Likely Lard and Tallow would be better for you than some of those franken-fats they are now often fried in.
Of course in a lot of cases it is the obvious reason of changing ingredients.
When I was growing up(60s), we didn’t even buy syrup. Brown sugar, water and Mapleine.
Forget red delicious. Eat Opal apples. Best apples I’ve ever had.
Better today:
Spices. Most folks in the 1950’s and 60’s had salt, pepper and maybe a couple others, and what few herbs they had were desiccated and tasteless. We were considered adventurous as my Mom used Paprika and Dad use Lawry’s seasons salt.
Fresh produce: better and worse. When it was strawberry season, you had great berries, the largest of which was maybe thumb sized, full of flavor. They had to be used that day or the next and the season was less than a month. After that-frozen or nothing. Today we have oversized and not as tasty berries- available year around and chap for several months. Which is better?
Us in SoCal sent Mission Pack oranges for our relatives in the cold states, since they couldnt get oranges year around!
Worse; Soda- HFCS, 'nuf said.
Red Delicious apples are the same. Newer apples are tastier.
You had a much better school cafeteria than we did. I can remember the fried bologna sandwiches, and the fish sticks every Friday.
I remember the TV dinners my dad gave me had slices of real turkey and roast beef instead of the turkey and beef loaves they use today. The meat was often dry and tough to chew, but it was loaded with flavor!
I had totally forgotten about fish sticks. They were pretty awful. Do they still have fish sticks on Friday?
Yeah. I went to grade school in the late 50’s. Food was crap. We looked forward to hot dog and hamburger days until the kids played around with the ketchup and mustard bottles, so the only condiment was ketchup, relish and mayo all mixed and served* or not.* (insert yuckie emoticon here)
“Spring Surprise” was ancient surplus canned veggies all mixed.
Bread was a cheap Wonder knock-off.
For the years 1997 though 2001 there were 72 reported cases of trichinosis in the USA. Only 22 cases directly implicating pork products and of those 22 only 12 were linked to commercial pork products.
I will still eat my center cut loins and tenderloins “just under medium”…thanks for the tip though!
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5206a1.htm
Also…here are the nationally recognized cooking temperature standards for the USA.Cook to a Safe Minimum Internal Temperature | FoodSafety.gov
As one who grew up in the 60s, I would say sweet corn (maize) tastes better today due to the newly developed varieties. (I know some people think the new stuff is too sweet.) Ditto for apples; the number of apple varieties you can readily get nowadays is about an order of magnitude greater than back then. On the other hand, watermelons and peaches have taken a drastic turn for the worse. (Again, I’m talking about what’s readily available in supermarkets.)
As I understand it the Olive Oil racket of adulterating with cheep crap, then mislabeling and lying goes all the way back to Roman times.
Yeah even in my lifetime Red Apples have sunk in quality.
I’m not really contributing to the intent of this thread, but want to comment on this.
Way back when (in the 80s) I used to work for a produce company in Tulsa. There is nothing like the smell of walking into a chilled storage room the size of a small airport hanger filled with cases and cases of apples. It’s incredible. The same is true for the Orange room, but since there is fewer varieties it was more of a walk in type cooler, but it smelled pretty good too. 
30+ years ago, and I’d love to go back to the warehouse just to walk into that giant room filled with apples. It’s indescribable.
If you shop in the right places at the right time of year and know how to spot them, you can find a few really good tasting Red Delicious apples. Incredibly crisp and juicy with an amazing mixture of sweetness and tartness.
One problem is that the name applies more to a category of apples rather than one specific variety. Almost all of what you find labeled “Red Delicious” are a modern agribusiness concoction rather than anything like an original.
Anyway, most commonly sold fruits and vegetables have been bred for size, shelf life, easy picking, etc. Not for flavor.
I think what we’re all forgetting is that with a few exceptions, you can still get just about anything you could get in 1960, but now it’s overwhelmed by mass produced crap.
The things I most vividly remember from that era are sugared soft drinks, tallow-fried french fries and honest-to-goodness cheese. Of those, only the tallow frying seems to have disappeared completely. Cheap cheese has undercut the real stuff, but the real stuff is still available.
One thin I do miss is the banana cream filling they used to use in snacks cakes and the lard-based fillings in Hydrox and Oreo cookies. Vegetable shortening just can’t replace lard!
Homemade pie crusts made with lard. Oh my gosh, SO good.
Oreos made with lard. Yes.
Kenji at Serious Eats did a double-blind taste test and people generally preferred HCFS Coke: The Food Lab, Drinks Edition: Is Mexican Coke Better?