Here's What Nuclear Families Ate in the Postwar Era

I was born in 1958. All five members of my family lived in a 8'wide, 30' long rented mobilehome. Meatloaf, or beans or potatoes were staples. We were poor but, not hungry. Mom is my hero. Please, read both of the comments I wrote RE: growing up very poor but happy.

I think most of this is what Middle class city folks had. My mother (she has 3 siblings) was a low class Southern farm girl. She said they didn't eat Wonder Bread. It was too expensive so, my grandma made their bread. I had a Super Grandma who could do anything. They ate mayo sandwiches (Mayo on a piece of bread) sometimes when times got real tough. Cornbread was a staple in their meals. My grandma made their jelly and preserve their fruits & veggies. My great grandfather cured all their own hams. They did eat treet-meat sometimes. Grandma grew & slaughtered & cooked her own chickens too. She also made their clothes too. Yes, she even knew how to weave rugs & make quilts. My mother said that every Sunday, they got half a 7-up and a bag of popcorn (Grandma grew, dried, & popped the corn herself) and watched the Wonderful World of Disney.

I was born in 1955, first generation Italian. My dad was seriously injured on his job as a commercial fisherman in 1957 & didn’t work for 5 years. I have no idea what we did for money…my mom was a housewife, never worked outside the home…but my parents made gold out of straw. We always had Christmas & Easter, we always felt like we had enough. My mom was a fabulous cook…could make anything taste good, no matter what..and most of our meals came from whatever dad grew in the vegetable garden or picked up from his fisherman friends, or what mom could finagle from other friends & family. I have some pretty special memories from those times.

My folks married in 1945 one week after he got back rom Europe in WW2. He had saved up most of his pay and they bought a little house. He went to college on the GI Bill. My brother and I had a great life compared to Mom and Dad who grew up in the Great Depression. Thank you Greatest Generation!

I'm a Boomer, smack in the middle of the demographic. My family was white, lower middle class, in the American south. I ate plenty of ridiculously sugary cereal, drank plenty of soft drinks, and GALLONS of that good old sweet tea. On the other hand, I never saw a TV dinner, except on TV. My extended family had farms and huge backyard gardens, and my diet was replete with fresh, seasonal fruits and vegetables. That being said, meatloaf RULES!

I was born in 1953 and I remember badgering my parents to buy a frozen dinner because they looked "cool". They gave in. I tried it - and was never so disappointed in my life. My Mom and Dad's food was SO much better. Ah, the power of advertising!!

I love the comments sections on these videos. They’re a treasure trove of stories from back then. Thanks to you all for sharing your history! 😊😊😊

I was born in the middle of WWll and grew up on a farm. Our food was home grown vegetables, fresh in summer and canned, later frozen, for winter or stored in the basement. Eggs or Oatmeal with plenty of milk for breakfast, sometimes pancakes and our own sausage or bacon. We raised Chickens for eat & eggs, cows for milk, our own beef cows to sell & our meat, hogs for our meat & to sell also. We had an orchard for fruit and honeybee hives in the middle of it for honey. About the only things we bought were sugar and coffee, baking powder, baking soda, salt & cocoa. We ground our own flour, cornmeal. We even made our own butter, ketchup, horseradish mustard, cottage cheese and Farmers cheese, pickles and relish. No soda/pop in our house. On Sundays in the summer we made our own homemade ice cream in a hand cranked maker with us kids doing the cranking. Fresh strawberries from the garden went in the ice cream. We drank water or mil at all meals. Our food was so much different from city kids and I am thankful for that.

They forgot to mention the milkman! Ours came around armed with a handful of dog treats to ward off any trouble. He delivered milk in glass bottles to the tin box we had on our front porch. But he also had a variety of dairy foods like sour cream, and the best treat: popsicles. I miss the milkman. 😀

I used to work at Walmart. Spam sold alright. Shortly after the area I lived in got a huge influx of Pacific Islander immigrants we were regularly sold out of spam. Took some time for our store to adjust to the higher demand. Same thing with cornmeal when our area got a huge influx of immigrants from East Africa. Cornmeal went from only one facing one brand and size on a bottom shelf to taking up nearly an entire four foot section in the baking aisle with multiple different brands and sizes. I always found it interesting to see the changes with demands and supply happen in the store I was in.

I lived in an upper-middle class neighborhood with doctors, lawyers, engineers, and business owners as my neighbors so I know I was especially blessed. My grandmother ran a very popular restaurant in the Cincinnati area which she started from scratch after WWII. She would make some of the best dinners in the country. I think it was her experience and love that made it so very good. My mother would purchase those Swanson's TV dinners in the aluminum trays (heated up in the oven -- before microwaves we're popular in the home) and afterwards we might get to help pop Jiffy Pop popcorn on the stove. Do you remember the sound it made while you slid it back and forth and the cool pop sounds while you mother watched over you so you did not burn yourself or ruin the popcorn?

my Polish grandma grew up in the 40s/50s and her cooking really shows it. all her meals are a mix of southern/polish dishes, with portions to feed 6 cows. it's crazy how an era can impact living style so much, despite being in it for only about 10 years or so

My mid-western Grandma who lived through the Depression, Dust Bowl, and her husband being sent overseas during WW2 ... She made meals out of everything she could get her hands on and she reused things out of habit. She was an amazing cook. Her go to recipes were meatloaf, potato dishes, casseroles, chick fried steak, a lot of home made noodles.... I miss everything except the god awful jello desserts that were filled with fruit and other mysterious things.

Spam is the most popular meat dish in Hawaii, where it has the highest consumption, per capita, in the whole US. This is due mostly to the fact that it was pretty much the only accessible meat available to the tiny island nation during WWII, introduced by American GIs.

Loved this walk down memory lane! I was born in 1950! You might want to include the history of Kool-Aid… All summer we drank it out of anodized aluminum glasses!

I grew up with all these foods. Another thing about the 1950s and 1960s was that people thought nothing of eating the same thing every day. We had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on a knock-off Wonderbread, with Campbell's chicken noodle soup every single day for lunch until I was in middle school and started taking hot lunch at school. My mom made us oatmeal with brown sugar and milk every morning with cold cereal reserved for Saturday and pancakes or eggs and bacon on Sunday. And dinner was most often a chicken, meatloaf, or a roast of some sort with potatoes, carrots, and celery alongside. My friends had a variety of casseroles, but my father didn't like them and meals catered to his tastes in our house.

We serve meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy and a vegetable every Thursday for lunch at our Italian restaruant.

I've eaten them all, but since my mother liked to cook and we were farmers who butchered our own meat, I never had Spam until well into the 70s. Store-bought cereal was a summer treat. In the winter we ate good old fashioned oatmeal or cornmeal porridge. As far as TV dinners go, I never had one in the 50s, but, of course, we didn't get a TV until the 60s.

I was born in the late 90s and most of these foods were staples on the weekly menu. It's comforting to know that decades seperate generations and there's bickering but at the end of the day, we're all just trying our best to get through life with enough to fill everyone's bellies and make everything a little special

Accurate.. I was a young mother and housewife in the 50’s ..sugar and fat ruled! I was a casserole queen 👑