History

1980s Food Fads That Should Stay In The Past By Brian Boone Sept. 22, 2025 11:40 am EST

For better and for worse, a lot of what's a regular, everyday part of eating for millions of Americans was established in the 1980s. It was a time of great innovations in food science and food marketing, propelling changes in how and what people ate as well as an era in which slowly ingraining habits became fully entrenched. For example, it's when value meals became a fast food must have, new flavors and trends in snacks, booze, and mall food courts emerged, and it's also when families still gathered around the table to eat since-disappeared casseroles .

The 1980s was also such an aggressively optimistic brightly optimistic period, at least from the standpoint of Reagan-era politi

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