I just bought a little beef jerky. Haven’t had any in quite a while. It was supposed to be spicy. What I got was something sweet, rubbery and gummy, with barely a hint of heat. (In the US) W.t.f.
When I was a kid, jerky was dry AF, thin, salty, tooth-rippingly tough sometimes, never sweet unless you specifically got a teryaki flavor or something. If you wanted spicy, it was covered in pepper and your mouth would be on fire after just a couple pieces. It was awesome.
Now it’s sugary and chewy. Why people gotta put sugar on everything? Can’t find that dry, thin, peppery stuff anywhere.
What food of yours has disappeared or been wrecked in order to appeal to more people?
I spent a fair bit of time in hospitals as a kid and subsequently, because the two are somehow linked, ate a lot of grapes.
I genuinely swear to you, thirty years ago white grapes used to be delicious, and unless they were getting old and gross, they weren’t even particularly sweet. Their flavour wasn’t strong, the skin was fruity and the flesh was slightly sour, but they were so refreshing and watery, and if they’d been in the fridge, crunchy too! Oh and they had pips! I used to try and swallow the pips whole as spitting them was gross, but ngl I even kinda miss the crunchy tannins they bought to the experience.
In some mad fit of nostalgia not too long ago, I bought all the green grapes I could find online that I could get delivered to me. I spent like £80 on grapes.
Grapes suck now. They are all so obnoxiously sweet, every variety I could get my hands on tasted like juice concentrate, and they’re all freaking huge now too. Fuck whoever decided grapes needed to taste like ‘cotton candy’, you ruined grapes.
This is me with berries, at least at my local supermarkets. I didn’t even realize how bad it was until I had blackberries right off the bush at a friend’s house. Now I only ever get them frozen or (when I can splurge a little) at a farmer’s market.
Yep. They’re generically hard and sweet. They’ve lost their distinct flavor. They’re not bad, but they’re not great, either.
We live in an area where there are a lot of different kinds of farms. When fruit is in season, even grapes, they’re incredible. They taste “real”. I miss how fruit used to be good and not bred to maintain looks and survive shipping.
I know what you mean. There’s a street market near me that occassionally gets in the most fantastic produce, it’s a bit hit or miss though, even for seasonal as they rarely have the same stuff in each week.
But I still think about that perfect, sun warmed, juicy af yellow melon I bought there a few summers back. That taste was something else, it was like melon³, like there was just so much more melon to this melon. No yellow melon has even come close since then.
Your tastes change as you old. Can’t tolerate as much sweet but still dull enough that you need more heat to feel anything.
Yeah but fruit has also been selectivly bred to be much, much sweeter too though. Zoos now can’t feed fruit to animals evolved to eat it as the sugar content has gotten so high.