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



## squatting dog (Oct 29, 2022)




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## Pepper (Oct 29, 2022)

Look how much thinner the people in 1958 are.


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## squatting dog (Oct 29, 2022)

Pepper said:


> Look how much thinner the people in 1958 are.


Think they dressed a bit nicer also.


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## Pepper (Oct 29, 2022)

I bet the modern kid in the cart is only about 8-10 years old.


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## charry (Oct 29, 2022)

We were thinner in the 60s etc
but we ate pies , chips , potatoes , fried breakfasts
thick butter on our bread
suet pudding and  we were so slim

i don’t eat any of that now …
I think it was because we were so active in those days


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## charry (Oct 29, 2022)

squatting dog said:


> Think they dressed a bit nicer also.


Yes they did , men all in suits and ladies in their suits and stockings


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## Pepper (Oct 29, 2022)

More active back then with less additives in our junk food.


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## hollydolly (Oct 29, 2022)

Pepper said:


> More active back then with less additives in our junk food.


less ready prepared food too.. people had to work to make every meal.. and there were no snacks in our house...


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## Pepper (Oct 29, 2022)

The kid in the cart looks so sad & angry.  I really feel sorry for her.


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## hollydolly (Oct 29, 2022)

Pepper said:


> The kid in the cart looks so sad & angry.  I really feel sorry for her.


she doesn't look angry to me she looks peed off at having her photo taken ..


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## Pepper (Oct 29, 2022)

I get very sad when I see a young child being Very overweight.


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## charry (Oct 29, 2022)

hollydolly said:


> she doesn't look angry to me she looks peed off at having her photo taken ..


She’s angry as shes too fat to get out of the trolley


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## hollydolly (Oct 29, 2022)

Pepper said:


> I get very sad when I see a young child being Very overweight.


don't we all.. but the mother is very overweight too.. so it could possibly be that her mother too was overweight...or that the mother never was taught how to cook, and therefore lives on processed high fat  foods..


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## charry (Oct 29, 2022)

Pepper said:


> I get very sad when I see a young child being Very overweight.


Yes pepper …there’s no need for it ….
they say show me a fat child and we re show you a fat mother


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## hollydolly (Oct 29, 2022)

charry said:


> Yes pepper …there’s no need for it ….
> they say show me a fat child and we re show you a fat mother


..as you can see, the mother pushing the trolley is also overweight..


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## MarkinPhx (Oct 29, 2022)

All good points but I am surprised that the mother in the picture from the 50's doesn't have a cigarette in her hand and of course none of them wore seat belts on the way or home from the supermarket.


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## Knight (Oct 29, 2022)

charry said:


> She’s angry as shes too fat to get out of the trolley


Makes a person wonder how she got into the cart


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## Jace (Oct 29, 2022)

O M G, but you do see  alot_ of 'em...out there!_


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## charry (Oct 29, 2022)

Knight said:


> Makes a person wonder how she got into the cart


Aww bless her , so sad in seeing these children obese knight


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## Jules (Oct 29, 2022)

The mother isn’t excessively overweight, as the young girl seems destined to be.

JMO, the girl seems sad. 

 I‘ve seen the occasional kid about that age have a mood and the mother pushed them around for a while.  Doesn’t seem long before the kid is evicted from the cart.


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## Llynn (Oct 29, 2022)

The ladies  in the 50s picture look like Pat Nixon and her two daughters.


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## hollydolly (Oct 29, 2022)

..the other thing is that way back in the day.. the shopping trolleys were a lot smaller too.. nowadays some of them are so HUGE. ( Costco)>. I can barely keep them under control...


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## Gardenlover (Oct 29, 2022)

Now you don't even have to get off the couch.


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## MarkinPhx (Oct 29, 2022)

I do not know the location of where the 1958 picture was shot but one other difference between that picture and the other one is back then that families ethnicity may have been the only one that was allowed to shop at that grocery store


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## hollydolly (Oct 29, 2022)

MarkinPhx said:


> I do not know the location of where the 1958 picture was shot but one other difference between that picture and the other one is back then that families ethnicity may have been the only one that was allowed to shop at that grocery store


Not in the UK it wouldn't have been... there was no segregation of whites and non whites ( of which granted,  comparatively  there wasn't very many  )... so every shop or store would have had white people and non whites doing their shopping regardless..


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## Pepper (Oct 29, 2022)

Llynn said:


> The ladies  in the 50s picture look like Pat Nixon and her two daughters.


And the boy in the back is David Eisenhower!


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## StarSong (Oct 29, 2022)

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.


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## DaveA (Oct 29, 2022)

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,


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## Pepper (Oct 29, 2022)

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,


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.


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## win231 (Oct 29, 2022)

Pepper said:


> Look how much thinner the people in 1958 are.


The one in the cart is conserving energy by not walking.


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## Flarbalard (Oct 29, 2022)

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.


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## Bella (Oct 29, 2022)

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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## Marie5656 (Oct 29, 2022)

charry said:


> She’s angry as shes too fat to get out of the trolley


*No wonder she is a bigger kid...bet she gets no  or not enough exercise, like bike riding, playing outside etc,*


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## Chet (Oct 29, 2022)

The photo on the right shows only one way that our society has degenerated. There are many more.


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## Gary O' (Oct 29, 2022)

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


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## HoneyNut (Oct 29, 2022)

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.


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## Knight (Oct 29, 2022)

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.


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## Jules (Oct 29, 2022)

If that second picture is a real photo of that child, I feel sorry for her.  Imagine being her and seeing yourself made fun of online.


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## SeniorBen (Oct 30, 2022)

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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## Tish (Oct 30, 2022)

I still dress up when leaving the house, be it shopping, work or fun.


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## Capt Lightning (Oct 30, 2022)

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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