> I've never once found it difficult to eat a "standard meat-with-vegetable-without-sugar-added".

Actually, I find that a simply prepared, decent (not excellent, cut of meat) steak has now become a rare thing and is ferociously expensive.

I suspect that there is too much wastage of better meat cuts and that restaurant margins are so thin that every owner immediately cuts back the expensive stuff right away.

Anything other than turkey, chicken, salmon, or shrimp is now problematic to find as a protein. And, with the possible exception of certain kinds of salmon, all those flavors are bland enough that they almost always need something in the dish to help them out (cream, butter, sugar, etc.).