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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Why, oh why, does everything devolve into poverty bashing?  It’s supposed to be an amusing thread.  Some people are poor and can’t afford premium cuts of meat.  Some people can’t afford sashimi qualify fish.  Some people live in food deserts and can only access easily convenience store items.  Why treat them with derision on a food post?

Sometimes when I’m in antique stores, I look at recipes from cookbooks in the 1950s and 60s. Lots of casseroles and jello based “salads.”  It’s pretty crazy how bland the food seemed in those days.

It’s also interesting how much of the processed food industry is based in Chicago.  Con-Agra and Kraft come to mind.  Is it a Midwest thing?  Makes me think of the stereotype of Midwesterners putting ranch dressing on everything?  [/quote]

Years ago I read an interesting history of processed food — basically we developed all this capacity to feed troops in ww2 and then had to repurpose it for civilian needs.  The Midwest has always been the heartland for food production since that’s where they grew the wheat, corn and raised most meat.  And it had significant rail coverage which used to be the main way food moved across the country.
Those of us over 50 that did not live in NYC or California likely remember also how hard it was to get fresh fruit and vegetables most of the year.  Even OJ was wicked expensive and mostly came condensed in frozen pulp.  Bananas you could get (thanks to United Fruit taking over Central America) but most things were highly seasonal and even then you often couldn’t get things like peaches and strawberries that don’t transfer well.  We all ate canned corn and peas and iceberg lettuce and they were disgusting.  Hence all the crazy salads to try to make any of that palatable.  Also food in the 70s was wicked expensive (fewer underpaid immigrants subsidizing ag production) — stuff like boneless chicken breasts was definitely for rich people. Everything now is so cheap and so readily available. Even food imports due to all the free trade after the 1990s and nafta and so forth.  You’d have to go to a big city to get specialty items now available in any supermarket.  [/quote]

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