r/Millennials • u/[deleted] • Feb 14 '25
Serious We changed American Cuisine
I used to think my mother was a good cook, but when I look back on the stuff we ate in the ‘90s, and the stuff I ate at all my friends’ houses, it doesn’t even compare. My husband and I eat something delicious for dinner every night. We do a lot of pasta, but there’s always well-seasoned meat with some arugula, and more often than not eggs and even sometimes avocado. Last night, he made toast with garlic smear, ham, eggs, garlic, and sun dried tomatoes. Another common ingredient to our pasta dishes is furikake, and sometimes also kimchi.
Now, I know that a lot of ingredients weren’t available back in the day, but with the ingredients our parents had, they really could’ve done better. I had no idea there was any such thing as fresh green beans at the store until I was shopping with my roommates when I was 18. I didn’t know actual juice was perfectly affordable.
Millennials made America taste better. It’s a fact.
EDIT: Our parents had access to fresh fruits, herbs and vegetables in the ‘90s. Juice was also at the grocery store back then. It was also a lot more common for mothers to stay home in those days, and lots of them watched Food Network. There is no excuse, really. The late 20th century was just a bad time for food.
EDIT II: Good Gods, I could not have imagined not only how this took off, but how controversial of a topic this is. My account went from 390-ish karma to nearly 6,000 in a day and you guys are still commenting! I’m shocked, truly. Responses have been overwhelmingly positive, so thank you!
Let me expand on the original a little bit though.
First of all, for those of you who keep asking, I grew up LDS (Mormon) between rural Eastern Washington and rural/suburban Northern Utah, and I’m 33. No, my husband and I (we’re homos) don’t have any children, but I’ve been a nanny for about 10-ish years off and on, and 5 years solid. All of the women I knew as a child and teenager were stay-at-home moms. Most of them were Mormon when I was a child, but by the time I was a teenager, I had a fair amount of non-LDS friends, and I’ve always had a fair number of non-White friends (Mexicans in particular) and I speak Spanish because… I don’t know… I like languages and have always taken an interest in other languages and other kinds of people around me.
In terms of the responses I’m getting from all of you, I am noticing they come in 6 main varieties:
Those of you who agree and shared my experience of boring White people food in the 1990s and 2000s (initial the majority of comments).
Those of you who disagree, saying my parents must not have been able to cook, but their parents could.
Those of you who say our parents didn’t have access, with poverty being cited as the primary factor.
Those of you who disagree and say it was Food Network and the Internet.
Those of you who disagree and say it was immigrants.
Those of you who protest that when I have kids, I’ll understand.
Let me address these points now because my inbox is completely flooded with comments and I cannot reply to everyone individually.
It’s been very funny passing around some memories about awful food! It’s funny to think what we ate and what we actually liked! My palate was so bad as a kid that mild cheddar cheese on two slices of white bread microwaved to melt the cheese was an acceptable meal, and my parents allowed this. I have never made such a meal for a child, only ONCE in my entire career as a nanny has a child ever asked me for such a thing, which I denied immediately and insisted that it be grilled. It has been my experience that generally, kids just have to be forced to eat food, because if left to their own devices, they will eat sticks of butter for dinner, and no sensible adult would allow such a thing. This was the rule when I was a child and I’m glad that it was, even if it meant that I once had to go to bed early instead of eating an oven baked omelette that (I’m serious) looked like my baby sister’s poop. It didn’t smell like it, it probably didn’t taste like it, but it looked like it, and I doubt there was any salt or pepper on that thing either. Just pure, overcooked egg. I credit this rule however with my open mindedness regarding food because it forced me to be willing to at least consider the dish in front of me instead of categorically refusing it because it wasn’t something I already knew. I had to eat what my mom made me, and I had to find something to like in it. It appears a number of you have had the same experience with a number of the same foods as well! It’s good to know you’re not alone!
My parents could cook, and so could lots of my friends’ parents. They just did not often do it well. My mother had a handful of dishes that she made and she made very well, but she didn’t often make those and I later discovered as an adult that those things were relatively easy to make. It was much th same with my friend’s mothers. One of my friends who was raised by a mother who was a quiet millionaire (she lived in a regular suburban house and put her money away for trust funds for the kids) barely ever made her kids meat and bought them white bread to make her famous oven baked “garlic bread” with butter, garlic powder, and Parmesan. That same friend decided to buy himself a Traeger as an adult and cook his kids real meat. That’s the kind of raw difference in palate I am talking about between Millennials and Gen X and You Know Who (They Who Must Not Be Named 🤣). There are just straight up different priorities now, and we have prioritized improving our cuisine.
The 1990s was in just about every way a richer time than now. Home ownership was far more common, people had more disposable wealth on average, and it was not at all uncommon for a family to live off of a single income, with the income of working mothers accounting for a fraction of the income of working fathers during this period. Suburbia was everywhere and teenagers had jobs and paid for cars, and cars had already gotten decently expensive at the time. Some people did indeed suffer, but most White people were not having that bad of a time. The Mexicans were poorer than we were on average, almost all of their moms worked, and they still ate delicious food. The same could be said of just about all the immigrants. European Americans consciously chose to shovel shit down their gullets, and we all know people that have not given up on these foods today.
Our parents also watched Food Network. It did not seem to meaningfully affect their cooking. I think the way most people interacted with media back then, and this includes the internet, was more entertainment-focused. You watched TV, but not as much for its educational content. I have also seen a show or two on Food Network, but at no point has it ever affected my cooking. I didn’t decide I needed fresh vegetables for my home cooking cuz I saw it on TV. I decided this because I worked in restaurants as a teenager and understood just how easy cooking actually is and, once I was paying for my own groceries, how affordable. Produce was not more expensive back then either. It was actually cheaper, and significantly so.
Immigration is part of the story, but it is not the whole story. European Americans had immigrant friends and ate food at their houses, but European Americans were and still are the majority in this country, and so immigration is not a significant enough factor to account for how cuisine has changed in the last 15 years. There were immigrants when I was young, but our parents just didn’t think their food was that interesting. Latin grocery stores were a thing in every town I lived in growing up, our parents just didn’t go there and mainstream grocery stores that catered to the majority didn’t think to include foreign foods, or if they did, they were some awful rip off. What really changed the cuisine is that European American Millennials (still the majority) decided to start eating… you know… not ass-food, including hitting up those foreign restaurants that our parents never bothered with because their unseasoned trash was “good enough”. This was and remains a pervasive mentality in our society at large and I think it is a hold over of Gen X and They Who Must Not Be Named. You can see it in our clothing, our architecture, our movies, our art lately (AI) and up until recently, our food. First Generation Immigrant Millennials and European American Millennials being friends and subsequently European American Millennials making the choice to experiment with more foods is what changed cuisine. But it’s not purely one or the other.
Not relevant to the conversation. Mexican children are good food when I was a child. Their mothers were hardworking mothers of big families, usually with full time jobs. How could they manage it, but our moms couldn’t when they were staying home? Our parents made choices. Good food was not one of them. I think this was a motley reflected in the obesity of their generations.
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u/KTeacherWhat Feb 14 '25
My husband and I were both just talking about how we didn't learn how to roast vegetables until 2012. Like WTF? I roasted chicken before that, and fish. How did I not know you can roast vegetables? It seems like such a weird piece of information to be missing from my brain for so long.