Food, Tea Time, Meals in the 1950s (2024)

FAQs

What was a typical meal in the 1950s? ›

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.

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.

School lunches in the 50s were pretty much like the meat and two veg in diners at the time. There was only one lunch, no choice. Typically it would be a ham slice with pineapple, mashed potatoes and gravy amd green beans. Or turkey and dressing or Salisbury steak.

The average American family spent a little more than $800 on food, compared to more than $8,000 today. A hamburger would cost 12 cents back then, compared to $3.81 today. This would estimate to about 22% of the average family income in 1950.

In the 1950s, the USDA developed the Daily Food Guide, which focused on 4 main food groups (milk, meat, vegetables and fruit, and bread and cereal) and introduced serving sizes (Figure 2) (12).

Taco Bell and Burger King are among the fast food chains that were started in the 1950's. With so many new innovations in technology and processing, the food industry was revolutionized in the 1950's. This revolution included restaurants and the landscape of dining was changed with the rise of fast food.

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.

What was food like in the 1950s? Breakfast in my case was cold cereal in summer, hot cereal in winter. Always orange juice - frozen back then unless maybe you lived in Florida or Southern California. Eggs and bacon, pancakes or waffles would be a rare Saturday morning treat.

Why were casseroles popular in the 1950s? ›

Casseroles provided affordable sustenance during the Depressions of the 1890s and 1930s and the shortage of food items during both World Wars. In the 1950s, the widespread use of oven-proof cookware and canned foods made casseroles a simple, quick and inexpensive way to feed the whole family.

Jell-O salads were born out of modern convenience.

Gelatin salads had been around long before that, but it was only after the extensive rationing and scarcity of World War II that Americans began to fully embrace the convenience of Jell-O and other pre-packaged foods.

What meals did families eat in the 1950s? Beaver Cleaver was known to sit down to a normal meal such as pork chops, a veggie and mashed potatoes. French fries were not normal fare in the 50s. Most families in the middle class region of wealth, ate spaghetti, ham, pot roast.

My elementary school started at 8:30 am and went until 11:30. We had an hour and a half for lunch, during which most of us walked home, ate lunch, and walked back. It was a neighborhood school, so there was time for that. School started again at 1 pm and ran until 3:30.

During the 90s, the federal government standards allowed McDonald's, Little Caesar's, Chick-fil-A, as school lunch vendors. It was beneficial for schools because they received funding, and for big corporations because it was consistent revenue. At the time, lunches packed at home were also notoriously unhealthy.

Today, fast food is often viewed as being low quality in exchange for speed and convenience. However, in the 1950s, fast food was viewed as pure Americana with chain fast food franchises seen as an extension of the popular American Diner. The fast food explosion of the 1950s began with McDonald's.