I do absolutely think there's also a generational shift between people born in the 50s & 60s, who smoked a lot and thus literally destroyed their sense of taste, and those born in the 80s and 90s, where this is not the case.
(People born in the 70s(hello) are somewhere in the middle)
And also totally seriously the fact that immigration was essentially cut off from about 1917 to sometime in the 1960s greatly affects the culinary traditions everyone, whether immigrant or not was brought up in, on either side of that generational divide.
Also long before the advent of YouTube, there was a transformation of American grocery options. Brussels sprouts were literally made palatable in the late 90s. Cheeses are in supermarkets that used to be confined to high end boutiques.
I was born in 1960 and never smoked. Non smoking was becoming widespread in the 1970s, at least in some places and classes.
Re immigrant foods. Yup I remember first exposure to Viet and Indian, at college in late 70s, 1980. I was a picky eater as a kid, but those were not around anyway
I'm talking NYC mid 70s. I suppose there were a few Indian restaurants somewhere in Manhattan, but easily overlooked. There were of course LOTs of Chinese and Italian places.
The trend I observed in the greater DC area was as the 70s shifted into the 80s, the Southeast Asian diaspora started to brand restaurants with their actual ethnicity instead of generic 'Chinese food' (even if they were serving their own cuisine).
Then this happened again as the 80s progressed into the 90s, and various central & south American communities started branding with their own thing instead of generically 'mexican' restaurants.
Re smoking. I attended a wedding in 1987. One side was mostly central/west Pennsylvania, gentiles. The other was Jews from southern CA (plus me and then gf, Jews from east coast) We noted that ALL our age peers from Pa smoked. None of the Californians did.
People born in the 70s were in their 20s when they learned to cook with Emeril as their teacher, demanding that they season their food.
I grew up in an Italian American household and my mom was/is a great cook.
Food Network & Top Chef elevated food culture in the US in a big way.
Yeah, GenX basically came of age - went out on their own - when Food Network launched. And then the younger generations also were able to watch that kind of stuff. Alton Brown and the whole autistic spectrum perfection need to understand everything also was a big factor.
