LOL, Cookie, I think our tastes change as we go through life, plus, if I stop eating something for a while, it never tastes as good as I remember.

There was a place in Muskegon called (yes, really) Doo Drop Inn. They hand cut all their onions and hand battered them for onion rings, the things were to die for and they sold them by the platter full along with hand battered Lake Perch. When I found out about cholesterol, I stopped eating them. The last time I went to Muskegon I just had to get an order of onion rings and lake perch and they were greasy, the breading was too heavy, they weren't nearly as good as I remember.

That's why I keep tasting things I don't like, sometimes my tastes change. I used to dislike peanut butter because of the texture and now I love the stuff. I didn't like winter squashes for a long time either, now I could make a meal of it. I'm working on olives, wine and white pasta with red sauce, LOL, I'm still not wild about any of those things.

But I keep trying them....

Annie

Cookie, I don't think that your taste buds have changed. Just your experience and your standards have gone up.

Ann

Since I've had the Sjogren's Disease my food tastes have changed dramatically. For months, I blamed it on my dental work. When I finally, half joking, complained to my doctor she ran blood tests &, sure enough, there's a reason why beef tastes ghastly & I don't like Ritz crackers anymore. It affects my taste buds, my sense of smell, & ability to chew/swallow. I've never had cravings for salty stuff before but now I'm tempted by things like potato chips because the salt initially stimulates the saliva glands and, as a result, my mouth isn't as dry & uncomfortable. The problem is that salt ultimately makes the disease's symptoms worse by drawing out moisture. My new best friend is "Oasis" moisturizing mouth spray!

I've gained some weight because my eating habits have been horrible for over a year now. Not knowing why...only that I couldn't chew or swallow a green salad, plain bread sticks to my mouth & won't go down but if I smear it with a heavy dose of butter I can get it down, BSCB is just impossible to eat unless I smother it in a heavy cream sauce, & my changed sense of smell has made virtually all green veggies repulsive. No small wonder I've gained weight.

/tricia

Cookie:
You're not getting old !!! Maybe some of the Products are.
Keep trying different Brands.

Just like eating Pizza out. You may go to the same Pizzeria
One time it will be the Greatest you ever tasted, next time
it may be, not too good.

Then again, it may be Natures way to make you eat less.
We don't exercise the same as when we were younger, so
You shouldn't eat as much.

How can you, on the CF ?

My cooking is always Great. Come on over for dinner.
LOU

Yeah, there is so much that I can no longer eat, but there are things I like now that I used to dislike.

I can't ride roller coasters anymore either.

Tricia, sorry you have so many health challenges.

I know my tastes have changed; I can barely tolerate anything that is really sweet. Most times I only have a small portion of dessert just to be polite. Once in a while I might think I want something sweet, but usually if I wait a little while, I'll forget about it.

When I was a kid in the fifties, Hershey bars (the milk chocolate ones) were the most wonderful thing in the world. Now they taste waxy to me.

Don't know if it's my taste, the product or both. Certainly some companies have changed the formula. Coke used to be made with sucrose, now I think there's HFCS in it.

Well, I am expecting right now and on a sweets binge so the cookie thing should be a no fail. Considering that it was - that's bad. Should have got the Oreos!

Now that I think about it, there have been quite a few products that I liked, but once they were "New and Improved!", I didn't like them anymore.

This may be a whacko idea, but maybe something in the recipe/production may have changed and they KNEW it changed the taste, so they put the NEW AND IMPROVED label on there to try to CONVINCE us that it still tastes good, and hope we fall for it.

The food we purchase now at the grocery stores just isn't the same as what we grew up with. HSCS instead of sugar, no transfat,no real butter, artificial flavorings and who knows what is in the stuff imported from China. If we buy something made in the USA, it may still contain ingredients imported from whatever country is the cheapest. We are lucky if chocolate chip cookies have any real chocolate is them.

My latest big disappointmentw as pepperidge Farms "original!!!" sandwich bread! Gummy, nasty, left an antertaste and when you toasted it, it still was moist and gummed up.
Nope....the oldf ashioned things are just made cheaper...not as mych cocoa i hershey bars, guar gum in everything.
We used to buy a local brand of cottage cheese....just pure and simple cottage cheese, no preservatives, no thickeners just milk, rennet, salt and cream. And it would turn very quickly, you had toe at it in 3 days or it would sour.
Well they chenged the formula, added thickeners and preservatives.....and it keeps for a week or more.....and it's nasty! I have taken to buying another brand.
don't mess with my old fashioned stuff!!!!
Linda C

My husband and I are convinced that Ritz crackers don't taste the same anymore. Sort of sweet and flat (if that makes any sense). Very disappointing, as we both really liked them. We are now in the process of trying different brands to find a replacement.

Hi Cookie....Hi Lou;
No, that "NEW AND IMPROVED TASTE" is for one reason that they DON'T tell you. I have noticed this (taste change) with a lot of products. One comes to mind as we speak.....ever hear of Entenmanns Bakeries????? They have (had) the BEST cakes, pies, etc. around. I bought a package of their Cheese Buns that were always good. When I bit into it, I thought I was eating cardboard. They tasted stale, but the fresh thru date said, May 15th. That was on the 6th of May. I called them next day and complained, which I normally never do, but, for $5.99, for 6 buns I want something decent. I asked them what happened to the recipe, did they change it? She said they must of changed it, or something to that effect. Yeah, they changed all right. They are eliminating a lot of key ingredients that make them taste good. Same as Campbell's Pork and Beans.. They are not the same as years ago. Why??? Because they took out the chunk(s) of pork that flavored the beans. Why??? HEALTH REASONS. Too much fat, too much cholestorol, too much salt, too much this and too much that.B.S. And what Pisses me off more is that they raised the price of everything. What a racket. She said she will send me coupons for another or whatever I want. Great>>>>>>>Just what I need. Cookie, Donna is right on the money with her post. EVERYTHING sucks lately. Bettor off making it yourself, your ingredients, in the privacy of your home. P.S. sorry for sounding so nasty. Just had to get that cake issue off my chest ,lol. Tony

Cookie, I think you are on the right track....things are not the same, but I have often wondered as well if we could have the exact same thing would it be like we remembered.

Teresa, your post about sweets reminded me of something I saw about wanting to do housework but if you lie down for awhile the desire passes, I'm all about that. Strangely enough I never cared that much for sweets, rather have bread but in very recent years have acquired a taste for sweets. That's bad.....but I still love bread more.

I don't think you're getting old either - just a bit more refined, perhaps.

I remember hearing about the Doo Drop Inn when I was a child because JFK visited there, I think. There's another one in Colorado, but it's not as old. In San Francisco, there was a Doo City Beauty Shop on Divisadero that advertised, "Get yourself a Doo City do." I never did get one because I didn't have the right kind of hair.

I think I'm getting a bit pickier now about what I will eat, especially in terms of packaged foods, which I almost never buy, unless it's from the Japanese market. Although I liked salt as a child, I really have an aversion to it now, and many packaged foods are too salty.

Lars

I think they changed a lot of things too. Cheaper ingredients probably. Even when we went for a dipped cone at DQ the coating was more like wax than chocolate. I think the thing is to make things at home. I found a recipe for chocolate dip that hardens and I used premium ingredients so now I can whip Revello's, Dove Bar and DQ's butts. And for the cookie thing - had to make my own which were chocolate cookies with white chocolate, milk chocolate, almonds and caramels all chopped up and added to the mix. I don't think I can find that in a box anywhere.

I'm sure our taste buds change with age and even from medications taken, but I also think they have altered the recipes on many things. I've noticed it with these rarely-purchased foods. Saltine crackers don't taste like they used to - neither do graham crackers (and both are so much smaller than they used to be they looked odd to me).

I made an old family favorite recipe that I hadn't made in years that uses Nabisco Ginger Snap Cookies. The cookies were horrible!!! Nothing like they used to taste. Hubby took a bite of a cookie and even noticed how bad they tasted, and he's not known for his discriminate taste.

-Grainlady

I don't think you're getting old-- I just think once you taste enough nice homemade desserts, the various mutations of sickly-sweet, high-fructose corn syrup plus hydrogenated soybean oil don't taste as good anymore :-). I think your blood sugar has to be desperately low for that stuff to taste good.

You're right, Lars, John F. Kennedy made a speech in Muskegon, I think in 1960, at the Doo Drop Inn. He was a Senator then, I don't know if he had the onion rings, LOL.

Cookie, I agree, you should have gone for the Oreos. It's one of the few things I loved when I was a kid that I still love.

I think one of the issues with commercially prepared food is that they make it cheaper, trying to make a profit. As consumers we expect a much bigger portion than we did when we were children, we've "super sized" everything. I think in many instances quantity is taking precedence over quality, so that a huge portion can be provided. The items then get bulked up with cheaper ingredients so a profit can still be made.

Annie

I am soooo glad I took the time to read this thread.... you have validated my feelings exactly!

Even the basic cooking products have changed. I've had to rework recipes because all of the baking chocolates aren't what they used to be; and other recipes too that used one or more commercial products as part of the recipe.

I've long thought that "new and improved" actually means "made cheaper and smaller".

It's funny that it was the chocolate chip cookies that got to you. For some reason, as much as I love homemade chocolate chip cookies and almost all cookies I've never ever liked storebought chocolate chip cookies. Oreos, yes. I agree there are so many products that have changed ingredients and almost always for the worse although sometimes I think it's a matter of what you have gotten used to and having that change. Our tastebuds really resent when you expect one taste and another comes across.

Don't even get me started on shrinking packages. It's a standing joke around here about a "pound" of coffee or whatever.