ABSTRACT
As alcoholic beverages, usually consumed to bolster a mood or heighten a situation, become even blander, the range of moods or experiences of many Americans may become similarly constricted. The growing social desirability of the newer brands' blandness is largely responsible for America's consumption of over seventy percent of the Scotch produced for export. Americans' enthusiasm for other bland drinks makes it less surprising that instant coffee has become so popular. The shift from regular to instant coffee is typical of the fate of many foods, whose blandness could have important effects. The ubiquitous popularity of dieting has reinforced our trend to bland foods because most foods for reducing are as tasteless as water-packed fruit. Although the number of really first-rate restaurants in America has increased in the last twenty years, the great majority of restaurants have enthusiastically adapted to the technological changes that led to blander food.
