Healthy life Interviews

Noor's Grandmother

Victoria's Mother

Jonah's Mother

Noor's Mother

Victoria's Grandfather

Diede's Mother

Diede's Grandmother

Jonah's great-aunt

General research questions:

1. Can you give a short description of your family when you were a teenager?

I had a lot of friends and a nice situation a home. My parents lot. were really caring and my dad
worked a lot.

I grew up in a farm family and had a few siblings I had to help take care of. I helped on the farm too
and went to school with the bus and in big classes.

My father worked in a metal factory, where I used to go after school. Because his office was very
warm, and we didn't need to worry about the costs of the radiator, and I spent many of my
afternoons there.

I lived with my parents, my father, mother and an older brother.

I grew up with my older brother, my mother and my father.

I had a mother two sisters and two brothers, I don't really remember my father because he died
when I was four, but I got a stepfather when I was fourteen.

I grew up with an older brother and sister. Later I got a small brother. My father was a biologist and
my mother worked as a teacher in a primary school, when my younger brother was born, she had to
quit her job.

I grew up in Leiderdorp with a Family of 8, two parents and five brothers.

2. How many people were there in your parent's families?

We didn't have a big family, I had two aunts and uncles. I still had my grandparents and one niece
and two nephews.

Both of my parents had big families, and I have a lot of cousins. My grandparents lived with us too.

My parents had many brothers and sisters. In total of three brothers and three sisters.
I lived with my parents but had hardly any contact with their family. It was a very long time ago and I
don't remember a lot of the times I did see them.

A small family with one uncle and my father had two sisters and not a lot of cousins.

My mother had two sisters and two brothers, and I think my father was with eight, so he has quite a
big family.

My mother was one of seven, she had five brothers and one sister, and I don't really remember my
dad's family since he died when i was four.

My parents had a small family, my mother had 3 brothers and zero sisters. My father had a bigger
family, with two brothers and four sisters.

3. With how many people did you live in the same house?

We lived with four people: my mom, my dad, my brother and me. We had no pets.

We lived in a big farm home with 10 people and me and my family, including my parents and
siblings, lived on one floor.

We lived with six people: my parents, an older sister, an older brother and a younger brother.

We lived with three. Just my parents and me.

We lived with four, me my mom, dad and my brother.

We lived with four people in one house, me, my brother, my father and my mother.

I lived with seven people, my mother, my two sisters and my two brothers but when I was nine, my
brother left because he is mentally disabled, so he started to live in a special house and later on
when I was fourteen my stepfather came to live with us.

My family lived in one small house, eight people.

4. Where did you live with your parents?

We lived in Den Haag, that is a big city in the west of the Netherlands.

We lived in Austria in a town called Tamsweg, it is located in the federal state Salzburg.
We lived in Leiden, then we moved to Rijnsburg for a few years and then we moved back to Leiden
and stayed there.

We lived in Vienna, Austria. I remember there was a chocolate factory across the street.

We lived in Oman and two different cities in the Netherlands.

We lived in Noordwijk. Koepelweg 38a, it's near the beach.

We lived in the centre of Leiden. Druckerstraat 8a.

We lived on the Kastanjelaan 1, in Leiderdorp, where my brother had his own business.

5. Do you remember a historical event or historical fact from when you were a teenager,
related to either India, Europe or Worldwide?
a. Why did this event impress you?

My dad did a lot in the second world war. Sometimes he told a lot about that but further there
wasn't happing much at that time. I was impressed by my dad's story's; they were so horrible and
interesting at the same time.
I was 14 years old when the Berlin wall fell, 1989. Me and my siblings sat in front of the tv and just
could not believe it. This meant the end of the cold war and the German people were free. I
remember people were dancing.

I grew up in the time just after the war and Vienna was separated in areas owned by either Russia,
England or France. My school was in a different area than my home, and I remember that the
Russians were always very friendly to children, we even got presents from time to time.

In 1986 the space shuttle the challenger exploded 73 seconds after the launched, and all the crew
members were killed. This impressed me because this was the first time a normal citizen was
chosen; it was a teacher.

I remember the war in Iraq, I was in school at the time at the Rijnlands lyceum Oegstgeest, we had
some televisions, these televisions were on trolleys and the teachers rolled them into the room and
then we could watch the news about the bombings. This event impressed me because it was already
hard to hear about it so I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be there.

In February 1953, we had a terrible flood in the South of our country, in Zeeland. The dikes were not
strong enough and the sea went in the villages in the towns and many people drowned. I can
remember my mother listening to the radio and she was crying because of how many people had
drowned. It was really a big thing. After that we all collected clothes and other stuff for all the people
that had lost everything to the flood.

I was born just after the second world war, but I remember all the stories my older brothers told me.
About the story of my two uncles, one was with the NSB, and the other was in the resistance. And
they got in a fight, they went apart for a long time.

Research question: To what extent have lifestyles become healthier or unhealthier?

Sub questions healthy life:

1. What foods/dishes did you eat when you were a teenager?

a. Were there some dishes that you ate very often?
b. Were there some foods that you didn't eat or weren't allowed to eat?

My mother cooked very nice meals and we started eating when my dad came home. When I didn't
like it, I sadly still had to eat it. We often ate the same meals every week. I wasn't allowed to eat
much candy and pie.

I ate dumplings and Knödel very much. Those are traditional Austrian dishes. In Austria we usually
ate sweet warm dishes as lunch. On Fridays we didn't eat any meat, so we ate Kaiserschmarren, a
sort of pancake. We didn’t really know fish, so we never ate it.

I don't remember it very well, but the food we had was very limited. We ate certain dishes for a
while and then, because it wasn't available anymore, we switched up again. We were allowed to eat
practically anything, because it was hard to get.
We ate a lot of vegetables and pastas. Also, we ate much fruit and we could drink glass of cassis in
the weekends.

My mother mostly cooked Dutch foods, so like potato's, vegetables and meat or fish and spaghetti.
My mother often made Shepherd's pie with apple sauce because that's a British dish and she lived in
England for a while. I didn't really have something that i wasn't allowed to eat because my parents
weren't very strict about food, and we weren't religious, so there wasn't anything specific.

We ate very simple food like potato's, vegetables and sometimes meat. We didn't have meat every
day because it was very expensive, and I remember that we, once a week had fish. We didn't really
eat a specific dish very often and I didn't have strict parents so the only thing that I wasn't allowed to
have was alcohol.

We ate a lot of cabbage and other vegetables, that we grew in our garden. We weren't allowed to
eat pizza or other fast food. We also ate a lot of soup.

My family was very poor, so we ate cheap food, this led to that all my brothers were very skinny and
unhealthy.

2. At which moments during the day did you eat?

In the morning, afternoon and evening and we waited for my father.

We ate at in the morning, evening and exactly at 17.50.

We ate lunch between 12-13 h. dinner was usually at 18 h.

I ate at school and after I came home, I usually had a hot lunch.

I ate my breakfast before school and lunch at school. At home my father was always late after work
so we waited for him to come home.

In my teenage years I ate quite a lot, so all day.

In the morning, right before school, in the afternoon and evening.

In the morning we ate very early, cause all my brothers got to work, I ate after school and around 6
o'clock.

3. How did you collect all the ingredients?

a. Did you/your family grow (some of) your own foods?
b. Did you buy foods at a specific store/place?

We had a small back garden where we could gather vegetables and fruits and other growable food.

We had a local supermarket and a small farming place in the backyard.

Yes, we grew a lot of our own foods in our big property on the farm. We grew vegetables like
potatoes, onions, lettuce, but also fruits like strawberries, apples, pears and plums.

We had a few local stores in the area and got practically everything there. We had a little garden
where we grew some of our own foods.

The most came from the supermarket, the meat came from the butcher and my mother also was
going to the greengrocer. All the green herbs we grew our self.
Almost all the food came from the supermarket, the Albert Heijn to be specific. We had a garden
where we grew radishes.

We got our food at the Albert Heijn, but it was very different from how it looks now, because now
you have the food all ready for you to buy but in my time, we had to weight it to see how much it
costed, and you had all your food in little bags. We didn't grow our own food, but we did have a little
garden.

We bought it and grew food in our back garden.

4. Did you exercise or play any specific sport when you were younger? If so, could you
elaborate?

I didn't play any sports because I was very bad at them. I did try a lot and I liked to play soccer, but
my dad thought it was a boy sport.

We used to ski a little and do cross country skiing, but I didn’t do it quite often.

Me and my friends used to play outside, and we played soccer in a small meadow, but I didn't
practice any sport. I had sport shoes, but I had to be really careful with them, because I wouldn't be
getting any new ones fast.

I played tennis, lessons and competitions. Also, I played handball and was riding horses.

I played hockey, tennis and I did some ballet, I wasn't very good at it, but I was allowed in class.

I did gymnastics once or twice a week.

I played badminton in the school team, for a few years.

No, we didn't exercise at all, as I said we were all very skinny and didn't have any money for sports.

5. Did your school play a role in (educating you about) your physical well-being?

No, we did have P.E. but that wasn't a really big thing.

At my school the lesson material was more important than physical well-being. We did have a little
P.E. and swimming lessons.

No, our school did not really care. We had some physical education, but we had older teachers who
were in bad shape and couldn't teach us properly.

No, there wasn’t any attention drawn to that. We did have two times a week P.E. and a sporting day.

Physical well-being wasn't important, but we did have P.E. once or twice a week and we sometimes
had a special sporting day.

Physical well-being was not that important in my time, but we did have P.E. sometimes, often like
once a week.

No, not at all, the only thing they did was, putting healthy food in the cantine, and let you go outside
for PE twice a week.

No, we only had PE once a week. So, it did not play a role at all.

6. Did you ever discuss the topic of 'mental health' when you were younger?
a. If so, with whom? And what did you talk about?
 b. If not, do you think this would have been an important topic to discuss?

We did, because I first was at a nice school with nice people, but my grades weren't that nice. So, I
had to go to a girl school, I hated the girls there and they weren't nice at all. So, I stopped with
school after one year. That decision did include mental health.

Mental health wasn't mentioned a lot, but I think it would have been important since lots of us had
questions no one answered, and we could have used a little support.

No, we never discussed mental health and I personally think it wasn't that important. It was just
after the war and the people had other worries.

No, there were no issues. But I do think it is important to talk about.

I didn't really have issues that I talked about, but I think that if I would have had them, I would have
talked about it with my friends.

I did have some issues when I was around 17 because my stepfather had just passed away and he
played an important role in my life, so I was really upset about it, but no one really cared about it, so
I didn't really talk about it with someone.

No, I've never discussed mental health, of course, there were problems, especially in my family. I still
find it disappointing that we've never talked about some problems.

Yes, sometimes with mother when I was little. I can't remember.

Compare:

1. What are the similarities and differences between the answers of the grandparents? Draw
a conclusion.

The grandparents lived quite different sorts of lives, mainly because of the place where they grew
up, since they grew up in different countries. Few similarities are the fact that none of the
grandparents had schools where physical wellbeing played a big role, same goes for mental health.

2. What are the similarities and differences between the answers of the parents? Draw a
conclusion.

All the parents grew a part of the food they ate themselves, and only had few or no foods they
weren't allowed to eat. None of the parents' schools discussed mental health, but they all did find it
important and were disappointed they never talked about it. Differences included the size of the
families and how their lives were as teenagers. Some had bigger families and others only had few
cousins, and the situation at home was different each time too.

3. What are the similarities and differences between the answers of the grandparents and
the answers of the parents? Draw a conclusion.

Playing sports was different in the generation of the parents than the grandparents, since the
parents played sports more often and had better physical education at school. Neither of the
generations talked about mental health at school or at home but a majority did think it would have
been useful.

4. Has there been a development with regards to the sub questions? If so, what is that
development?
No, there hasn't been much change between the two generations; The food sources were limited,
there wasn't much variety. With every person, mental health wasn't discussed that often. And the
only role that school played with their physical wellbeing was PE, nothing more. So, with those sub-
topics, there hasn't changed much.

(300 words)

Conclusion:

1. To what extent have lifestyles become healthier or unhealthier?

The lifestyles didn’t become any healthier when you look at what the interviewed people ate. They
mostly grew some food they ate themselves and bought the other stuff they needed in local stores.
There was a big difference in the sports category, the parents played more sports than the
grandparents, so that aspect became healthier. Then talking about mental health, this was not
talked about at all by parents or grandparents. Most of them did think it was important to talk
about.

2. Does your group think that young people maintain a healthy lifestyle nowadays? Why
(not)?

Yes, we do think so, because nowadays we practice sports a lot more. There are more physical
activities in school and a lot of people practice sports in their free time. There is also a lot of
attention drawn to eating healthy and maybe if that isn’t always the case, there is a change. We talk
about mental health a lot these days because it is really important to share your feelings if you're
dealing with problems, so that is also a big healthier change.

The grandparents hadn’t technology so they played a lot outside and with friends they also tried a
lot of things.

They have huge skyscrapers and many cars. In their past they didn’t really had pollution because
they had minimal buildings and no cars.
They had no technology it was just studying eating it has developed a lot. Especially in social media.

IT has changed a lot. First there were two store buildings now more cars and technology.

More electronic devices.

In the evening we ate Grandparents they ate very early and went to bed around 8

8 till ten.

Which dishes?

Every state has different dishes.

Meat and chicke charts" a lot of spices

Spices

Sports

They more played sports than the newer generations.

PE

They play different sports.

Did your grandparents learn a lot?

They didn’t learn about healthy life.

Now theyre on there phone most og the time.

They were more healthy.