This is all very well for sophomore sociology classes

From The Economics Behind Grandma's Tuna Casseroles by Megan McArdle.

We often get into arguments that say more about modern day ignorance than they do about logic and evidence. McArdle's article provides an example. There is a strain of foodyism in the US, largely populated by well educated, high income people living in the city. The arguments and debates which surface can seem esoteric and obscure. The explanations for phenomenon, all to often, are traceable to ideological strains of postmodernism/progressivism in academia than to actual information and logical. McArdle is having none of it.

So I’m always a bit bemused when I read articles pondering why our grandparents cooked such dreadful food. True, reading about your grandmother’s idea of what constituted a nice Asian meal is a bit lip-puckering. But why are people forced into flights of fancy to explain why our near ancestors ate like this? All too often, cooking is explained in terms of social norms about femininity, or immigrants, or, in one recent New York Times column, the Cold War. This is all very well for sophomore sociology classes, but why does no one ever offer simple theories such as “they liked it”; “they thought it looked pretty like that”; or “that was what they could afford”? Having read quite a lot of the era's cookbooks and food writing, I find these the most likely reasons for the endless parade of things molded, jellied, bemayonnaised and enbechameled.

McArdle has her own list of seven reasons food from decades ago was the way it was. Read the whole list but it boils down to: Tradition, economics, economics, economics, economics, tradition, tradition. I don't think she is wrong and is far more likely to be right than more refined arguments finding causal origins in patriarchy, communism, feminism, etc.

Ockham's razor rules.