It's not just that recipes were being used for advertising, it's that they were used as advertising for new ultraprocessed convenience foods. Because of that, they were all designed to feature canned and shelf-stable boxed trash as ingredients. Stuff like Jell-O™ and Campbell's™ Cream of Mushroom Soup and whatnot. Real ingredients like fresh produce (which they hadn't figured out how to sell as a brand yet) were absolutely kept to a minimum.

The fact that atomic-age modernist ideals made people think that high-tech convenience was a good thing only made it worse.

Well, yah? Like, the recipes were full page ads? This isn't a revelation, it's fact.

It's why I highly value the cookbook from my grandma's church. It's made from old ladies that grew up on great depression food

Nestlé has completely taken over pretty much every traditional dessert here in Brazil, by flooding the country with alternative recipes adapted to make better use of their products. Most people don't even know how to make those things in their original form anymore.

Propaganda is everywhere.

You always have to be vigilant when 'information' is being served to you. It is often obvious, but that also gives you false confidence that you are above it.

Always be vigilant. When you get better at it, each information source becomes part of the suspect cloud.

It won't necessarily help you derive the correct conclusions, but might help you recognize the incorrect manipulations.

I raise you one banana ham hollandaise

Everything had jello in it. Spaghetti Ring Florentine.

I tend to believe that after the depression and the rough WWII years, you had a lot more wealth for the first time in a few decades. Also, factorization was still relatively new - let me use mashed potatoes as an example.

In the 1800s, the ultimate mashed potatoes were boiled, put thru a sieve to make them as smooth and homogenous as possible, with lots of butter and cream. No pieces of skin, no lumps, you wanted to show off that you had the time, equipment, and skill to produce silky smooth potatoes.

Now, it's trivial to buy a box of dried potatoes, prepare with hot water, salt, cream, butter, and get a product that is 95% of the deliciousness of 150 years ago. And, in fact, now what we treasure most is home-made with love. And to show your mashed potatoes are home-made with love, you make sure there's bits of the skins, probably some lumps - imperfections showing that YOU made these from actual whole potatoes.

I think in the same way, all this stuff was new and technological and factory food / industrialized food was safe, in the same way that people went to McDonadl's in the 1970s on road trips because you could always depend on it. You knew what you were getting, and the food safety was reassuring.

Now, we treasure those one-off little diners and such that have "character". And while in the 1950s, the idea of an aspic was new and fun and industrialized, now we think "ewwwww" and the ultimate meal starts with whole pieces of meat, veggies, fresh herbs, et cetera.

I still think they went absolutely over the top batty in the 50s and 60s, but I think I can understand it. I'm glad we moved on from that, mind.

I’d try that.

On top of that, the rise in refrigerators and freezers being common goods made storing food much more viable. A bunch of stuff came out of just that, rather than just making things fresh.

ANGRY RED MEALS

https://liartownusa.com/angry-red-meals-sunset-magazine-1980/

Oh, McDonald's was horrendous back then too. Worse, in fact. The fda food code didn't exist until the 90s. Ecoli was more widespread. Way less regulation.

McDonalds was always bad, just they started talking about how bad later and investigating fast food

i do think it's worth noting that these are societal preferences, i think most individuals have always valued things being handmade and home-y. Like, the concept of "mom's food is the best" has always been a thing, as far as i've seen.

I have a cocktail book from the 50s. Every ingredient has a brand name next to it, and yeah, most of the cocktails in it aren't good.

Nestle dominates the market in many countries of the global south. In my country, they own several water sources from which they sell their bottled water.

you can really taste the hooves in that one

Hot dogs in jello.