What foods or products do you feel had become inexplicably bad?

31 comments

1. Red lobster shrimp linguini 😢

2. honestly most chain restaurants in general seem to have taken a significant dive in quality in the past few years, though maybe that’s nostalgia talking

3. A lot of yall wont remember this, but us old folks remember when KFC had edible fried chicken.

4. Any candy made by Mars or Hershey. Oops, all soybean oil!

5. related, does anyone know wtf is going on with asparagus and cilantro? Almost half the cilantro I get is tinny and/or almost mushy.

   Asparagus seems to be getting thinner and thinner, organic or otherwise. Is it a region specific issue I’m having? Multiple retailers – Sprouts, Frys, Albertsons, Walmart.

6. KfFC had buffets where I grew up. That was a hell of a treat back in the day.

7. If the acquisition of Rao’s sauce by Campbell’s goes through, you mark my words, it’s going to suck.

8. Insert chain restaraunt.

   Though that’s really not inexplicable, it is them balancing the loss of customers with cheapening of the product to increase margins.

9. Hershey bought the rights to make Cadbury products in the US. They ruined it, as expected

10. Every Hostess product

11. Pizza Hut’s quality has fallen off a cliff and their prices are higher than ever

12. Little Debbie snack cakes (excluding Christmas tree cakes)

13. Fruits and vegetables

14. Chipotle, Use to be quite good. Now it’s just food poisoning in a bowl.

15. Quarter-pounder and double quarter-pounders at McDonalds. A few years ago they got rid of the artificial flavoring. Turns out I liked the artificial flavoring and they were just never the same.
    McDoubles are still good though.

16. Any packaged cake/desert item. They taste sweet to the point of being nauseating and they didn’t use to just a decade ago.

17. KFC

18. They ruined the pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks when they changed the formula and made a big deal out of there now being pumpkin in it.

    I to this day believe they either stopped being able to get a key ingredient, it went up in price or an original ingredient was actually toxic.

    I do not believe anyone really was mad about there not being pumpkin in it. That seemed manufactured.

    Edit to add:

    Outback Steakhouse had the most perfect, meaty, chicken wing drummies between 2002 and maybe 2006.

    Something changed and all of the food got worse.

    Oh, and Panera was awesome between 2000 and 2005. It was not after that.

19. The Filet-o-Fish used to be fantastic. It’s super pathetic now. Thankfully there’s a local burger place that has a similar fish sando but it’s better than the Filet-o-Fish has ever been.

20. Thought of another one:

    Little Debbie Pecan Spinwheels – they are incredibly dry and flavorless now.

    I started eating TastyCake Pecan Swirls because they were still moist and full of cinnamon flavor. However, I think they think they need to become more like Little Debbie now, because they’re getting more dry too.

21. I think high fructose corn syrup is made by the devil.

22. Pretty much all honey buns are trash these days aside from Entenmann’s. At least this is how I feel

23. Wendy’s restaurants.

    I realize most fast food chains have had employment shortages since the pandemic started nearly 4 years ago, but Wendy’s seems to have had it the worst. Factor in mediocre food quality and slow drive thru and and I just don’t eat there anymore.

    I’m not a huge fan of McDonald’s but the drive thru is fairly quick and they always get my order correct.

24. McNuggets. I never eat fast food anymore and recently wanted one treat. ONE TREAT. McNuggets. And they were horrible. What the hell happened?

25. IHOP no longer offers the Chicken Florentine Crepes. That sucks.

26. Ketchup.

    Sweet, tomato flavored syrup? Gross.

27. Those strawberry shortcake ice cream bars.

28. I will list one thing that has thankfully not changed. I’ve been getting the same gas station carrot cake for like 30 years. It tastes the exact same. It’s delicious. It doesn’t even look like they’ve changed the packaging. You can get it pretty much anywhere in the country. I love it. Gas station carrot cake, please never change

29. Totino’s pizza rolls. Sure they were bad junk food before, but now the filling is more akin to pizza flavored wet slurry than the separate ingredients they used to have inside.

30. Qdoba, Taco Bell, Reese’s Cups, all snack cakes like Star Crunch and Nutty Bar.

31. Regular cheez-its. They never have enough salt anymore.