Why were people thinner in the 1970s?

When we played it, the entire point was to get rid of the ball, because The Queer got Smeared. The guy who had the ball wanted to get away from everyone else and then chuck it to someone else. It’s actually a little fascinating that there was a regional variant where you were fighting for possession of the ball in Smear the Queer.

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The correspondence to the large scale production of high-fructose corn syrup is interesting.

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Do the cars speed through at 40 because there are no kids playing in the street, or were the kids pushed off the street to make room for cars to speed? A little of both, I think (what parents would let their children play on a street where cars do 40?)

As the number of cars on the road has gone up, active alternatives (walking, bicycling) have become less safe and pleasant… After walking ~1 mile to a sandwich shop for lunch today, several of my coworkers, apparently not having realized how far away the place was, resolved to take a Lyft back to work instead of walking for 20 minutes. Hard to blame them, when the walk back involved crossing a 6-lane highway.

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I totally believe you, but in my sheltered suburban US neighborhood I do not recall it being so used by children in the 60s and early 70s, and none of the kids fighting for the privilege of being the queer were doing so because they wanted to be thought homosexual.

Remember the rules. The game only works if people are actively trying to get the ball. Otherwise the ball lays there on the ground and everybody goes inside or just stands around looking at it.

The comments by @nungesser, @exonauts & @footface about the cultural implications of the name are apropos, though, regardless of what we kids understood.

I dunno, the part about kids ganging up on anyone “different” sounds the same, unfortunately. I was different, which probably comes as no surprise.

I don’t think they are necessarily a problem (although I am ready to believe some subset of them are problematic) but rather I think they’re a useful rough indicator that a foodstuff is probably not anything that my ancestors ate.

I try to eat like those of my ancestors who lived long, healthy lives which means stuff like whole fresh fruit and vegetables in summer, preserves and fermented foods in winter, plenty of red meat, and no soft white breads or high fructose corn syrup. Evolution is mostly slow. Traditional foods co-evolved with me.

I loosely adhere to the “no more than five ingredients, none of more than three syllables” theory, although obviously that’s also just a rough guideline, a quick way to eliminate nearly all supermarket foods from consideration. And I eat locally produced organics as much as possible, and drink the least processed milk I can get.

So basically I pay a lot more so I can eat like a poor person of a previous era. This seems to keep me more healthy and capable than my peers, but obviously the sample size is too small to draw reliable conclusions.

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Sugar in bread does two things. It softens the texture. And it prevents staling. McDonalds didnt just decide to put sugar in the bread. And there are hundreds of styles of non-sweet bread that contain a small amount of sugar.

The sort of bread burger and dog buns are made from (derived from the pullman loaf, pan de mie and english style white breads) almost always contains sugar. And almost always have. Even when scratch made at home.

“Why is there sugar in bread” is certainly one of those factoids we hear a lot when it comes to processed foods. But when you know a little bit about bread you realize it would be weird for that sort of bread not to have sugar.

With or without sugar they’re good for that. Bread is almost entirely carbs, and even “whole grains” contain a fair amount of their own sugar.

And like I said those are chiefly varieties of bread that are supposed to have sugar. Easy enough to find bread that doesn’t. So long as you dont expect the same texture and shelf life.

The main variety of mustard globally isnt even the same genus.

The other two are brassicas. So at least the same genus. But different species.

And the other vegitables you’re listing are mostly cultivars of:

Cabbages, broccoli, brussel sprouts. Other stuff. All a different species from rapeseed.

All of these things have been selectively bred to the point where they only barely resemble their wild ancestors. But none of them were derived from rapeseed

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cigarettes too.

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Some words were different in the 1970s. Gay meant lame or retarded (retarded didn’t mean retarded). I don’t remember saying or hearing it with any homosexual connotations. I don’t think most of us knew what fag meant other. “You dropped the ball, you fag.”

There’s a Simpsons episode where Nelson is kissing Lisa Simpson. His bully friends see them and one says, “Eww. You’re kissing a girl? That is so gay!”

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Gay still meant homosexual. Its just that kids were using various terms and slurs for homosexuals as a general use insult. Gay, Fag, Queer, and Dyke only had negative connotations because of the overall negative connotations of being gay. Gay didnt shift meaning from “idiot” to “homosexual”, the context around it shifted so it was no longer acceptable to casually insult some one by calling them a homosexual. Or to casually hate some one because they were one.

And kids still do this. And still make the same excuse.

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They ate less crappy food and moved their asses more.

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Aka canola.

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Well rape oil does have a bit of a marketing problem.

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Wait, where was dyke used as a general insult?

I guess it depends who you’re marketing to.

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We called that ”muckle”. All the violence, none of the bigotry. The way we played, you totally wanted to get the ball, even though it meant getting fscked up.

Kids are weird.

Edited to remove a confusing geographic reference.

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This is a video that shows the oil making in a small mill. This is for extra virgin oil, spoiled olives an the remains of the processing of extra virgin olive oil are treated with heat and chemically to get the olive oil, because othewise he oil is too acid.
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And coffee.

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I see this marketed in sketchy discount grocery stores as “olive pomace oil” (also not food, as far as I’m concerned). Another thing that they do at the discount grocery is this cunning trick with contrast:

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Also the misguided and misunderstood food-pyramid is a culprit. The “war on fat” had as side effect the increase of added sugars and salts. You could find 0% fat yoghurt with added sugar and dextrose. On the other hand 100 grams of Grana Padano has the same caloric value of 100 grams of bread sticks, so eating a lot of bread and starchy foods will increase the calorie intake. And sugar and starch are easily transformed in body fat, with the help of the pancreas, and are actually transformed faster than fat.

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It was and is routinely thrown at women in the same way as “bitch” is. And while adults are specifically calling them lesbians (under the assumption that this is a bad thing). Tons of kids when I was a kid were saying it without understanding that context.

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