This is what we ate in the 1970s, part two
Collecting stamps with your groceries and serving pudding-powder desserts with Klop-Klop, instant whipped cream – let’s refresh your culinary memories of the seventies.
Long live the SRV man
The SRV was founded in 1966, and in the seventies two thousand vans drove all over the Netherlands. A complete supermarket on wheels, slightly more expensive than the supermarket in the shopping centre, but hey, it came right to your door… Especially popular for milk, yoghurt and other dairy products, packaged in glass returnable bottles. Did you also have a bottle scraper at home, to get the last bit of custard out of the bottle? In some places, a baker or greengrocer still came to the door, but the supermarket was becoming increasingly popular. Completely new: the hypermarket, such as Miro, a huge supermarket modelled on the American example.
Would you like stamps with that?
Stamps, points, stickers, call them what you will: collecting rewards with your groceries was hugely popular in the seventies. Douwe Egberts points had already been diligently cut from the back of coffee packets since the 1930s, but during this period entire household sets were collected with stamps from Blue Band, Zeeuws Meisje or De Spar. With a stack of points plus a few guilders in cash, you could simply buy a teaspoon at the DE shop… Savings stamps were popular too: with every purchase you bought a few stamps, stuck them in a booklet and, when you handed it in, received just a little more in return. A nice little nest egg, for example for the expensive month of December!
Time for dessert!
Ready-made desserts were the love child of the seventies. In 1970, the first Mona desserts came off the production line. The company started with fruit yoghurt; vanilla custard followed in 1971, and in 1973 there was vanilla, coffee and chocolate pudding. A revolution that meant dessert could suddenly appear on the table on weekdays too. Housewives who preferred to keep the idea that they were making something themselves opted for Saroma desserts: pudding powder mixed with fresh milk and left to set in the fridge. Alternative: Trixy, a bright pink gelatine pudding comparable to Jell-O. Serve with Klop-Klop, instant whipped cream.
Nice and easy
Really don’t feel like cooking? In the seventies, you could say that, very cautiously. Iglo advertised it: why not put a ready-made meal on the table? Just as tasty, ready much faster. Conimex also promoted convenient packets, and nobody needed to be ashamed of a quick meal of tinned vegetables, packet mashed potato and meat from a tin: frankfurters or that old familiar Smac.
Macrobiotic buckwheat
Ingredients did not appear on packaging until 1979, so until then nobody had the slightest idea what was in all those new packets and sachets. The Consumers’ Association regularly warned against fat and salt, but almost nobody paid much attention. A group of alternative-minded people began looking for new, healthy food. Muesli was a thing, as were tofu and buckwheat. Macrobiotics became somewhat popular, and here and there health-food or natural-food shops appeared where this alternative food could be bought. Chamomile tea, homemade sauerkraut and oat biscuits: health food made a major leap forward in the late seventies and early eighties.
Also read:
