I’m genuinely curious. Years ago, I was a chubby young pothead who lived on fast food. Taco Bell, McDonald’s, KFC, you name it—I ate it. Back in college, fast food probably made up at least 50% of my diet. And it wasn’t just because it was quick and cheap—I actually enjoyed it.
But these days, I find myself craving it less and less. Besides being more health-conscious, it just doesn’t hit the spot like it used to. It’s more expensive than ever, mostly bland, and I feel terrible after I eat it. So what’s changed? Is it just part of the enshitification of everything? Have I just gotten old, or has fast food really gone downhill?
Not just fast food, chains and franchises in general. Local only may be more of a quality gamble when trying things out but when you find that unassuming diner or small restaurant that takes pride in their daily soups, and doesn’t do delivery or apps, and closes at reasonable times for their workers, and is usually packed on weekends, you’ve found something special.
29 and it’s worse now
I used to actively enjoy Carl’s Jr, they made good burgers, especially for a fast food place
Starting 2022ish they started all tasting… Bland? Like no matter what’s put on it there’s a never-ending bland flavorless ness underneath it all and it sucks
Basically everywhere else too but that’s the one I noticed
KFC has gotten shittier chicken. I don’t even eat there anymore. I would rather get a rotisserie from a food library.
Wendy’s has gotten worse with their ‘sauced nuggets’. I’m 100% convinced the quality of meat in their chicken nuggets got worse and the new CEO is trying to cover it up by adding sauces as a gimmick.
It has gone to shit.
In some cases like McDonald’s, the ingredients have been on par while the cooking quality has tanked.
For a lot of other places, both the cooking and ingredient quality tanked.
Taco Bell is probably one of the few major chains I still eat at because their ingredients are hard to fuck up cooking and putting it together isn’t that difficult.
As far as I can tell, Wendy’s took a dive after the founder passed away, and Pizza Hut took a dive at least 20 years ago.
The rest it seems dependent on location. I often wonder how much of the variable issues of quality I see are result of continued pressure on the workers as capitalism continues to grind them down.
Brand names have gotten worse, that’s not you. Cost saving measures upon making sizes smaller while still raising prices. I swear, KFC mid-2000’s was amazing compared to the bland oily ones of today. That said, you probably have gotten desensitized to them in general as you grew older too.
Local fast food is still really good for me, but I’d just avoid major brands like Mcdonalds. They’ve become synonymous with trash food.
I’m in the UK and KFC has gone downhill here too - something I’m very grateful for! A few years ago I got a real craving for a crispy, juicy piece of chicken with the colonel’s secret spices. I ended up with a grim, wizened leg that tasted of stale oil and despair. Never again. My own cooking is sooo much better, and cheaper too. Win win!
The other day I ordered a burger and they put tomatoes on it even though I asked them not to. I was about to complain, but decided to take a bite anyway and…huh. The tomato had no flavour whatsoever. I used to not like the taste of tomatoes but how could I object to this?
So what does this mean? Are my taste buds not functioning like they used to? But I spent lunch looking it up and apparently, there is a fair consensus that tomatoes, along with a host of other fruits and vegetables, really are blander today than when I was a kid. For something I never liked, this kind of works out but…
I’m in my 40s, and I’ve found that fast food quality varies up and down from year to year and location to location.
The feeling bad part is aging.
Quality has absolutely gone down, though, while cost has gone way up.
I’m feeling nitpicky in general so I apologize in advance.
Prices have gone up, not costs. The increase in overhead for these places hasn’t gone towards maintaining the same product quality, much less improving it, nor has it gone towards the pay of workers, and its not really even the real estate.
The bigger price listed is almost entirely because shareholders want more before they keel over finally fucking die
That’s fair. I meant cost as in cost to me, the consumer, which is the price, but I think what you’ve said here is a valuable thing to consider when wondering why it’s so expensive and yet shit now.
Thanks, I’m too scatterbrained to have put it in those words, but yeah, thats totally what I was getting at. Thanks
No worries, we’re all trying to make it through the best we can and I didn’t feel anything adversarial in your critique, just a desire for you and your fellow worker to be treated with dignity in their labor
I stopped eating fast food during covid and never got back into it.
The one time, post covid, I was out and stopped to eat, it was gross. But it’d been so long, I genuinely don’t know if it had always been gross and I lost my acclimation to it, or if it was actually more gross than it used to be.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard complaints online that the quality has gone down while the prices went up, so it probably has gotten worse.
i freakin love fast food, and as soon as covid hit i had to start a ‘blacklist’ of places that have gotten so bad (chipotle/tacobell/bugerking), its just not even kind of worth it.
fiveguys is one of my favorites as it did not change in any way.
fiveguys is one of my favorites as it did not change in any way.
Besides that price haha
20 bucks you can get a proper burger at a pub
Most certainly. When I was young a burger king the food was better and you did not need to say fresh from the broiler as that was default that way. Ironically mdconalds has in some ways gotten better compared to long ago. they made the warming light thing famous. Wendys I would say has kept its quality up the best but still has fallen. taco bell does some interesting things over time but I swear they have invented new technology to slather less and less of their meat flavored slop onto the product. Chicken places have kept up quality in their main sutff but have come out with more and more cheap stuff to stay competitive and cheapened the sides to. Honestly when you had buck stuff and meals under 5 bucks combined with needing something fast to fill your pie hole it was a temptation, but now with many meals over 10 and anything a dollar is now pure trash I find I prefer to miss a meal than pick up anything. Heck even gas station roller stuff is like 5 bucks now.
im in my 40s and feel the same as you. things like fast food dont hold the same appeal, just nostalgia wishing for the ‘old taste’
The only fast food I enjoyed in recent memory was Pizza Hut. During some scare about MSG they removed all of the MSG and I ordered it a time or two after that and it was nearly inedible.
I suspect similar things happened with other types of fast food. I think there’s a flanderization effect happening with a lot of it. The same is definitively not the case for things like pizza in general, as I can order from my local NY-style pizza place and pizza is still just as good as it ever was.
All that is to say it wouldn’t surprise me at all if fast food was objectively shittier across a number of different metrics.
Like everything else they are dropping quality and portion sizes while increasing prices. Line must go up. Last time I bought a quarter pounder at mcdonalds it was definitely made from 70% mongolian horse lung. Yea, I remember when it used to be a tasty burger. Fucking weird that their “beef” has become gamey. And I definitely took a bite where I was like “yea, that was definitely spoiled meat”.
