S/O Portion Distortion.....Product Distortion.... quality changes in foods you loved?

[Tap]

In the portion size thread we were discussing the iconic Breyers Ice Cream, which was once known for its quality and few ingredients... has now switched to 'frozen dairy dessert' and a slew of natural and synthetic ingredients.

 

What other products have you noticed decreasing in quality?

 

I think one that I notice is that historically, when you went to a health food store and bought natural foods, they were high quality with a minimal amount of ingredients. These weren't always the best tasting items LOL but they were typically healthy.

 

Now, it seems like every store sells Organic, Natural Foods....that are laden with inferior ingredients and are often high in 'organic' sugars and other 'organic' additives.

 

I used to be able to go shopping at a HFS and do minimal ingredient reading, just skimming for allergens and verifying what I already knew. Now, I am back to 1 hour shopping trips as I am forced to read every ingredient scrutinizing the ingredients for the constantly changing terms and new ways of hiding the old.

 

 

 

 

From Bryer's Wikki

Cost-cutting

 

Prior to 2006,[2] Breyers was known for producing ice cream with a small number of all-natural ingredients. In recent years, as part of cost-cutting measures since their move from Green Bay, Wisconsin to Unilever's U.S. headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey,[3] Breyers has reformulated many of its flavors with nontraditional, additive ingredients, significantly changing the taste and texture of their desserts as a direct result of these additions.[2] Following similar practices by several of their competitors, and to the consternation of many former customers,[2] Breyers' list of ingredients has expanded to include natural food additives such as Tara gum[4] and Carob Bean gum,[5] artificial additives such as maltodextrin and propylene glycol,[6] and synthetic ingredients[citation needed] such as corn syrup, whey, and many others.[5][6]

 

One significant result of these cost-cutting practices has been that the majority of their U.S. products no longer contain enough milk and cream to actually be considered "ice cream", and are now labeled "Frozen Dairy Dessert" instead.[7] Likewise, in Canada they are labeled "Frozen Dessert".[8] Ultimately, very few former Breyers all-natural products are still truly "ice cream".

 

For several decades, over 30% of Breyers products, including most of their products sold in the North-Eastern U.S., were produced in a large plant outside Boston, in Framingham, Massachusetts. However, as part of further cost-cutting by Unilever, the plant was closed in March 2011.[9]

 

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[vmsurbat]

Well, I don't know if the formulations have changed or I have, but I was SOOO disappointed to discover on our last furlough that I no longer liked many of the goodies/easy-but-healthy staples I used to buy at Trader Joe's. Yes, some were still yummy, but others...tasted soooo processed/chemically/odd, like salad dressings, snack foods, cereals, frozen goodies, etc. I had been looking forward to taking a break from the constant cooking I must do here (south central Europe), but couldn't stomach most of the convenience foods even from TJs. We stuck with chocolate, cheese, smoked salmon, hummus, flour, and a few spices--basic ingredients except for the salmon and hummus. Even most of the salsas tasted "off" to us.