Sure, but the price difference increased.
I really doubt the price difference was that sudden in 2003. There already was a significant difference in the 90s. Double is exaggerating it, but I recall it being significant, like $1.99/lb for bone-in breast and $1.29/lb for bone-in thigh. And, currently, it seems to have somewhat equalized. Thighs are usually around $2.49/lb around here when not on sale; breast at $2.99/lb here for your factory farmed type birds.
I have to say, though, some of that factory farmed chicken breast is just godawful. I don’t know what they pump these birds full of, but they have gigantic breasts now and, every once in awhile, if I’m being dumb and trying to take advantage of $1.49 boneless skinless chicken breast for stir fry made from one of the Schwarzenegger birds, I get inedible meat that I just throw to the dog. Even properly poached to 155/160, they are rubbery and awful. It’s not every batch. It’s one out of a dozen or so batches that ends up like this. So, now, I only buy the oversized breasts for the dog (I feed him a mostly homemade diet), and make sure to get smaller ones for human consumption. I don’t ever remember breast being that terrible back in my college years (90s).
If you have Popeye’s where you live, check out one of their apple pies. They definitely remind me of the McDonald’s pies from when I was a kid.
I second McDonalds fruit pies - much worse when they stopped frying them. And Hostess pies now come with a free game - “Find An Actual Piece Of Fruit.” Making them at home is one of my “stupid food tricks” - i.e. it’s one of those things I make that people are shocked to discover you can make at home. (For an office pot luck I once brought a deep fryer and made glazed donuts - people talked about it for months afterward.)
The weird one for me is Lipton Tea - it had a much more distinctive taste in the 60s and 70s.
Some things have different because I have changed. I can tolerate, even enjoy, small quantities of mustard, now. As a kid, it was overwhelmingly strong, and I hated it. But my sense of taste isn’t as sharp as it was then.
Other things taste different because they changed.
Yeah, that changed over night. They were SOOOO much better when they were fried in beef tallow. They’re hardly worth eating, now.
And other things can still be found, you just need to look:
There are about 30 sports of red delicious, and some of the older ones are smaller, greener, and rather than some of the new ones. But yes, storage matters, too. If you buy them in season, from the orchard, they aren’t bad, although there are lots of apples I like better.
I can still buy local strawberries for about a month. They are expensive, and small, and soft, and taste fabulous. Nothing like the large firm ones available year round. Go to your local yuppy farmer’s market in June, and you should be able to get some.
Mandarin oranges. There is a huge difference between Japanese and Chinese Mandarins, and I much prefer Japanese. They used to be everywhere at Christmas time, but now 90% of Mandarin oranges seem to come from China, and when I do find Japanese Mandarins they are almost always moldy and rotten. Our local store got in a big order of Japanese mandarins, and there were rotten ones in every box.
Swanson meat pies. They used to come in an aluminum bowl and had to be cooked in the oven. Now they have cardboard bowls and some change to the crust to allow them to be microwaved, but it’s made them a pale shadow of what they used to be.
Kraft Dinner is still the same - just don’t buy the ‘deluxe’ version. Original KD tastes just the same as it always did. Same with Kraft pizza, which I still love.
Almost every fast food place has seen a decline in the quality of their fries.
And of course, soft drinks were much, much better in the days before the government slapped tariffs on imported sugar and drove soft drink makers to use high fructose corn syrup instead.
My vote is for Little Caeser’s Pizza. Bacon the day (early 90s) it was too oily and stringy. Now their five dollar pizza is my favorite (but don’t get me started on the six dollar pizza, that one is terrible).
Yes, we just tried some of the “Deluxe” with the cheese sauce goop in a packet. Terrible.
What’s the six dollar pizza? Around here, we have the five dollar pizza, which is terrible, and the seven dollar pizza, which is (for Little Caesar’s) pretty awesome. The former is that crappy thin-crust stuff that, while not as bad as a New York or Italian style pizza, is pathetic, whereas the seven dollar pizza is a pretty close approximation of a Detroit style pie. Not quite to the level of Jet’s (limiting ourselves to fast food pizza), but much better than the flat stuff.
Yeah, when they cook that deep dish one right (getting browning on the cheese) it is not bad at all. Not really pizza, but tasty.
Swanson meat pies are nothing but a skant cup of goop between crusts! They are ridiculously bad, and we used to eat them all the time. So we switched to Marie Callendar pot pies, which are better (not that they are healthy to eat! enough fat and salt to kill a horse.). (I put one on a plastic tupperware lid, and put it in the microwave, for some reason the bottom of that pan the pie is in got so hot it melted the plastic tupperware lid - melted all over the glass spinning plate! It could have caught on fire!)…I should really be making my own pot pies, I have the time and know-how.
what do you mean, “not really pizza?”
Wagon Wheels - not only are they much much smaller, they used to have jam layer in addition to the marshmallow fill - nowadays you can hardly taste the jamminess
Soreen malt loaf, they reduced the amount of dried fruit in there, or maybe we got a different brand - all I can recall is that malt loaf seemed a lot better.
Ham just seems to have a less strong hammy flavour, maybe they cure it with less salt these days.
I agree with most of what has already been said about most meats, fruits and breakfast cereals, but I have been complaining for years (probably decades) that cokes don’t taste the same. Now mind you, where I come from all soft drinks are “coke”, but I recall as a child in the 70s that when you pulled one of those ice cold bottles out of the machine and took that first swig, there was this strong bracing feeling that went all the way into your sinuses. And that didn’t matter if your coke was a RC, Nehi, Mountain Dew, Cheerwine or an actual Co-cola, they all delivered on that initial jolt. I have felt for a long time that all cokes taste flat to me.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with the industry switch from cane sugar to high fructose corn syrup, but they are just different. I don’t drink them anymore, 1) because they are bad for me, and 2) because they just aren’t as enjoyable.
The senses of smell and taste change significantly as we age, and those changes tend to come earlier than most people think, i.e. by the mid 30’s there has been marked alteration in these perceptions. The sense of smell is so very important in how the tastes of things are perceived, and olfactory sensitivity clearly deteriorates not just with age, but also in accordance with the severity and frequency of sinus/respiratory infections an individual has had.
Keeping that in mind, my WAG is that well over half of the complaints typified in this thread are due to changes in the individual, rather than changes in the product.
You must be from the UK or a Commonwealth nation.
We call Wagon Wheels = Moon pies.
Yes, and not only are they smaller, they are really gross and waxy. Too much parafin fill and not enough creme in the coating.
which are smaller and gross?
Moon Pies are smaller and gross now. All the ingredients are far less quality. Hey, I know they have never been exactly anything sophisticated, but they were bigger, and not just because my hands were smaller, and the coating didn’t leave that flavorless waxy residue in my mouth. The cookies were better quality as well. And the marshmallow wasn’t so sugary.