I'm pretty sure the quality of American candy has continued to decline. Or, I may have acquired higher standards in the intervening time. I'm nearly always disappointed when I eat a candy bar, of almost any sort. They're too sugary and simplistic to be satisfying. Calling most of them "chocolate" is an insult to actual chocolate.
> Or, I may have acquired higher standards in the intervening time.
Don't discount this idea too much. There was a sea change in my dietary inclinations around the time I was 20-21 years old; I started preferring fatty foods to sugary foods. I'll still eat candy, but I'm much less attached to it now.
I think it's a little of both. It's not just candy, either. Most foods have seen a decline in quality. You can still buy actual food that is of high quality, but it costs a lot more. But, since I was a kid (which was a long time ago...well before 2003), I've seen grocery stores evolve to selling more processed and packaged food. Corn by-products in all their forms seem to be the primary ingredient in nearly everything, now.
I don't want to be the angry old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn, and I see that in many ways we have superior options today, than when I was a kid. As a vegetarian of over 20 years, my food options have widened in the intervening years. But, I also don't really like what mainstream food has become, or rather, what Big Ag has turned mainstream food into (as it wasn't an accident, it was a massive campaign of misinformation and regulatory capture).
