"I Was In My 20s Before I'd Ever Heard Of It": People Are Sharing The Now-Common Foods That Used To Be Exotic
As the times have changed, the kinds of foods that we have readily available have expanded exponentially. From being able to buy certain fruits and vegetables year-round to being exposed to foods from other cultures, older adults on Reddit shared the foods that they once thought of as very special and exotic that you can get in any supermarket now, and it's pretty darn eye-opening. Here are some of the top comments:
1."Avocados. I grew up in Michigan, and we didn’t have a lot of extra money. My mother used to buy me an avocado every year for Christmas. I miss her."
2."When I was little, we got oranges in our stockings. When I was a teenager we got pomegranates, very fancy for us at the time."
3."I was in mid 20s before I ever heard of pesto sauce."
4."General Foods International Coffees in the rectangular tins, like Orange Cappuccino or Swiss Mocha. If you had those in your house, you were high-end. Oh, and I thought Grey Poupon dijon mustard was for rich people in Bentleys."
5."Any lettuce other than iceberg. I grew up in the South and remember living in California for a month. Not just lettuces but the array of fresh vegetables was awe-inspiring to my little mind. This is funny because a lot of my family had vegetable gardens. But it was peas, okra, tomatoes, and maybe corn. Kale was still just a decorative plant."
6."Toblerone. I grew up in the '80s and only got one when someone I knew traveled by airplane, so they must have been very fancy and exotic. Now you can get one anywhere."
7."Olive oil. When I was a kid, that was something in a tiny bottle you stuck in your ear for earache."
"Yes! I was recently looking at my mom’s 'fancy' cookbooks from the late '70s and early '80s, and they basically talked about olive oil as an exotic ingredient that you had to source. Everyone just used 'cooking oil.'"
8."In 1976, I had hummus and falafel for the first time. This Syrian guy taught me to make hummus. My Yankee parents were so skeptical, but it became a staple, and I ate falafel every chance I got."
9."Pineapple. We would get one fresh pineapple a year in a Christmas gift fruit basket from a more well-to-do relative. You could get canned pineapple, but the fruit itself seemed like from an alien world and was more expensive, if not impossible, to get parts of the year."
10."Craft beer. Correct that; good beer is what I meant to say. When I was young in the Southern US, it was Bud, Miller, or PBR. That was it. Literally."
11."Where I grew up, it was a huge deal when we got our first Taco Bell."
12."Shrimp and really any seafood. I buy bags of frozen shrimp as a regular thing now. We have a shrimp dish once or twice a month. I remember shrimp was a once-a-year maybe thing and only at a restaurant."
13."My mom (born in 1948) told me the first time she had yogurt was when she was 18."
14."Cashews. They used to be really expensive. I remember my grandmother bought a pound every year for Christmas from Fannie May and paid something like $20 around 1970. That was when the nuts were hand stripped from the fruits in India before automation."
15."Eggs Benedict. You would have to go to the fancy breakfast restaurants to get that mammy jammy. Now I think you can even get them at IHOP."
16."I remember when a Mexican restaurant opened in our town in the early '70s, maybe? That was exotic!"
17."I remember when nachos became a national fad, in about ‘77 after Monday Night Football went to Dallas and had them as a bar appetizer. My mother took 3x5 cards to a friend's house to copy the recipe for nachos."
18."Blackberries. I used to have to pick them wild when I was a kid for a few weeks in the spring. My understanding is they weren’t really made into a viable crop until the USDA came up with a hybrid variety in the 1990s. Now you can get nice fine ones in the store whenever you want."
19."Anything you could cook in a microwave."
"Oh yeah, remember when microwave popcorn was seen as the future?"
20."Grew up in rural Ireland in the '60s/'70s, and I remember having pasta for the first time. It was the wild exotic food that my father got from friends who came home from Italy. I remember neighbors coming in to taste it."
21."When I was maybe 6 years old (approx 1956), a brand new restaurant chain came to my Midwestern factory town. McDonald's! I attended a friend's birthday party, and the new and exciting birthday excursion was...a trip to McDonald's!"
"My hamburger had mustard and pickles on it, which to me meant poison. I cried because I couldn't (wouldn't) eat the exotic new food."
22."In a tiny town in northern British Columbia, Canada, around 1970, an uncle visited from Vancouver and introduced the family to pizza. It must’ve been from the local Safeway frozen foods section, but it seemed very exotic — 'hmmmm, what is this strange food peet-za?' I recall my parents marveling and feeling very cosmopolitan."
23."Iced coffee. I learned to drink it in Boston in the late '80s in college, but when I was home in Colorado and tried to order it, people thought I was crazy."
"And in the early to mid-'90s in Los Angeles, coffee shops were like nightclubs. There were lines to get at night, and you’d go in to order drinks, talk with friends and meet people. Very different from the Starbucks of today!"
24."Back in the late '80s, my company would have frequent potluck lunches (sadly, these are rare nowadays). I had discovered Trader Joe's, and would drive 30 minutes to do my shopping there before they opened more locations. I brought blue corn tortilla chips to one of the potlucks, and everyone thought there was something wrong with them like they were moldy. Now I think most folks don't bat an eye at multi-colored tortilla chips."
25."Sushi. I remember watching The Breakfast Club and how all the other kids reacted to Claire having sushi, and I agreed. Sounded weird and disgusting. Fast forward 40 years, and sushi is my absolute favorite/if I had to eat only one thing for the rest of my life food! I live in the USA."
26."I remember in the mid-'80s, seeing the first burrito place in NYC. It was called California Burrito, on something like 3rd Avenue and 35th. Previous to this, a burrito was really a California thing. I had always looked forward to getting one in San Francisco on business trips as a special regional food. Now they are so ubiquitous, I recently had one in Scott’s Bluff, Montana."
27."Mangos. I live in the Midwest, and we never had real mangos in the '70s. We called green bell peppers mangos for some inexplicable reason."
28."Tofu seemed exotic (to us, as non-Asians) when we first started having it in the 1970s."
"Wow, I never heard of tofu until the early 1990s."
29.And finally, "Fresh fruit and vegetables. I come from an isolated northern Canadian town, and growing up, we got the last of the produce on the truck. What we got was old and battered and cost a small fortune. Now I live in the South and sometimes the variety still surprises me."
What's a food that seemed so special and rare back in the day that you can find just about anywhere now? Tell me all about it in the comments!
