• frezik@midwest.social
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    5 hours ago

    I’ve had a little theory that post war American food is universally terrible due to everyone smoking and destroying their taste buds. Stuff starts getting better in the mid 90s when smoking rates start noticeably dropping.

    Especially with coffee. People used percolators for years. You know how bad percolator coffee is? So bad that when Mr Coffee came out, it sold for about the same inflation adjusted price as a modern entry level espresso machine. It went into high end restaurants and people thought it was amazing.

    I don’t know if this fully works, though. Much of Western Europe had higher smoking rates for longer, and the food isn’t so shit.