At three score years plus some, it’s comforting to know that despite losses in hearing and sight, my sense of smell is unimpaired. Referencing memories of common tastes (using taste and smell interchangeably here) such as orange juice, Coca-Cola, and childhood sweets indicates no change to flavour or intensity, but at the same time I have become aware of other factors. These include fillers, which dilute flavour, and artificial products such as sweeteners. Age brings with it discrimination.
But all is not well in taste-land. One becomes aware of changes in food preparation, and often these are not good. An example is that many cafés have stopped salting food and buttering bread. The result for someone brought up with different standards is that such food is bland and stodgy. Most cafés offer salt and butter as add-ons, though I note the start of a trend to charge 50c for a butter pat. Food preparers are unaware that white meat needs more salt than red meat, or that bread and butter go together like, well, bread-and-butter.
Tea is another product that cafés fail on, because those who serve it no longer drink it and have no idea how it is made. This will result in extremely weak tea, or staleness through poor storage, or thinking a teabag floating on top of fairly hot water will do, or brown sugar only - why should that matter. Wet-tea providers are killing the market for one of the most subtle and varied products available, and replacing it with lower-margin, less varied products like coffee and soft-drinks.
Evidently most people care little about taste, and cafés care little about providing it. Those who do care need to be as discriminating about the cafés they visit as about the food they are fond of.
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