol would have been laughed at

And the only thing we never had on our table in the 1950s was – elbows!

Sylvia Brown Southend on Sea Essex

[simply brilliant don’t you think?]

Published in the Daily Mirror 27/06/2014 with the addition: ‘What’s more, we were a lot healthier than today’s couch potato generation. Obesity was, if not unknown, then certainly rare, particularly among children. Fat people were stared at in the streets, not regarded as an acceptable norm’.