No, not what happens when you accidentally leave your salad in the car for a few days (as I did last week…). What brand name food items have, in your estimation, declined in quality over the life of said product? Inspired by a blogposton Ben-and-Jerry’s ice cream, where the blogger decries the stealth addition of questionable additives and the decline in variety of all those wacky flavors.
[Assumed CS is a good forum match, tho IMHO might have worked too]
I read that diary this morning and figured it was what you meant by the thread title.
How about Hershey’s? Apparently they’ve replaced cocoa butter with vegetable oil in some of their products. That certainly counts as product decay for ME…
Though I could never tell much difference, (I was pretty young when they switched) I would bet that most people would say that when Coke changed from sugar to corn syrup, and then switched formulas completely (New Coke) would be the classic examples of what you are talking about…
I agree. I knew there was a reason why Hershey bars don’t taste as good as they used to.
Are we limited to grocery-store type food, or are restaurant dishes fair game?
As grocery store stuff goes, most things are better than they had been, IMO. About the only obviously worse thing that I can think of is the
Restaurants, OTOH, suffer this much more drastically than prepared foods do.
Restaurants are fine-go for it.
Read about the decline of Hershey’s Miniatureson the ever-awesome Candy Blog.
And make sure to see the companion articleabout how Hershey is trying to gloss over the issue.
Don’t leave us hanging!
To be on topic, lots of things to me, just “aren’t as good as they used to be”. However, I’m not certain if it’s declining quality, a change in my food preferences with aging, or because I smoke.
Cheese is one. I find cheese, ordinary cheddar, gouda, monterey jack, whatever, smells distinctly ‘off’ days after being opened and cut into. I wrap it well, refrigerate, but it still smells and tastes funky to me. This isn’t a product-specific example, however. (Except I kept meaning to post about “why does cheese go bad so quickly these days?” but by the time I’m out of the kitchen and near the computer, the thought’s gone off as quickly as the cheese seems to.)
When we were out looking for houses last year, we were delighted to see a Long John Silvers. We hadn’t seen one since the early 90s, when we lived in San Diego. Their fish and chips were great, light and crispy Tempura battered fish and buttery hush puppies to die for. When we pulled up and got to the door, we saw it was now not next to but actually part of the KFC. We were a tad concerned, but willing to give it a try.
Some memories should just never be challenged.
Now they fry everything at LJS’s in the same heavy grease they fry the chicken in. Feh.
McDonald’s Milkshakes.
A long time ago, in a universe far, far away, McDonald’s used to make real milkshakes, with real ice cream. Now, they make milkshakes like all the other fast food chains, the ones that taste almost completely, but not entirely, unlike milkshake.
Agreed. This change happened a long time ago, back before I worked at McDonald’s (before the early 90s), to my knowledge. Now there’s more seaweed (carageenan) than dairy in them.
I think that a big part of the reason why McDonald’s “milkshakes” don’t taste like they used to is not carageenan, though that might be part of it, but because they use YOGURT instead of ice cream. Yuck. Almost all yogurt, whether frozen or not, has at least a faintly sour taste, and some yogurt has a very strongly sour taste. Now, this can be a good thing in some dishes. However, milkshakes should not have any sour taste at all.
When I was a kid and young adult, I used to love Underwood’s Deviled Ham. In the past decade or so, though, it just doesn’t taste nearly as good. I don’t know whether this is because they’ve changed the recipe or because my taste has changed, but this product is no longer a treat for me.
Same thing goes for canned chili. I used to love to make and eat Frito Chili Pie with canned chili, but now I have to make chili from scratch, or the dish won’t taste right.
About 2-3 years ago, TGI Fridays revamped their menu from “bar food” to “frou-frou food with way too many ingredients and calories for no good reason”.
Some examples:
Honey Pecan Salmon
We top a fire-grilled, cedar smoke-seasoned 7-oz. salmon fillet with pecan honey butter, then add a spoonful of glazed pecans and serve it with savory rice and vegetables. A savory and sweet medley of mouthwatering flavors and textures.
WHY, oh why would salmon need to be cooked with pecan honey butter? Also, they’re already using cedar smoke - why are they sweetening it?
Dragonfire Chicken
A fire–grilled chicken breast glazed with Chinese Kung Pao sauce, served over stir–fried brown rice with pineapple pico de gallo, Mandarin oranges and broccoli.
Pineapple pico de gallo? Oranges AND broccoli? What, no grapefruit eggplant?
Chipotle Grilled Steak Sandwich
Tender Cajun-rubbed steak served on toasted Ciabatta with a blend of Colby and Monterey Jack cheeses, roasted plantain slices, lettuce, tomato, onion & Chipotle mayo.
Typical TGIFridays thinking - start with a basic item, then add random ingredients until it’s so full of crap, it sounds unappetizing. Cajun spices AND 2 cheeses AND Chipotle mayo? Roasted plantain?
I’m sure these kinds of items appeal to someone - but not me.
I was just talking about this with a friend the other day.
Back when I was a kid, one of the best places to get a burger in Toronto was Lick’s in The Beaches. They had these humongous handmade beef patties, which could be topped however you liked.
Then they decided to start opening up franchises all over the province, which meant switching to mass-produced versions of their products so that a Lick’s burger would always be a Lick’s burger, no matter where you went. Conveniently enough, that meant they could make extra quantities of that mass-produced product to sell in grocery stores, so that people could have the Lick’s experience at home, too.
Of course, that nice mass-produced standard means that these days a Lick’s burger is a craptacular prefab frozen burger patty, which is nothing like the old school hamburgers they used to make - it’s like a glorified Harvey’s, except that Harvey’s doesn’t have special sauce.
I don’t go to Lick’s any more. 
Doritos went downhill when they went to the “Nacho Cheesier” formula, which was just sticky and unpleasant. The original Nacho Cheese Doritos were far superior. (Of course, they also dropped the original, plain Doritos, which were excellent, and they changed their taco flavor to some Taco Bell flavor, which is inferior to the old taco flavor.)
McDonald’s french fries were changed a number of years ago after some vegans found out that the oil contained beef flavoring, haven’t been as good since.
KFC original formula is NOT the same as it was when I was young, not even close.
Movie popcorn that used to be made with palm oil.
I have yet to see a ‘healthy’ change in any food product result in a better taste. It’s a non-stop assault on food in the name of forcing ‘healthy choices’. And the people that push these changes don’t even eat the foods in question.
I believe they were fried in beef tallow, or a combo of beef tallow and oil. Also, they used to have sugar in them, which improved the flavor and browning of the fries.
I know that at least one chain restaurant (Denny’s) has quit salting their fries right after they’re removed from the deep fry pots. Sure, you can salt the fries at the table, but it just doesn’t stick as well when the fries have cooled and drained slightly. I also don’t like skin-on fries, or mashed potatoes with bits of skin in them. If I want to eat potato skins I’ll order them, TYVM.
Dammit, now I want some good fries. GOOD fries. Which means that I’ll have to make them myself.
OK, not a foodstuff, but I decry the transformation of Cascade Complete dishwasher detergent. This was the one brand that would get all the food off without prerinsing the dishes. I’ve been using it for years, with no pre-wash or post-wash. Now my store only has it in the little tablet type format combined with some other miracle additives at a way higher cost per wash. I don’t need my dishes shined and, I dunno, perfumed, I just want them reliably clean for no more than what they were previously charging, which was still more than all the other brands.
Breyer’s vanilla ice cream. Pure vanilla bean goodness. Now they downplayed the bean and added gums for texture. I refuse to buy it. Tastes gummy and I’m dissapointed in them.
Unfortunately the company was bought by Unilever, who proceeded to screw it up. A perfect product for this thread.