I don’t really see being poor as a tradition. I’ve seen enough people present racism as a tradititon and I don’t like that either. My dad has been facebook’d and keeps wanting to do ancient medicines because “the government took them away from us”, and has asked where to get some definitely dangerous substances. There are indeed a lot of things people call tradition that I don’t like.

I don’t think changing a couple ingredients breaks tradition when most old recipes were just throwing whatever we had together and trying to make it at least minimally enjoyable for bonus points. I guess it’s different for wealthy people in the past much like it is now, but if it could be improved cheaply or for free when it was new either due to ingredients or skills and knowledge, everyone would have done it. Some things were probably also just good enough that nobody bothered changing it, but now most people are conditioned to really high sugar and salt or just stronger flavour in general.

Actually one of my time travel fantasy wishes is to see people in the last eat the modern versions of their favourite food. I’d feel bad about shocking their systems with large doses (to them) of microplastics, pesticides, and who knows what else though.