I recall reading an article talking about how the food companies started to bring in psychologists around that time. Iirc Betty Crocker or some such company had a cake mix but it wasn't selling well. The psych figures out there basically wasn't anything for the women using the mix to do. You just combined the stuff in the box, put it in the oven, and bam it was done. The effort and work that went into cake making was a large part of what made it enjoyable for the women baking. Using the mix wasn't enjoyable and so sales suffered.
Coincidentally, cake decorating became a huge thing at the same time. Funny, that.
As an aside, I think a similar thing is at work with TV dinners. I doubt actually taking them out of the microwave half way through to r o t a t e the meat 5° does a single thing, but hey it probably feels to enough people like they're doing something. We've willed away effort through the magic of technology and so have to make do with these surrogate activities.
Yeah I used to hate eating stuff that was warmed up because 5% of it avoids getting hit and remains frozen/stuck together/etc. You bite into it and it's yech.
Once I started stirring everything halfway through that problem went away. Stirring in the middle of heating meant everything tasted as good/bad in the middle as it did at the start.
I recall reading an article talking about how the food companies started to bring in psychologists around that time. Iirc Betty Crocker or some such company had a cake mix but it wasn't selling well. The psych figures out there basically wasn't anything for the women using the mix to do. You just combined the stuff in the box, put it in the oven, and bam it was done. The effort and work that went into cake making was a large part of what made it enjoyable for the women baking. Using the mix wasn't enjoyable and so sales suffered.
Coincidentally, cake decorating became a huge thing at the same time. Funny, that.
As an aside, I think a similar thing is at work with TV dinners. I doubt actually taking them out of the microwave half way through to r o t a t e the meat 5° does a single thing, but hey it probably feels to enough people like they're doing something. We've willed away effort through the magic of technology and so have to make do with these surrogate activities.
Yeah I used to hate eating stuff that was warmed up because 5% of it avoids getting hit and remains frozen/stuck together/etc. You bite into it and it's yech.
Once I started stirring everything halfway through that problem went away. Stirring in the middle of heating meant everything tasted as good/bad in the middle as it did at the start.