1960 might be a few years too late but in the late 1950s the banana strain (Gros Michel) most commonly imported into the USA was just about wiped out. It was replaced by a new strain (Cavendish).
The Gros Michel had a flavor which more closely resembles today’s artificial banana flavor. My recollection as an officially old person was it also seemed to be juicier. I distinctly remember noticing a remarkable difference in flavor texture color when the “new” Cavendish strain was introduced to American markets.
Bread. The varieties and quality of bread, even from mass-market outlets, is vastly superior to what was being offered for sale in 1960 (eg: Wonder Bread).
McDonald’s fries are one thing I can remember tasting delicious when I was a kid, but at some point started tasting like cardboard. Though as Qagdop and others have mentioned, when actually comparing memory to now it’s hard to separate what’s actually different and what’s changing taste buds, changing neuron pathways and nostalgia filtering.
To refine my question a bit, since Chronos (appropriate username for this post :)) and others have asked: I think part of the reason the story states that food in 1960 “just tasted better” was due to Stephen King’s own nostalgia filters. I started wondering how true that was, if one was to travel back in time to 1960, and try the pie, coffee, beer, tex-mex food and margaritas (all things the character experienced in 1960 in episode 1). Some things probably would taste better, others, like coffee and beer, would likely be worse- at least in the normal places you would get it. You might be able to find imported Guiness, say, in 1960 in some specialty store or faux pub, but not at the corner bar.
So, a combo of quality of ingredients, preparation, and availability are all fine for answering.
To take the mass-produced-crap bull by the horns: around 1990 the USDA passed the nutrition labeling act, and a lot of processed foods scrambled to reformulate. I specifically remember certain breakfast cereals and packaged baked goods taking a nosedive with regard to flavor.
Also, I remember McDonalds’ french fries fried in tallow, and they were definitely better.
Better now: cheese. There are lots of craft dairies that make their own cheese now and with fast shipping you can get good cheese all over the world.
I’m going to disagree with everybody that thinks milk and/or eggs were fresher then. I get eggs from a coworker who has his own chickens and I can’t tell a difference in taste with grocery store eggs. My coworker raises his chickens on all-natural food.
Cooking techniques HAVE changed quite a bit between now and then. With the exception of steaks and burgers off the grill, meat was cooked to the point of being very well done. I’m sure a lot had to do with food safety concerns, but it was also partly the tastes of the time. My mother wasn’t a bad cook, but her idea of pot roast was beef so thoroughly dry and cooked so long it fell apart into strings. Of course, that is why God invented gravy, which was poured all over anything in the meat family. Vegetables often were cooked to the mushy stage and lacked flavor.
But…when I’d spend time on the family’s farm in the summer and we’d have vegetable dishes like creamed corn made with actual cream and butter made from our cows and corn picked that day, it didn’t need seasoning. It was, in a word, sublime. When I first encountered the watery, sloppy canned mess that passed for creamed corn, I was appalled.
No. Apart from poultry, modern CAFO industrial meat really did not exist in 1960. The '60s and '70s is when the change happened.
The change in fruits and vegetables–largely the loss of varieties not suited to high-volume methods or long transport–happened more slowly, and was certainly advanced by 1960.
There’s an entire corner of the internet devoted to photos of terrible vintage recipes from this era. Just go Google, well, “terrible vintage recipes” and check out the image results.
Here’s one where they actually made a bunch of them.
I think I’m good with modern recipe sensibilities.
The pizza I had as a kid was fantastic, whether in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Colorado, or any of the other places I lived. Compared to the mass-market pizza sold nowadays, it was out of this world. Back then, we ate at real pizzerias, not Pizza Hut.
Chicken and turkey were much better than the overbred, injected-with-chemicals birds sold in supermarkets today. So was the ham I ate when I was a kid. I mean, you could actually see the muscle fibers in the meat, unlike the gelatinous molded stuff you get today.
All varieties of soda pop were much better, since they were made with cane sugar.
Johnny Bravo, those are priceless! I actually remember my early childhood years when everything was jellied, loafed, or molded in all sorts of gut-wrenching combinations. Of course the genesis for all of that was the Depression, when the woman of the house was hard to put to come up with something that would utilize the bits and scraps of leftovers that were all she had to work with.
As kids, when we’d hear the phrase _____ in aspic was for dinner, we’d naturally break it down into its phonetical syllables - and we weren’t far from wrong!
I also remember having real char-broiled hamburgers and french fries that left a wonderful film of fat in your mouth, all from a little hole-in-the-wall place in Minneapolis long before McDonald’s hit it big.
A lot of attention given the “bland cuisine” of 1960 America here, with references to Wonder Bread and Jell-O.
You could avoid 1960’s suburban honky cuisine the same way we do today, by staying out of the suburbs. In 1960 NYC I could patronize non-tourist restaurants in Chinatown, be the only white guy in the place, and eat great food. I could go to Italian or Greek neighborhoods and buy good freshly-baked breads, and order fresh vegetable dishes not boiled to mush.
No sushi, of course, and the Mexican food would suck – New York didn’t have a lot of Mexicans back then – but I could take a train trip to Southern California! (The food in the dining cars was supposed to be really good, too)
My mother, and her mother, boiled vegetables to death and then smothered them in salt and butter. The salt and butter made up somewhat for the lack of taste, but not for the nutrients that must have gone down the drain with the water.
More recently, the times I’ve been at her place for dinner I’ve noticed that she now microwaves most vegetables, and doesn’t overdo it, but for some reason she still ruins broccoli by boiling it on the stove. Broccoli doesn’t exactly lose flavor from this. It gains bitterness.
I remember eating a lot of canned vegetables that were not very good. You couldn’t get something like asparagus or brussel sprouts fresh from the grocery. I even remember eating (or at least being served) canned zucchini.
Better today: [ul]
[li]TV dinners, though perhaps it’s just the microwave that makes them seem better.[/li][li]Any ethnic food. Ingredients just weren’t available. No sriracha, no hummus, not even picante sauce. [/li][/ul]
Better then: [ul]
[li]School lunches. Our school made everything from scratch. Fresh rolls made with yeast and government butter. Scratch made pies and cakes and cookies. [/li][li]Strawberries. When did they hybridize all the taste out of strawberries?[/li][/ul]
We used Log Cabin, which was only 10% or so real maple syrup. Outside Canada and the maple producing states, i think few ever saw or used real maple syrup. Maple syrup was at it lowest production in the 1970’s and 60’s.