at Mon, 05 Sep 2005 09:03:15 GMT in <1125910995.495845.102080
@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>, wrote :

>What foods do you guys know of that aren't as good as they used to be?
>Here's the ones I know.

Many people have brought up the points about seasonal, local foods still
being pretty good - that much of the problem is that peoples' expectations
have changed so that they don't stop to consider what might be in season
and hence end up paying more for worse foods shipped from who-knows-where.
This is certainly a big part of the problem.

But there is a difference between things that are seasonally available and
that can be had with only a little discrimination, and things one must
pursue with almost fanatical obsession in order to find something even
halfway decent even when it is in season. It's this second group, typically
victims either of industry standardisation and consolidation or of
overzealous regulation, that are the genuine gastronomic losses.

Ironically, the 3 you mention here are readily available at high quality
where I am, in Washington State, due to regional demand and markets.

>
>1. Salmon. They have farm raised salmon which is inferior to
>wild-caught salmon...

Yeah, living in Seattle one is almost oblivious to the nationwide takeover
of the farmed stuff. Most of the salmon in Seattle is wild-caught, most of
it very good, and some of the better runs are superb. Sure, you can buy
farmed salmon here if you really don't care, but even the local
supermarkets have a lot of the wild salmon.

>2. Coffee. ...
>(However, I'm sure high quality coffee is still available if you look
>for it)

Of course in Seattle there's no issue with coffee...

Just don't buy it from Starbucks (which used to be good, aeons ago).

>3. Meat...

In Seattle again, we are fortunate for a couple of first-rate farms: Skagit
River Ranch (for beef, chicken, and pork) and Sara-Joe's (for good, old-
fashioned fatty pork and sausages). There are also some other good farms
available. You don't have to be obsessed, but it's not quite as simple as
walking into your local supermarket. So here is a borderline case.

However, there is one meat that isn't what it used to be, not here, not
AFAIK anywhe lamb. You can't get good, fresh lamb here in Seattle, nor
for that matter in most parts of the US. Butchers claim low demand - many
more people supposedly dislike lamb than other meats, but I suspect they
only dislike it because the only lamb that's available is terrible - old,
very red meat from half-grown sheep, usually by now somewhat tough, and
generally much leaner, too. If people had the opportunity to try a truly
great lamb they might realise they'd been missing something.

Local farmers encounter regulatory frustrations with meat raising. New
slaughter regulations generally involve so much red tape and have so many
restrictions that it's prohibitive for local farmers to be able to
slaughter. The regulations are geared towards very large, centralised meat-
packing operations and haven't given any thought towards smaller
facilities. Meanwhile, a smaller producer can't get his meat specially
processed through a large-scale packer because in the first place they have
commitments to larger farms and in the second place their line isn't geared
towards that kind of separation and identification.

However, IMHO there are other losses perhaps even more lamentable.

Milk. Definitely #1. Today's homogenised, low-fat "whole" milk (3.2% fat
even for whole milk) is tasteless. Making matters worse, the best you can
do is buy pasteurised - most states now ban raw milk sales - and there you
have to read labels carefully. A lot of milk these days is ultra-
pasteurised - essentially cooked until it's thoroughly killed. Even the
pasteurised milk is usually HTST (high-temperature short time) treated,
which gives it a cooked taste. LTLT (low-temperature long time) is an
improvement, not perhaps like raw milk but at least tolerable, and this is
virtually impossible to find. And whatever happened to 4% whole milk?
That's at least worth drinking or using with cereal.

Grapes. No grapes today are worth even looking at. The invention of
seedless grapes is the worst violence ever inflicted upon an innocent
fruit. And they've shoved out of even local farmers' markets the really
good grapes. Everything you find are large, insipid waterbags. And
Washington is a big grape state - there's no excuse for that here, as there
might be for, say, Minnesota. The move to Zante grapes for currants and to
Thompson grapes for raisins has had disastrous effects on the qualities of
these baking staples.

Speaking of Minnesota - wild rice. There *are* sources, but you generally
have to mail order. Real *wild* rice is unobtainable not only in
supermarkets, but even in specialty stores. Paddy "wild" rice is a
completely different thing, so much worse than the real deal that the
still-high price you pay for it is a total ripoff. The paddy stuff is
invariably tough and tasteless.

And what about ordinary rice? Am I the only one who finds that most rices
these days are starchier and stickier as well as blander than they used to
be? You have to buy Indian Basmati in order to get anything decent. Good
Basmati is also becoming harder to come by. It's irksome to me, too, that
you pretty much have to buy the unwieldy 10-lb sacks in order to get the
good stuff. Plenty of places sell bulk Basmati, but it's inevitably the
bottom-of-the-barrel stuff. And as for the other varieties of rice they
might sell, forget about it.

Apples. When, even in Washington State, you need to look hard to find good
apples, well, enough said.

A very recent victim: raspberries. A few years ago, some diabolical
hybridiser developed the "Tulameen". This has almost completely monopolised
the fresh raspberry market in a couple of years. Growers like it because
the bushes are thornless and produce massive berries. This makes picking
much more efficient. And it has the "wow" factor for consumers at the
market. But the older thorny, smaller-fruiting varieties were a lot better
tasting. The Tulameen doesn't taste awful, but the relative drop in flavour
is very noticeable.

I will also agree with another poster that broadly, green beans have gotten
worse, although a couple of farms around here have some good ones. As a
result of where I am, furthermore, truly great strawberries are still
available in June, along with truly great peas, but I get the sense that
this is not true in most of the USA.

--
Alex Rast

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