My mom was a really good cook, she would make us mouth watering meals on a daily basis and I was always excited when she would call us to come and eat. But since I was growing up during the 80s, every now and then she would see a strange new recipe in the paper or in some weird cookbook and she would decide to make us stuff like ‘Chicken wings in cola’ or “Tuna and olive pasta” and we would collectively smile and eat quietly, trying not to hurt her feelings, but she could tell. For some reason…
I think a lot of these are more 50s and 60s war crimes than 80s.
50s invented Jello Salad war crimes.
Yeah, most of these sorts of abominations are pushed by big food conglomerates trying to manufacture demand for their shelf-stable hyperprocessed shit by publishing recipes that feature their “convenience foods” as ingredients. (Just look at how many of the recipe images in the list are literally advertisements for Miracle Whip and whatnot!) That sort of thing really resonated with the whole '50s atomic-age modernist thinking crowd.
(Don’t get me wrong: I think the modernist aesthetic/furniture design/aesthetic is great. Lots of other stuff about it, like the food and the [anti-]urbanism, was an absolute disaster, though.)