For Judith it’s about the nostalgia of being a girl and having her mother make these cookies with this method. Judith’s mom was likely over-worked and buying a box was a timesaver. Who cares if it’s not “properly” made?
But companies come and go. They change recipes all the time. They do research to make everything as cheap as possible, you may never know it but I knew someone working at Unilever and the Mars bar for example constantly evolves, and let me tell you it's not because they want to give you the best Mars bar, it's just "we found a cheaper supplier for X" or "If we replace X by Y we save Z, and you don't really taste it". I like our Dutch tomatoes: Big, deep red and absolutly tasteless. Now they sell "taste tomatoes", I'm not kidding, they're much nicer. Last much longer on a shelve as well.
Many, many products have changed and disappeared over the decades. I don't see anything worth reporting in the piece, except for "putting attention on shrinkflation". Which is fine of course, but Judith should know better, we all should.
Idk, maybe it's a cultural thing. I just can't imagine putting any value in a boxed mix. It's just seen as the low value stuff here, the fake food, unthinkable to pass down a generation. Sorry. It's like Christopher Walken having a cheap "won at the fancy fair" watch up his *.
Btw, I used to get chocolate sigarettes for Sinterklaas (dutch Santa Claus). It's a core memory, yeah, they're gone, but it's very different from my mother's Chinese tomato soup. I can still make that "from scratch".