Trans fats are a good example of this. They used to be the prime replacement for saturated fats. Now, in the US, they are effectively banned.
This hit oreos. [1]
[1] https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2006/01/02/manufacturers-tri...
The fracking industry has made guar gum too expensive to use as a food emulsifier. I know someone who reacts to xanthan gum (which has all but replaced guar) and she's not a happy camper, because it's in fucking everything.
Palm oil is thick at room temp, like partially hydrogenated oils are.
They did use lard till mid 90s.
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2008/02/getting-lard-out-ko...
Every time you see a package with “new and improved recipe” you can bet it only improved their margins by using cheaper ingredients, not the actual taste.
Look at coffee. The gradual shift from Arabica to more Robusta beans over a generation. Each year, an imperceptible shift was taken that, over decades, lead to coffee that tastes terrible. Opening the door for companies like Starbucks and a ton of gourmet roasters to compete.
But properly roasted, single origin coffee costs more than Chock-full-o'nuts. So you have options.
I've surrendered and just drink tea and chai now.
In fact their coffee doesn't taste like coffee, but more like mocha/hazelnut ice cream.
Much like how McDonalds, KFC, etc started by making decent food so did Starbucks. Add 40+ years of optimizing for the bottom line and the average person’s pallet and you get a very different product.
Cold brew is better, but not as much as afficionadoes sold me on. I can still taste the bitters.
For the job, there were five "espresso style" variants[2]. Although the "black no sugar" was too intense or me, none of them were bitter. I could make them bitter if I left one open too long or by heating one and letting it cool. There are only three variants now, and I miss the the discontinued "black lightly sweet" and "mochachino".
I've since experimented with making cold brew, servedhot or cold, with a little potassium bicarbonate. I've also tried some ready-made cold brews and lighter roasts. Darker roasts taste more burnt to me. Robusto is unsuitable. Arabica is better, especially if it has a good proportion of Kona in it. If it doesn't specifiy how much Kona, assume it's not enough to make a difference. I haven't tried pure Kona, even while in Hawai'i, because price.
[1] This was not planned. I was mistakenly given regular tablets instead of children's chewable…more than once, by different people. Not a recommended experience.
[2] I'm told Italy made them stop calling it that, because of some legal definition of what constitutes espresso.
No we call it just that, enshittification.
I'll be glad when this juvenile meme finally passes out of Hacker News' system.
Shrinkflation generally means same price for less product (grams, fluid ounces), but enshitification by slowly decreasing the quality of the ingredients is also a problem.
Do we put that under the shrinkflation umbrella or track it as a separate problem? Since they are both unwanted solutions to the same problem, seems like they should be kept together (to avoid a Goodhart's Law fiasco)
I recall eating an Oreo after fifteen years of not having one. At first I just thought I'd forgotten what they actually tasted like, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see a long chain of focus groups asking customers if cookie A and cookie B taste the same, if one tastes better, and slowly changing the formula to only alienate 0.2% of the customers each time until one day I wander up and find I'm part of the 10% they've cumulatively alienated.
See also how only some of us can taste certain artificial sweeteners as sugary toxic waste instead of sugar (saccharin tastes to me like drinking soda after licking a 9 volt battery)