I don’t know, but anecdotally, my experience is that it’s mostly poorer and older folks that trend towards bland foods. It’s what they grew up with and what they know, and to them a lot of the recipes are tradition / comfort food. They simply weren’t exposed to a lot of spices and taste profiles growing up so they didn’t develop an appreciation for it and have no desire to step out of their comfort zone.
A lot of them were from large families and families that basically only ate what they raised and grew, for generations. They might’ve spent money to buy a small amount of extras like white sugar, bleached flour, salt, and maybe black pepper. And then in terms of produce, most of what was grown was staple foods, and a limited selection of easy to manage herbs like mint and dill that they could grow in a season then use or preserve.
Obviously that’s a bit over simplified and not every family and every body’s story is exactly alike, but it generally holds true to varying degrees in most of the cases of “blandfooditis” I’ve encountered.
Then there’s also the nature of a lot of larger families having to prepare meals for the least common denominator. Grampie can’t have too much salt, Grammie can’t chew cause she doesn’t have any teeth, Gina is diabetic, Braxton is allergic to pepper … so you end up with a lot of plain boiled meals simply because that’s the easiest/cheapest option that everybody can have.
I don’t know, but anecdotally, my experience is that it’s mostly poorer and older folks that trend towards bland foods. It’s what they grew up with and what they know, and to them a lot of the recipes are tradition / comfort food. They simply weren’t exposed to a lot of spices and taste profiles growing up so they didn’t develop an appreciation for it and have no desire to step out of their comfort zone.
A lot of them were from large families and families that basically only ate what they raised and grew, for generations. They might’ve spent money to buy a small amount of extras like white sugar, bleached flour, salt, and maybe black pepper. And then in terms of produce, most of what was grown was staple foods, and a limited selection of easy to manage herbs like mint and dill that they could grow in a season then use or preserve.
Obviously that’s a bit over simplified and not every family and every body’s story is exactly alike, but it generally holds true to varying degrees in most of the cases of “blandfooditis” I’ve encountered.
Then there’s also the nature of a lot of larger families having to prepare meals for the least common denominator. Grampie can’t have too much salt, Grammie can’t chew cause she doesn’t have any teeth, Gina is diabetic, Braxton is allergic to pepper … so you end up with a lot of plain boiled meals simply because that’s the easiest/cheapest option that everybody can have.