Which of your favorite foods today will be only fond memories later?

As children we always knew styles changed. Skirt lengths went from long to short, then to long again. New body styles for cars came out every year. Boys’ popular haircuts went from crew cuts to shoulder length with a lot of protesting in between.

We all know that styles change all the time. Occasionally, a new style lasts forever and becomes a classic; more frequently they have a short lifespan and become fads. Styles and fads become the “Remember when ...” parts of conversations as people get older.

As children, though, we never considered that food styles also change along with everything else and the food you ate as a child will be different than the food people eat a mere 20 years later. Some of the changes are not really changes but seem like it as we expand our horizons beyond the dinner table of our youth. Still, however, styles change and preferences change — and the everyday folks who just go along, living their lives, aren’t even aware it’s happening until it’s already happened.

For example, we doubt if very many — or any — of our readers grew up eating sushi. Looking back, we can’t imagine our parents saying, “Guess what; we’re having raw fish for dinner tonight.” It probably wouldn’t have gone over too well.

We’re old, so we can even remember the days when Wonder Bread, that tasteless, texture-less white bread, was an example of great progress and was supposedly packed full of vitamins. Now, many folks would feel like they had to apologize if they served plain old white bread. Today, it’s all about the healthy bread or the tasty bread or bread from other cultures, or it’s about finding bread that is gluten-free.

Then, there’s coffee. It used to be that coffee was just coffee. If you wanted a cup of coffee, you just got one — from home, from the office, a restaurant or a diner. The only decisions to make regarding coffee were whether you wanted cream, sugar or both. Now the choices are almost limitless, and the prices seem to be limitless also.

There have been so many changes in food styles that we can’t even begin to mention them all. Sopapillas have not always been solely a dessert item, fried chicken was a staple in many homes, vegetables came from a can and tasted totally different from fresh vegetables, tuna also came from a can, and there were only a few flavors of ice cream. And we had never heard of frozen yogurt, coconut milk, tofu or all the different kinds of lettuce. We sure weren’t exposed to the wide variety of ethnic foods that are available today. And we certainly had never heard of salted caramel and chocolate.

People look at food differently today, and they are more health conscious. They are also probably more adventurous today because these foods have not been recently invented; they are just used more and in different ways today.

We are not going to complain. Like everyone else, we eat differently today than when we were kids. We know more about food than we used to and enjoy trying new things, sometimes. On the other hand, occasionally fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy sounds good. Probably, though, we would buy it at a fast-food outlet rather than cook it at home. What a shame.