# Is U.S. restaurant food getting blander? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [February 20, 2018, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206 "2018-02-20T16:18:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/41 "2018-02-22T04:27:44Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Possibly. I’m not into spicy food, but then it’s a myth that all Thai food is spicy. A lot of it is not. But it is more flavorful. I actually wasn’t remarking at all about spiciness, but, rather, its flavorfulness. Even something as simple as pork or chicken I’ve discovered tastes better pretty much everywhere else in the world. It is completely bland here, and has always been in my lifetime (mid-70s onward). ETA: I should say commercial mass-market pork and chicken ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/42 "2018-02-22T04:30:06Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I actually wasn’t remarking at all about spiciness, but, rather, its flavorfulness. I was just throwing that out, because many people automatically think Thai = spicy. There are people who won’t even try it because they “don’t like spicy.” But yes, it is very flavorful, and that could be part of why I find food here blander, much blander, than I remember. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/43 "2018-02-22T06:15:20Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > I don’t know from bland but today’s tomatoes blow big time. Not from my garden they don’t. 😃 From the supermarket (yech) I agree. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/44 "2018-02-22T06:19:58Z")
Maybe we are regressing back to the good old days. I made a recipe from a 50-year-old cookbook tonight, which was bland indeed and which called for 2 teaspoons of salt on 1 pound of ground beef, which is crazy. The independent ethnic restaurants I go to aren’t bland at all, but perhaps the chains are cutting down the spiciness even for dishes which are claimed to be spicy. I think lots of people think they like spicy food more than they actually do. I’ve never had anything remotely spicy in a chain restaurant, even during the height of “Cajun” food. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 6:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/45 "2018-02-22T06:56:30Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > I think some (i.e. “foodie”) Americans have this notion that any dish from any other country other than this one simply _must_ be bursting with intense flavors, and any replication we can find here is watered down. > [@pulykamell](#): > > . . . heavily spiced does not mean its necessarily indicative of the way it is prepared in its native land. For example, Neapolitan pizza is quite respected among foodies, and often people who are not familiar with the style are perplexed by the lack of spicing in the sauce (often, just crushed tomatoes, nothing else) and paucity of toppings (mozzarella and basil, that’s it.) \ Yes, it’s not even about the recipes, necessarily. If the basic ingredients have real flavor, a simple dish with only a few flavors can be really great, (such as a real Neapolitan pizza, in Italy). But American food production sacrifices basic flavor even, for the sake of appearances and preservation for transport, efficiency, etc. I had an Italian girlfriend once who would lament the preponderance of “fake” mozzarella in American food, and she had to get regular fixes of the real thing, imported. She could prepare the most amazing dishes with that, without throwing in a whole lot of flavors. I don’t see anything new about the blandness of food in “traditional” U.S. restaurants. For a long time I’ve been amazed at the flavorless crap people are willing to pay for and eat. I’m just glad I live in Thai Town and Little Armenia, so that flavorful food is always a short walk away. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/46 "2018-02-22T06:58:30Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Maybe we are regressing back to the good old days. I made a recipe from a 50-year-old cookbook tonight, which was bland indeed and which called for 2 teaspoons of salt on 1 pound of ground beef, which is crazy. > > The independent ethnic restaurants I go to aren’t bland at all, but perhaps the chains are cutting down the spiciness even for dishes which are claimed to be spicy. I think lots of people think they like spicy food more than they actually do. > I’ve never had anything remotely spicy in a chain restaurant, even during the height of “Cajun” food. I’ve never found Cajun/Creole to be all _that_ spicy. That said, of course you can find plenty spicy stuff at the wing chains like Buffalo Wild Wings and Wing Stop. But that’s about the only type of chain I can think of off the top of my head that has truly fiery options. Come to think of it, Taco Bell’s Ghost Pepper Griller had a surprising amount of kick to it, too. Chik-Fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwich also scratches my spicy itch, although it’s nowhere near something like the Blazin Wings at BW3 or anything like that. ---
**Author:** ![nelliebly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nelliebly/32/5422_2.png) [@nelliebly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nelliebly)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/47 "2018-02-22T08:53:04Z")
To the OP: Alas, the perception that food is blander may indeed be the result of aging tastebuds. According to[this article](http://www.comfortkeepers.com/home/info-center/senior-health-wellbeing/aging-gracefully-changes-in-the-taste-buds-and-sen), we’re born with over 9,000 tastebuds. Between ages 40 and 50, we lose some tastebuds, and others shrink. After age 60, we’re less able to detect the difference between sweet, salty, sour, and bitter foods. At 70, the sense of smell begins to go, and eating may seem less pleasurable… Have you noticed you’re using more salt, herbs, and spices in recipes at home or complaining they seem bland? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2018, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/48 "2018-02-22T12:58:29Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > For clarification purposes: I was referring to blandness of entrees from _non-chain_ restaurants (specifically thinking of a couple of highly rated Italian places in my area). > > … Part of this is restaurant supply stores. Around here there is really one local store where most places buy their food, more and more premade stuff, which results in not only blander food, but that there is no new taste experience as it’s all prespiced. Around here, it even has a expression that the meal tastes Ginsberry (where Ginsberry is the name of the supplier), meaning that it was really a heat and eat meal or at least spice/sauce from that supply place. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/49 "2018-02-23T00:38:31Z")
Do you see a lot of old people eating there? Old people tend to like their food bland, and if they’re catering to them as their top demographic… ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/50 "2018-02-23T00:41:58Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Maybe we are regressing back to the good old days. I made a recipe from a 50-year-old cookbook tonight, which was bland indeed and which called for 2 teaspoons of salt on 1 pound of ground beef, which is crazy. Not at all. 2 TABLEspoons would be but 2 teensy teaspoons for a whole pound of beef, sounds pretty right, depending on what you’re using it for. ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2018, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/51 "2018-02-23T01:54:19Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Not at all. 2 TABLEspoons would be but 2 teensy teaspoons for a whole pound of beef, sounds pretty right, depending on what you’re using it for. I agree. Two teaspoons salt to a pound of ground beef sounds right to me. Going back to **E-DUB,** yes, supermarket tomatoes are garbage. Look around for kumatoes, a “black” tomato developed in Italy and genetically COPYRIGHTED…we can only buy them imported from Mexico or Canada…they taste almost as good as August tomatoes even now in February. ---
**Author:** ![anomalous1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e56c9b/32.png) [@anomalous1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anomalous1)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2018, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/52 "2018-02-24T22:47:48Z")
> [@Ukulele\_Ike](#): > > I agree. Two teaspoons salt to a pound of ground beef sounds right to me. > > Going back to **E-DUB,** yes, supermarket tomatoes are garbage. Look around for kumatoes, a “black” tomato developed in Italy and genetically COPYRIGHTED…we can only buy them imported from Mexico or Canada…they taste almost as good as August tomatoes even now in February. I concur. Those are delicious. Price is very good too. They actually have a savory and full taste, you can eat them almost like a hand fruit. ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2018, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/53 "2018-02-25T21:58:07Z")
> [@Jasmine](#): > > It makes more sense to let diners add salt/pepper/etc. to suit their own tastes than risk overdoing it in the kitchen. After all, you can add it, but you can’t remove it once it’s there. I understand why people say this but I don’t even see the point in eating out if your food is unseasoned. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/54 "2018-02-26T02:27:55Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > Not at all. 2 TABLEspoons would be but 2 teensy teaspoons for a whole pound of beef, sounds pretty right, depending on what you’re using it for. Maybe, but none of the modern recipes I use call for more than one teaspoons of salt. I used one and the recipe came out just fine. The recipe was a standard brown the beef, throw in some other stuff, then throw in a baking pan, put some dough on top, and bake for a while. Nothing happening which would require that much salt. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2018, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/55 "2018-02-26T03:17:35Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Maybe, but none of the modern recipes I use call for more than one teaspoons of salt. I used one and the recipe came out just fine. The recipe was a standard brown the beef, throw in some other stuff, then throw in a baking pan, put some dough on top, and bake for a while. Nothing happening which would require that much salt. Yeah, I tend to be in the one-ish teaspoon per pound of meat category (I do slightly more). Typically, fresh sausages are around 1.5-2% salt by weight. (I know this is not a sausage, but it’s a good yardstick for this kind of stuff. Bread is also at about 2% salt). Two teaspoons per pound of meat would put it at about 2.5%, assuming fine grained table salt (not kosher flakes)-- certainly a bit on the saltier side, but still within reason, though probably a tad salty for my tastes. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2018, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/56 "2018-03-04T04:17:07Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Maybe, but none of the modern recipes I use call for more than one teaspoons of salt. I used one and the recipe came out just fine. The recipe was a standard brown the beef, throw in some other stuff, then throw in a baking pan, put some dough on top, and bake for a while. Nothing happening which would require that much salt. I suspect “modern recipes” is key here. More concerned with “health” than “taste”😛 ---
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2018, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/57 "2018-03-05T02:33:45Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > I suspect “modern recipes” is key here. More concerned with “health” than “taste”😛 And the thing is, salt’s not bad for you, _unless you already have high blood pressure._. Okay, to be fair, there’s still a lot of old research out there, and new information is coming in slowly, but it looks like salt in reasonable portions isn’t a cause of high blood pressure. I mean, don’t go crazy. Don’t drink ocean water for an extended period of time. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2018, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206/58 "2018-03-05T19:09:34Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > But I can appreciate the intoxication of real Sichuan Chinese, as painful as it may be Man where was that when I was a kid in the 1970s? My family didn’t eat out very often, but when we did, half the time it was my mom insisting on “Chinese”. And that is the reason I grew up thinking I hated Chinese food. As far as I could tell, every dish was a pile of rice and limp celery smothered in a cloying sweet & sour sauce. I didn’t realize there was such a thing as spicy Chinese food (with recognizable meat in it!) until I worked under a chef who had a few tasty recipes in his repertoire. And that was in my 40s. > [@nelliebly](#): > > After age 60, we’re less able to detect the difference between sweet, salty, sour, and bitter foods. When I cooked in a retirement home, I generally had to prepare relatively bland food, but there were a few recipes that were slightly “spiced up”. But one thing I never did was use a lot of salt. Nevertheless, there was one elderly lady who, the moment anything resembling “spicy” was served, would promptly start complaining that it was “too salty”. Dishes to which I had added no salt were “too salty”. I came to the conclusion that she simply could no longer differentiate types of flavor, so any remotely intense flavor was “salty” to her. I talked to all of the residents after each meal, and nobody else was making this complaint. Then again, that particular woman complained about absolutely _everything_, not just the food. She had been a resident for quite a few years, and eventually I realized that all of her rotation of complaints boiled down to “everything isn’t exactly the same as it was when I moved in ten years ago”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-u-s-restaurant-food-getting-blander/809206.md?page=2)