Snacking Through The Decades: 1950s & ’60s - Canteen (2024)

FAQs

Snacking Through The Decades: 1950s & ’60s - Canteen? ›

Spaghetti-Os, Gatorade, Diet Pepsi, Doritos, Taster's Choice, Quaker Instant Oatmeal, Campbell's Chunky Soups and Pringles. Candy also made a resurgence with 100 Grand, Swedish Fish, Fruit Strip Bubble Gum, Lemonheads, Now and Laters, Starburst, SweeTarts, Tic Tac Mints, Trident Gum, Twizzlers and Swizzle Sticks.

1950s Dinners

There was no such thing as the keto diet in the 1950s—meat and potatoes reigned supreme. You'd find hearty main dishes like Salisbury steak, beef stroganoff and meat loaf on a '50s dinner menu, plus scrumptious sides. Casseroles were also popular, particularly those featuring seafood or ham.

1954: Marshmallow Peeps

The original candies were made by hand, but in 1954 Born invented a machine to mass produce his Peeps. Now the company, Just Born, makes about 4 million Peeps every day!

1951: Dunkin' Donuts

I mean, Dunkin' still makes a mean donut to this day. But back in 1951, a year after the company's inception, everyone was snacking on those frosted doughy delights when the munchies hit.

Items like pancakes, sausages, meatloaf, burgers, and sandwiches were standard on diner menus, and still are today. The meals were priced low, making diners popular even before their rise in the 1950s.

Popular packaged foods included Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Special K cereals, General Mills' Trix and Cocoa Puffs cereals, Star-Kist Tuna, Minute Rice, Eggo Waffles, Pepperidge Farm Cookies, Ruffles potato chips, Rice-A-Roni, Ramen Noodles, and Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream.

Dinner: American palates became more sophisticated thanks to Julia Child, but many 60's meals were still dominated by convenience foods like this terrifying olive,celery and cheese jello salad. Buffet dinners of beef stroganoff, green beans amandine and flaming cherries jubilee were popular.

Pringles, Pop-Tarts, Doritos, Starburst, Chips Ahoy!, Gatorade, Sprite, and Ruffles all debuted during the decade, and fast food came into its own with McDonald's. New kid-friendly (read: super-sugary) breakfast cereals abounded, like Froot Loops, Honeycomb, Cap'n Crunch, and Lucky Charms.

The 1950s brought treats including the Hot Tamales candies in 1950, Eggo Waffles and Cheez Whiz in 1953 and Trix Cereal in 1954.

Other fast-food restaurant that were popular during the 1950s: White Castle, Wendy's, Church's Chicken, Denny's, Burger King, and many others. Many fast-food restaurants of the 50s are still around today, and this shows how the "fast-food boom" of the 1950s greatly influenced America's culture.

What food was served at the 50s picnic? ›

Often tinned hams, salads, breads and dessert would be served in a field. However, for an easier alternative make sandwiches and wrap them in greaseproof paper. Don't forget the hard boiled eggs as no picnic would be a picnic without one! Tea and lemonade.

Breakfast was viewed as the meal to set you up for the day so was, at the very least, porridge, followed by bacon, eggs and fried bread, then toast and home-made marmalade, and lots of milky tea. As children it was also when we had our vitamin tablets - Haliborange and Adexolin capsules.

'This meant, that in the early 1950s, most people ate similar diets as they did in wartime, with staples such as Spam and powdered eggs popular. 'Diets were generally healthier than today, with people eating more vegetables and milk, and far less fat and sugar.