Then there was the food itself. I looked at the ingredients listed in her old handwritten recipe cards. Butter, flour, sugar, eggs. Real things.
There was no high-fructose corn syrup hiding in the bread. There weren’t forty different chemicals designed to keep a snack cake ‘fresh’ for three years on a shelf.
Portion sizes weren’t a challenge back then because the plates were smaller. A soda was a 12-ounce treat, not a 64-ounce bucket that fits in a car’s oversized cup holder.
I realized that in the 70s, people didn’t have to choose to be healthy. The environment made the choice for them.
Stress was different, too. When my father came home from work, he was *home.* He wasn’t checking emails on a glowing rectangle in his pocket until midnight.
His cortisol levels weren’t constantly spiked by a never-ending cycle of global news and social comparison. They slept when it was dark.
I looked back at the photo. My mom looked so relaxed. There was a peace in her posture that I rarely feel in my own body.
We spend so much money now on supplements, standing desks, and organic labels, trying to buy back the health that our ancestors had for free.
We are the most ‘health-conscious’ generation in history, yet we are the most physically burdened. It’s a tragic irony.
The 70s weren’t perfect—far from it—but they had a simplicity that we’ve traded away for convenience.
We traded the walk for the delivery app. We traded the home-cooked meal for the ultra-processed ‘protein bar.’ We traded the quiet evening for the blue-light glow.
As I put the photo back, I realized that ‘thin’ wasn’t a goal they were chasing. It was just the natural byproduct of a life lived in rhythm with the real world.