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I posted in recipes about Heinz baked beans not tasting as good as they used to, which got me thinking what else has changed? I know they have 'watered' down Marmite as I put lots more on my toast now! And what have they done to Mc Vitie's Chocolate digestives? I used to adore them. Why do they change them, is it really to make the product better or to save themselves some money? Anyone else noticed changes in their favourites?

I am amazing that you eat Heinz baked beans, with all you grow surely you make yours own, they are much more nutritious and delicious.   

But I do remember only needing the barest scrapping of marmite.   My uncle who lived in Chile thought we were being frugal and put it on thickly and nearly choked.

I think the manufacturers have been persuaded to take the fats particularly butter out of biscuits, a shame really because they simply leave it in yoghurts instead which are now rarely 0% fat.    So now as a nation we are eating more fats because they buy in cooking oils to put in the biscuits and cakes.  Low fat yogurt in now 3% fat

When I was a child an oxo cube was divided into four or more sections.   Now you need to use two.   Though I think the cubes shrunk as well.

I also think some varieties of veg are not as good.  Sungold tomatoes have lost some of their bite as have Gardeners Delight, and Desiree potatoes are very variable.   

When a product deteriorates they then bring out a new better one which costs more.   Look out for the appearance of finest original mcvities digestives.   

Maybe you have become used to fuller flavour foods, with chillis etc.  Does taste change as we get older?

I only just thinking something like that the other day when I was on the bus. I had a seat to myself. I put it down to the Brut not having the full aroma it used to have.

Quote from: Digeroo on October 22, 2013, 09:51:17
I am amazing that you eat Heinz baked beans, with all you grow surely you make yours own, they are much more nutritious and delicious.   

I'm sure they are, just they were always a favourite as a kid and I just kept eating them. My mum said I always asked for beans but would just push them round the plate for ages if they weren't Heinz!

Lol your poor Uncle! I tried a pot of the extra matured Marmite when they brought it out, not sure the taste was better but certainly less needed to be spread on toast. The price as you can imagine was on the dear side!

I think taste certainly changes and especially as you say with the huge range of world wide foods available today.

Another one I remembered  loving as a kid was Sandwich spread, bought a jar not so long ago, it was disgusting!

Quote from: ACE on October 22, 2013, 10:51:11
I only just thinking something like that the other day when I was on the bus. I had a seat to myself. I put it down to the Brut not having the full aroma it used to have.

Lol, that must be the reason! P'raps you need to dig out the Old Spice?

I was saying to my husband the other day, how things seem to be tasteless, these days. I think it could be that manufacturers are using less salt.

Lot of things have changed their taste but I'm sure my taste buds have changed too.
Most of the 'common' chockies are horrid..just lumps of sugar and hardly any chocolate taste...everything seem to be too sweet for me.
Sauces tend to taste very sweet and sharp...it is all down to salt, sugar and vinegar..you hardly taste any other incredients.
Bread..well..it just something to hold filling in..unless you get money out and buy something more pricey and 'special'. That's why I tend to either make my own or be without.
Just recently I did write complain to Lidl..they have this Creek yogurt, sold in buckets, and I used to buy it a lot..but this summer it changed to more 'general natural yogurt' flavour...even its texture is not same as it was. It used to be really thick and very different to other brands..now it is like the 'stuff' in other shops. I stopped buying it....GRRRRR.... ..I havt when beautiful stuff is messed with..

For fellow plain Greek yoghurt eaters of the forum, I am pleased to report that Asda's Extra Special Fat Free Greek yoghurt is yummy. Total 0% Fat isn't bad either.  The rest aren't worth bothering with: Tesco's Finest version is horrible, tastes as if it has been thickened with cornflour,  and the rest are just runny plain yoghurt, might as well buy a basics pot.

A lot of flavour comes from salt and sugar and both are being reduced by many brands for health reasons.  Those Heinz beans used to be treacly sweet and quite salty.  When I ate them for the first time (as an adult) I thought they tasted very artificial and not like beans in tomato sauce.  If they were to revamp the recipe to include a little pepper, garlic and thyme, a very decent product could evolve.  But that would be even further removed from the flavours of old.  At the moment they are a bit lost which way to go with less salt and sugar.

Thanks for the yoghurt recommendation.

Chocolate bars taste of what they're made of - artificial chemicals.  The worst one is Milky Way.  WHAT did they do to it?  Nothing like the Milky Ways I used to eat as a kid.  Then the filling was brown, now it is white.  The last time I ate one, I took one bite and threw the rest in the bin.  Couldn't get the foul, chemical taste out of my mouth for hours.  Never touched one since.

Chocolates in general - e.g. Milk Tray etc., I find vile.  It's the artificial aftertaste I loathe.

Lucozade.  Something I usually only drink if I've been unwell.  Now leaves a tacky coating in your mouth and is oversweet - nothing like it used to be even 10 years ago.

McVities.  Can relate to that.  Utterly tasteless - like eating cardboard.  Less sugar (if any at all) and less salt.  Tried Aldi's digestives and they were probably the closest to the original McVities.  They actually had taste.

I'm fed up with the "powers-that-be" messing with our foods so now mostly make all my own including bread.

There's WAY too much artificial this and that put in and on our foods - and they wonder why deadly diseases are on the increase.

I used to love Walnut Whips as a kid and teenager so I was delighted when i saw them in the English shop a few weeks ago.  Bought one each for my daughter and me.

They were ghastly - oily, chemically, not chocolatey.  The walnut was OK.   Sticking to Belgian chocolate in future.

The baked beans are changing because the are Americanising them. We get about 8 types of Heinz baked beans here, I buy the Original, of which there are 2 by the way (one with pork sausages in) The more American  Heinz ones, which is your typical baked bean over here, has a lot of molasses in them. Molasses is now in the Originals, just a bit,m but as the years go by it seems to be getting more. I thinj they are working the way up to dropping some of them and the Original may be completely different before long.


HP sauce is different, I noticed when I was in the UK, yours now tastes the same as the HP sauce here so the US have us on that one too.

Doughnuts in the UK tatsed very differnt to the way they used to, again more like the US ones. I found only 1 shop that had them the way they used to be and I know why..they used to be cooked in lard, now it is oil.

Pork pies have changed too over there, many have not, but a lot of places seem to have cut down on the lard again and it has affected the flavour.

Aberdeen Rowies, changed  too, they cut down the fat content.

I am all for making things healthy but sometimes it just doesn't work.

Yesterday I opened a packet of Smarties and all the colours have changed, they are subdued and they used to be vibrant.

Walnut Whips are a joke, we have a n English shop here, you almost need a mortgage for them now.

OXO cubes were definitely smaller, but they had been for a long time, actually I can;t get them here any more, they come ready crushed in little sachets now, and the Oxo liquid which I used to buy tastes like a completely different product.

I had a very hard time finding regular sausages when in the  UK, just one old butchers shop had them the way I like them. Here it is worse, they are so different, most are flavoured with everything from lemon to cranberries and hot spicy ones. To find a good old chipolata is almost impossible and a banger is hopeless, sausages are all meat here, should be better one would think but a sausage is a sausage, if I want  all meat  I will buy a pork chop. I am making my own most of the time now.

Galina, you would probably enjoy the range of baked beans here...

XX Jeannine

Reading all your observations I too think things taste so differently now. As well as all the changes that the manufacturers have made I wondered if it is that as you get older your taste buds deteriorate and make things less tasty. I certainly dont think that is the whole reason as many have said when recipes are tweaked to make them'more healthy' something has to suffer and often in my mind it is taste. Does anyone else feel it could have something to do with our taste buds?

Not me.. I am as keen as mustard when it comes to taste..pardon the pun . You should hear me in restaurants when I order from scratch eggs Benedict and they bring it with sauce made from a packet XX Jeannine

I like proper meaty sausages with herbs or spices, so, in despair at what was on offer in the late 80s I bought a sausage making kit.   I also started making my own bread so I could get organic, wholemeal with seeds if I wanted.

Now I live in Belgium where sausages have no cereal content and other flavourings are seasonal.  Proper bread is still baked fresh every day by artisanal bakers because there is price control on bread so supermarkets can't undercut them.   I don't make sausages any more and only make bread about twice a year.   I make lots of cakes cos that's something Belgians don't really do but their tarts and pastries are magnificent.

I've noticed Marmite is not as dense as before but have never used Oxo or Bisto and I don't like pork pies or HP sauce so can't comment on those.  Toblerone sold for the UK market is different from the version sold in Belgium or Switzerland.   I buy Heinz beans in the local shops cos the ones at the English shop are so expensive and too sweet now.   I go there for mint jelly and mango chutney which I can't get locally and also crackers for OH's cheese.   Belgians eat their cheese with bread or grapes or walnuts.  Much nicer, I think.

Quote from: Jeannine on October 22, 2013, 22:36:14


Aberdeen Rowies, changed  too, they cut down the fat content.

I am all for making things healthy but sometimes it just doesn't work.

XX Jeannine

Aberdeen Rowies.  I originally come from Aberdeen.  My brother still lives there and sometimes sends down a large box of Rowies.  They are not as good as they used to be.  I liked Aitkens Rowies.  They were usually quite crispy round the edges.  Haven't had one of theirs for years.

There was a big article in both the Daily Mail and Daily Express yesterday from eminent doctors and scientists blaming the LOW FAT diet for the increase in heart attacks.  Seemingly, the whole low fat scam was based on just one study done in 1970 that was very flawed.

I've said for a long time (years) that the reason for the increase in deadly diseases coincided with the switch from butter, whole milk etc. to margarine (that is banned in my house - only one molecule away from being plastic and a by-product of the petro-chemical industry), semi-skilled milk - yuk - watered down rubbish.  These so called "healthy" food-fads are anything but.  They are killing people.

Google the article - it makes for very interesting reading and also goes to show how much people have been conned while the pharmaceuticals and food manufacturers have been making vast profits and since most of this con has been perpetrated by various governments, I wonder whose palms have been well and truly greased to push this dangerous rubbish (no pun intended).

Another thing that is tasteless is meat (notwithstanding the horse meat scandal).  Once you got your meat from the butcher - with the fat left on.   It was the fat that gave stews and casseroles it's flavour.  Now you're hard pressed to find a tiny piece of fat on anything.

Fish and chips taste ghastly now because they're cooked in oil rather than good, old fashioned beef dripping.

I don't know what they do to fruit and veg.  Most of the shop bought stuff is bland, tasteless and rots within a day or two yet home grown is full of flavour and keeps for ages (that's IF it isn't eaten before that).

I make my own bread (breadmaker).  Tastes completely different to the cardboard shop-bought mush.

The general public have been taken for fools for far too long - and it has cost people their lives.  It's high time the food scandal was exposed for the dangerous scam it is and something done to get proper, real food back on our tables.

http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f6340?tab=responses

You can read that article directly on line in the BMJ along with comments from other medically qualified people.

I saw the headline in the Daily Express and thought it a bit confused.  It's "Low Fat" processed foods that are not so good for you because the fat has been replaced with refined sugar.   Well, DUH!!!  And it goes on to sing the praises of the Mediterranean Diet which is a diet low in saturated fat.   But still, people always want to hear good news about their bad habits and thats what sells newspapers.

  Saturated fat doe`s cause clogged arteries their is no doubt in that statement.
If only food tasted like it used to. I bought a Kit Kat today  no resemblance to what they used to taste like. I would not buy a fruit cake if I had a gun to my head they are cheap & nasty chemical rubbish sold to people for maximum profit.

Hoola Hoops!!! I don't know what they have done to them but they don't taste the same. 

Birds eye fish fingers 

........Wagon Wheels ......       what kind of chocolate is THAT ? !    YUK !