The Fat Free Food We Ate in the 90s

How We Ate In The 90s

Every January I join my friends–real and virtual–in the time-honored tradition of refining our eating and exercise habits. (January and September if you’re Jewish.) But the truth is I’m tired of renewing my bi-annual pledge to eliminate the white stuff, add more leafy greens, lift weights, stretch, blah, blah, blah.

a pile of gummy bears

Instead of berating myself for not always making the best choices, I’m celebrating how far I’ve come since the 90s–the decade when “diet” was my middle name and Step Aerobics was my idea of a good time.

Here Is What We Really Ate In The 90s

So with great shame and the pictures to prove it (I’m not posting them, sorry) I present: Ten Things I Believed About Food in the 90s–in other words: Why I Weighed 30 Pounds More in High School and College Than I Do Now. (It’s true.)

  1. Frozen yogurt is a suitable meal and snack. Hello calcium! And the more sprinkles the better. It’s all fat-free, baby!

  2. A SnackWells cookie is the dessert choice of champions. Snack well–get it!? Go ahead, eat the whole box.

  3. Gummy bears, Sour Patch Kids, jelly beans, candy corn, and licorice are better for you than chocolate.

  4. Diet soda. Drink it.

nine bagels lined up in a pan

  1. A smoothie +  a wrap is the ideal meal. A wrap slathered in ranch or Cesar dressing is even better. Because then it’s like a salad.

  2. Fat-free cheese = real food. You won’t miss the concept of cheese that melts.

  3. Early 90s: Pasta and bagels are low-fat. Therefore, go to town.

  4. Late 90s/early 2000s: Pasta and bagels have ruined us. Fill up on hamburgers but toss the bun.

  5. Anything Oprah swears by for weight loss is gold. Buy every book on the subject she endorses and highlight entire passages. Pray Bob Greene will become your trainer. (Actually, I still think Bob Greene is very sensible. I’m just too lazy for that much exercise.)

  6. A Dairy Queen Butterfinger Blizzard (17 points) + a bag of popcorn (2 points) + an apple (2 points and never touch a 3-point banana–for shame) = a fantastic day on Weight Watchers.

I know I’m not the only one who frantically slurped down the dieting Kool-Aid in the 90s.

What did you eat or do in the name of weight loss back in the days before fish oil, whole grains, and power yoga?

Photo by Dan-Cristian Pădureț on Unsplash


 

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Nina Badzin hosts the podcast Dear Nina: Conversations About Friendship. She's been writing about friendship since 2014, co-leads the writing groups at ModernWell in Minneapolis, and reviews 30+ books a year on her website.

37 Responses

  1. I paid no attention to most of this stuff and have continued to ignore it into the 21st century. Well, truth is that in the 90’s I was ripped and worked out hard enough that I could eat anything.

    In the years that have passed my metabolism has betrayed me and I have found myself having “earned” some of the weight that refused to attach itself to me in the 90s. Doesn’t mean that I don’t care or that I don’t miss having my six pack because I do.

    But life is too short for me to worry about all of the calories.

    1. I always love the male perspective, Jack. I tend to assume guys don’t worry about these things as much, but I know that’s not always true. I’m sure your wife adores you with or without the six pack!

      1. Children are always good for reminding us of the tiny little details. My daughter likes to look at old pictures and point out all the things that are different. I promised to return the favor at her Bat Mitzvah, but I don’t think that she really gets it yet. 😉

  2. Great post! In the 90s I assumed all food that was vegetarian and organic was healthy and therefore could disregard the nutritional info on the label. It was also the time of eating with a spoon. Somehow I had convinced myself I was consuming smaLler portions this way (ha!) – even when I repeatedly dunked in the peanut butter or “clenaed”/evened the edges in a serving dish. Finally, there was the snacking phase. This was the classic take-something-good and make-it-bad. I wasn’t eating big meals, but rather snacks… A lot of them at all times of times of day, including late, late night hours.

    1. Oh liss- thank you for sharing! Love your additions (cleaning edges, etc). Remember those late night cookie cakes in college??? (not that we thought those were healthy. But what WERE we thinking??)

    1. My biggest downfall was the self-serve yogurt machine in Bear’s Den and Center Court with the self-serve toppings right next to it. And Alissa mentioned the cookie cakes, too. Honestly, we were animals. 😉

  3. Oh, the SnackWells. I ate those things by the case! Clearly an example of how we can fool ourselves into believing ANYTHING if only we want to believe it badly enough.

    As for diet soda, um, well . . . I’m afraid there’s still a fair amount of Diet Pepsi coursing through my bloodstream . . . .

    1. Tracy! At the grocery store in the town were I grew up, you had to put your name on a waiting list to get them and you could only buy a certain number of boxes. People were CRAZY!

  4. So funny Nina! Your blogs always start my day off in a great way! So true about the Snackwells and Frozen Yogurt. 🙂 As well as the 30 # heavier. . .

  5. I’ve been on and off Weight Watchers since about 1978, so I’ve always been aware of what was good and what was not-so-good. Didn’t mean I always did the right thing!

    But you still can’t convince me that a ‘sleeve’ of Oreos isn’t one serving.

  6. This is HILARIOUS! And Totally true! Isn’t it only when you “stop dieting” do you lose weight….oh wait – I sound like Oprah….Thank you for making me laugh and smile this morning.

  7. I genuinely LOLed at the smoothie and wrap being diet food one. That was SUCH a craze, and ended up being more fat, sugar and calories than some fast food meals.

    1. AMANDA- Frozen yogurt + gummy bears was genius. All fat free!! 😉

      30ish Mama- Ahhh, I went through the Jamba Juice thing too. I tend to relapse with smoothies in the summer. Of course then I’m starving an hour later.

      THETA MOM- I ate more Golden Grahams my freshman year of college then should be legally permitted.

      1. Theta Mom’s comment plus yours about Golden Grahams made me flashback to my freshman year of college (admittedly in the mid-80s) where dinner at the dorm – that’s right, I said dinner – was soft-serve ice cream with Cap’n Crunch!

  8. Don’t forget working in a candy store in high school where we could eat anything that was broken…oooooh that chocolate covered pretzel looks sooooo yummy…oops – it broke!

    1. Jamie!!! I’m so happy you commented on here. Those fat-free “chewies” were the beginning of the end for me!!!! I had NO business working in a candy store. NONE! People who say, “Oh, you get sick of it after a while . . .” Well, that never applied to me.

  9. Frozen yogurt has never left us. There are some parts of both NY and LA where there are three frozen yogurt stores on one block. A large population (and I see many college age women in the stores) think that they are eating something healthy when they enjoy their banana cream-flavored frozen yogurt, especially when the yogurt is slightly tart like in Pinkberry. Good for digestion!

  10. I was laughing so hard, I blew coffee on my keyboard reading this.
    I majored in EVERY SINGLE ONE of those myths in college: with particular emphasis on “bagels and pasta are low-fat so go to town.” I too believed non-melting fat-free cheese was a miracle and that 32 ounces of frozen yogurt topped with Butterfinger was a great idea.
    I, too, weighed about 20 pounds more then than I do now. And I eat more. Sometimes, even a hamburger bun.
    Go figure.
    Thanks for sharing and for the laugh. Not so much for the coffee I have to clean up now.

  11. What about the 1998 Chilean diet:
    a) Eating pan (bread) with every single meal because it was freshly purchased and a cultural experience — it would improve our Spanish
    b) Consuming ice cream on a bus doesn’t count
    c) Beer mixed with Fanta orange soda as the drink of champions
    d) Wouldn’t all that walking burn off the calories??

    1. JULIE- So glad you loved it. And I’m sorry for you that you know exactly what I’m talking about. It takes a long time to unlearn those bad habits, doesn’t it!?

      BEKS- 1998 was an aberration where the worst of my fat-free philosophies met an anything goes desperation. 1998: make that 40 p0unds more than I weigh now. Dark times, my friend. Dark times. (But I met Bryan months later . . . you know he must really love me!)

  12. Oh, I love this. Somehow, I have a much more laissez-faire attitude toward det these days (and I’m much smaller – go figure). I used to obsess about carbs. I would eat those terrible no carb candies and other fake things that made me feel terrible. I would also eat Tasti-D (a NYC faux dairy concoction) by the gallon. Was lovely when reports came out that it was a total sham… Wonderful post 🙂

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Hi, I'm Nina

HI, I’M NINA BADZIN. I’m a writer fascinated by the dynamics of friendship, and I’ve been answering anonymous advice questions on the topic since 2014. I now also answer them on my podcast, Dear Nina! I’m a creative writing instructor at ModernWell in Minneapolis, a freelance writer and editor, and an avid reader who reviews 50 books a year. Welcome to my site! 

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DEAR NINA: Conversations About Friendship is a podcast and newsletter about the ups and downs of adult friendship. I’m the host, Nina Badzin, a Minneapolis-based writer who accepted a position as a friendship advice columnist in 2014 and never stopped. DEAR NINA, the podcast, started in 2021, and has been referenced in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, The Guardian, The Chicago Tribune, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, and elsewhere! 

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