Imagine you were the wealthiest person living in New York City in the 19th or even early 20th century. Your diet would be unbelievably bland. Very few ethnic cuisines, very few spices available, and overall food quality was horrendous due to lack of industrialization, sanitation, and processes that hadn’t been invented yet.

And that doesn’t even get into the consequences of the lack of refrigeration and refrigerated logistics. It is a stunning achievement that we can eat raw vegetables year round, with such a high confidence in safety that every contamination incident is national news. The modern salad is a tribute to man’s genius and capital investment.