I had Tillamook at a birthday party recently and thought it was quite good for a commercial ice cream. I was disappointed however when I saw ingredients like peanut oil and soy lecithin on the label.

Not the same? The run of the mill US produced candy bar (whether a Nestle, Hershey or Mars product). I was never a fan of Hershey, but the chocolate is just so crappy tasting these days overall. Is it the replacement of cocoa butter with oil in some of the products? Have I just been exposed to better stuff over the years and the snobbery has set in? A combination of both? It seems like the texture isn't the same, either. And it isn't that I don't like to eat crap from time to time. But the US mass produced candy bar has (with limited exception) become a bit too crappy even for me.

From "Frasier:" https://tvquot.es/frasier/quote/3wrkj89/

I came here to say this. Most brands I've found to have decreased in quality of the years. For what it's worth, Taco Bell has been the same, regardless of what you think the current quality is.

Pizza hut is one of the biggest shames. It used to be such a treat. Same with KFC. A KFC that serves, hot, fresh food was a delicacy.

Taco Bell has been the same for ages (i.e., my adult life) - but once upon a time, it was a better product. The menu was a small fraction of its current size. The only major improvement since was the introduction of fire sauce.

A&W Root Beer restaurants. Again, so much better 25-30 years ago.

You could try A&W in Canada next time you are up here as it is a separate and distinct entity from the U.S. (and other non-Canadian) ones, and interestingly more outlets than the U.S. operation has in the U.S. and other countries. . It's still rather good (IMO) and some places (namely free-standing locations, (i.e., not in mall or airports) have different grilling methods/equipment that make the grilled food taste better. Also claim to only use grass-fed beef, antibiotic-free pork, free-run veg-fed chickens and hence eggs from such among other things.

Including moderation! :) In fact I'd say all ice cream has fat. That's why it's ice cream and not ice water.

Yeah, either Hershey has gone downhill or I've just gotten used to better chocolate. I think the latter.

I had a can of Campbell's tomato soup maybe a year ago for the first time since I was in maybe middle school and I couldn't eat it. It was so sweet that it was just gross. I looked at the ingredients and sugar featured prominently. I don't remember it being sweet. Why do they have to put sugar in everything?

In business school one of my marketing professors, who used to work in a corporate marketing job for...I think it was Shake n Bake but not sure, said that his office used to listen to the radio in the mornings and one morning someone called into the show to say that they remembered their product tasting different when they were a kid and wondering why. My professor thought it would be fun to call into the show and say, "we work here and it's the same great ingredients it has been since 1960something," and maybe send the lady a free box of the product as a little marketing triumph. But before calling they thought to look at the history of the product recipe and found that, sure enough, when it first came out it was lots of fresh herbs and fewer but higher quality ingredients, and by the time of the radio call in it was a lot of chemicals and no fresh ingredients...so they didn't call.

Great idea for a thread, especially restaurants. I agree with KFC and Pizza Hut. Disagree on Taco Bell. Outside of fast food, I can think of three off the top of my head -- Chili's, Outback, and Olive Garden. Maybe my taste buds have improved, but in the 90's I recall thinking the food was good at all three. And when I've tried them recently it's like it was heated up from the grocery freezer section. I know the restaurants I could afford were different 25 years ago but there are still a lot of others in that category that I like today.

Remember when they served root beer (and floats) in those heavy glass super frosty mugs? At your car!
Can't remember when they stopped doing that. Maybe around 1970?

Olive Garden was marginal even back then. There was one close to my old office and to order an entree cost about $1 more than just a soup/salad bread sticks lunch. And I was always sorry I ordered the entree. (Oh, maybe about a half dozen times before I told others "you can eat here again but I won't be joining.")

IHOP omelets have a weird texture. Maybe too much pancake batter is being added to the gas.

Agree. As a kid I loved an A&W cheeseburger with pickles onions and mustard. Fresh ground beef. Now, thawed beef and burgers appear half the size as back then.

Saladworks. The variable has always been the quality of the franchise outlet that you visit. Now, the salads are getting smaller and smaller, as the serving trays continue to shrink. As does the roll provided. All with the prices skyrocketing.