Food quality

Food quality in restaurants is declining at a rapid pace. In the old days - 5-10 years ago they would make food following recipes at each location.

I remember seeing a shelf of spices above the grill at the local chipotle. The chef would combine the ingredients and prepare food on the grill.

They don't do that anymore. I didn't notice the spice shelf had been removed and they no longer have a chef. What I did
Notice was the food is now pre-made and stored in vacuum sealed plastic bags. Some kid gets whatever needs replenishment on the line out of the refrigerator, cuts open the package and heats it up. Or grills the meat. Most of it it isn't cooked in the store. It's reheated in the store.

It's probably more efficient to mass produce in a slop house and truck it to the store locations and make them reheat it instead of cooking it. The quality is probably more consistent because the recipes are being followed more accurately. Or ingredients are being combined by machine. I don't know.

What I do know is with higher consistency comes reduction in quality. Nothing food related is better when mass produced further away from point of consumption. It's made simpler and cheaper through efficiency.

That's why food is starting to suck. It's reheated slop made for mass consumption and convenience. Like feed for cows poured into a trough. Now it's slop for people poured into line containers.

Extracting profit and efficiency for higher yield destroys quality and authenticity. America is one giant means of production. We are all cogs in a machine.

Offspring and I discuss capitalism often. He thinks it is ruining and watering down human existence on many fronts including productivity, happiness and prosperity of the population. He's right. Business has become a sausage factory with nothing mattering more than production done the most efficient way possible at the lowest cost possible only to charge the highest price possible. Benefitting corporations and their executives and shareholders more than anyone else. The rest of us are just cogs in a machine. Means of production. Serve no value in life other than a labor market to be exploited.  I think capitalism is at an inflection point where priorities are misaligned and a reckoning of realignment is coming.. He thinks capitalism is functioning as ultimately designed.