What's interesting is that a large part of this was the move to "ergonomic" kitchen tools, which the kitchenware brand OXO has been a big part of.

Because you're right -- kitchen tools used to be made out of metal and wood. Metal could be bent back into place and resharpened. Pieces of wood could easily be replaced.

Then OXO decided that small metal handles like the one on the all-metal classic vegetable peeler you or I might have grown up with [1] weren't usable by people with hand grip/coordination issues, decided to use a bicycle handlebar grip as a model, and invented their now-famous OXO vegetable peeler [2] with a big rubber grip. And then slowly everything started to follow that aesthetic -- most kitchen tools are made out of plastic, rubber, silicone, and nylon, with "bulbous" handles. The rise of nonstick cookware is partly responsible for the trend as well, necessitating plastic/nylon/silicone turners, spoons, etc.

I'm not sure what I think about it. On the one hand, my kitchen almost feels like it's made for children, with all these big grippy things. I worked in a kitchen in Spain once where all the tools were probably 50 or 100 years old, and thought -- oh this is a kitchen for adults!

On the other hand, modern kitchen tools seem to be much safer, and usable by a larger proportion of the population -- especially the elderly. So I can't really see that as a bad thing.

[1] amazon.com/Linden-Sweden-Original-Vegetable-Peeler/dp/B00176JEY4

[2] https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Good-Grips-Swivel-Peeler/dp/B0000...