Our food tastes are turning salty and weird

Exactly, fresh food tastes good with modest and naturally occurring levels of sugar, salt, and fat

Like a fig, or real bacon or real ham

Processed food is like bacon flavored and has incredible amounts of harmful sugar, salt, and fat variants

Governments are starting to notice (a few decades too late) that processed food is decimating the population

I’ve seen signs against processed food in NYC for the city, and Brazil and Mexico are waking up to their huge public health problems

Well I dunno. I prepare food myself like soups and stews and all and what I found makes the difference between my wife and kid saying "meh" or "fantastic!" is two hefty spoons of salt.

Yes, processed food of all types has continued to be “optimized” over the last few years.

Similar to housing and rent being optimized for profit, etc. And private doctors being bought by private equity

Food you can buy in normal supermarkets is not the same as what it was in the 90’s or even 2010’s. Most people I talk to don’t seem to notice since it’s a gradual change, but I think the spreadsheet types have fully taken over food.

I highly recommend circumventing the normal supply chains where possible. This basically means paying 1x-2x and going to different stores, but it’s a steal seeing how cheap food is

People used to spend 20% of their income on food, and now it’s 5% or less. I don’t get trying to optimize 10% off that 5% when it’s what you put in your body 3x a day. Availability is a big problem though

What is in stock is usually a poor indicator of demand in the beer and candy isles as what the group of consumers see on the isle is only the leftovers from what everyone before has not purchased.