"In Our Times...": Were the Good Old Days Really Better, or Are You Being Played?

Home » Consumer Psychology & Economics » The "Good Old Days" Effect & Quality Fade

Why do your parents always insist their generation had better food, tougher sportsmen, and purer products—and what if they are only half wrong?

Every single one of us has sat through the lecture. Whether it is over a plate of store-bought biscuits or during a live cricket match, older generations love painting their youth as an untouchable golden era. For years, psychologists brushed this off as a harmless memory glitch.

But here is the uncomfortable twist nobody talks about: while your brain is hardwired to romanticize the past, multi-billion-dollar corporations are simultaneously exploiting your neurological blind spots to quietly shrink, dilute, and degrade almost everything you buy today.

In this deep dive, I break down the fascinating tug-of-war between Rosy Retrospection (how memory tricks us) and Corporate Quality Fade (how shrinkflation, skimpflation, and Weber's Law secretly strip the value out of modern life).

⚡ Quick Summary: Were Things Actually Better Back Then?

• When Our Brains Lie (Rosy Retrospection): In areas like sports (e.g., 1990s cricket vs. modern Team India), hard statistics prove the present is superior—our brains simply erase past losses and glorify childhood heroes.
• When Our Parents Are Right (Economic Degradation): In physical goods (food, footwear, packaging), quality has genuinely dropped due to Shrinkflation (smaller sizes), Skimpflation (cheaper ingredients), the Dilution Effect, and Planned Obsolescence.
• Why You Never Noticed It Happening: Brands use Weber's Law (Just Noticeable Difference) and Shifting Baseline Syndrome to downgrade products in microscopic steps that fall right below human perception.

"In our times...": Separating psychological nostalgia from real-world product quality degradation.

📌 Inside This Article:

1. "हमारे ज़माने में तो..." — The Universal Phrase Every Child Hears
2. The Cricket Debate: Nostalgia vs. Hard Win-Rate Statistics
3. What is the Good Old Days Effect (Rosy Retrospection)?
4. When the Past Was Truly Better: Bata, Food & Everyday Goods
5. Shrinkflation, Skimpflation, Dilution & Planned Obsolescence
6. Weber's Law (JND) & Shifting Baseline Syndrome
7. Living in the Present: Creating Tomorrow's Nostalgia Today
8. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

"हमारे ज़माने में तो..." — "In our times..."

It is a phrase that everyone, every child in this world, has heard. It is what parents say when they talk about the times when they used to do things that were much, much better than the things they are doing now.

It may be the journey to their school. It may be the game they played. It may be the attempts they made. It may be the exams they gave. It may be the struggles they had—struggles passed down orally across generations, much like the stories history did not record about our ancestors' migrations. It is, however, a very common phrase that we have all heard at least once in our lives, in our respective languages.

The Generational Divide: Indian Cricket & the Illusion of the Past

At the same time, while discussing the Indian cricket team in the last T20 World Cup, which India won, by the way, I told my father that this was one of the best teams India had ever had. I said that because I have known, watched, and somewhat studied the Indian teams from his father Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi to Tiger Pataudi, to his successors, and then the 1983 World Cup, and so on.

That World Cup was something different. Rohit Sharma's 2024 World Cup—and the dominant 2026 title campaign that followed—was something different. India looked invincible, which India didn't in the early 2000s or 1990s. So then he said that it wasn't what it used to be. That time, beforehand, this and that. It used to be so good.

📊 The Statistical Reality Check: I thought, statistically, India has never been better than the team we have now. At that time, India had a 30%, 35%, or 40% win rate. Now India has more than a 50%, 57%, or 60% win rate, sometimes even 65% or better under certain captains. So how was the past better? To me, it just looked better to him because it was his time, his era.

Umpire Dickie Bird talks to Kenny Benjamin and Curtly Ambrose about their fiery short-pitched bowling at Headingley (1995)—an era etched into our parents' nostalgia.

So he used to say that Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh, Curtly Ambrose, and Lance Gibbs made it difficult to score runs. He didn't give as much leverage to Sachin or to more recent players—recent from my perspective, not his, like Glenn McGrath or Ricky Ponting and those who used to be the greatest. He used to take some names that were great but faded away slowly because their stats couldn't match up to the latest intricacies of the sport.

I loved Curtly Ambrose, I loved Malcolm Marshall, I loved their stats, I loved Clive Lloyd and others from the West Indies. They were something every team wanted to be. And then, for me, it was Australia because although I was born in the early 2000s, I started watching in the late 2000s, matlab mostly after India won the World Cup in 2011. Australia was my favourite because they were invincible. Ricky Ponting was my favourite captain (whose ruthless era gave us unforgettable flashpoints like the 2008 Sydney Test Monkeygate controversy). Then he captained the Mumbai Indians. Sachin was in the Mumbai Indians, Malinga was in the Mumbai Indians, and I loved him.

What is the "Good Old Days Effect" or Rosy Retrospection?

I couldn't understand this idea that things were better in our time. That things were good back then. So I searched for it, read about it, and came across a concept. This thing is known as the Good Old Days Effect or Rosy Retrospection.

And what is this? In simple terms, it means why we think the good old days were better than the present. It is a psychological tendency to remember past experiences as being more enjoyable, more positive, or better than they actually were, while viewing the present less favourably (closely tied to Declinism).

You can relate it to nostalgia. Nostalgia, however, does not degrade things that are in the present in comparison to the past. It allows us to remember and enjoy both simultaneously. This rosy retrospection is about berating the present and making the past seem superior—something we often notice when music lovers debate modern streaming algorithms while taking on a hidden retro Hindi songs challenge across ChatGPT and Gemini.

When the Past Was Actually Better: Bata, Food & Real Quality Fade

Yet this superiority of the past is actually true in some respects, yes. I actually agree that in many respects, if we talk about a product, the product changes a lot.

If we talk about Bata, which, when first launched, offered pure leather shoes that were affordable for the middle and lower-middle classes, with charm and pure authenticity. Today's Bata uses Rexine. It is entirely understandable because leather is much, much costlier. To meet the demands of the middle and lower-middle classes, they have to use Rexine or a mixture of materials to make something affordable as well as good-looking. They are trying their best, and I respect the company a lot.

Similarly, when we talk about thousands of products—when we talk about the oil we eat, when we talk about food, rice, wheat, anything—the quality of these products has deteriorated. Much like how the dilution of modern mass education has fueled India's graduate employability crisis and skills gap, mass-market consumer goods have lost their original substance. The desi egg costs more than the regular commercially produced white egg. This is also due to an economic playbook that goes largely unnoticed in our daily lives.

The 4 Hidden Economic Forces Stealing Product Quality

So let's go through a couple of terms which I guess are needed by all of us to understand the effect exactly. Some of the terms we'll be talking about are the dilution effect, skimpflation, shrinkflation, and planned obsolescence.

The Anatomy of a Jam Biscuit: How 12 pure, butter-baked biscuits in a reusable pouch quietly became 10 palm-oil biscuits in thin plastic.

1. Shrinkflation: Paying the Same for Less

Okay, then shrinkflation. Let's think about a strawberry jam biscuit we used to buy, say, 20 years ago. Okay. In that jam biscuit, there was a nicely packed, reusable pouch, a premium-quality pouch, premium biscuits, everything handmade, hand-grown, no preservatives, nothing, everything pure. In that packet, you got 12 pieces of biscuits. After some years, after some decades, you just get 10 pieces. That is known as shrinkflation.

Real-world shrinkflation: Milka chocolate shrinking from 100g to 90g while the package footprint looks identical.

How major confectionery brands systematically shaved off grams between 2014 and 2018.

2. Skimpflation: The Silent Ingredient Swap

Now, the same thing. If I used real butter and real ghee to make that biscuit, then, over time, I started using palm oil and preservatives. Instead of original cane sugar, I am using artificial sweeteners to reduce the cost and prevent it from going up. Then this term is known as skimpflation: quality degradation. So in the debate of shrinkflation vs. skimpflation, shrinkflation is a reduction in size or quantity, while skimpflation cheapens what is inside.

3. The Dilution Effect: Volume Over Essence

The third is the dilution effect. I mean, what is the dilution effect? Initially, we were using hand-grown, hand-sown strawberries, organic strawberries. Then, with time, we started using genetically optimised strawberry seeds with fertilisers, insecticides, pesticides, and whatnot to grow more strawberries.

4. Planned Obsolescence: Engineered to Fail

Okay, then we come to the term planned obsolescence. Now, what is planned obsolescence? Planned obsolescence is something where, in short, the quality is made worse so that it does not stand the test of time. So, in short, earlier, you were getting a good-quality wrapper, a pouch, and a zipper. Now you're getting cheap, thin wrappers, which reduce their lifetime to maybe three or six months only because you then have to use them again, refill them again, and the business keeps going.

Built to last vs. built to replace: Heavy die-cast metal toys of the past compared to hollowed-out modern plastic builds.

So, in short, these are the terms.

Economic / Psychological Term	Core Mechanism	Everyday Real-World Example
Rosy Retrospection	Overrating past memories while unfairly belittling the present	Claiming 1990s Team India (35% win rate) was better than the 2024–26 team (60%+ win rate)
Shrinkflation	Reducing product weight or piece count at the same price	Jam biscuit packet dropping from 12 pieces to 10 pieces; 100g chocolate cut to 90g
Skimpflation	Swapping premium raw materials for cheaper substitutes	Replacing pure butter/ghee with palm oil, or pure leather shoes with Rexine
Dilution Effect	Mass-producing inputs with chemicals to prioritize yield over purity	Replacing organic hand-grown strawberries with pesticide-heavy hybrid crops
Planned Obsolescence	Engineering products to break down faster to force repeat purchases	Replacing sturdy reusable zipper pouches with thin wrappers that tear in 3 months

The Psychology of Unseen Changes: Weber's Law & Shifting Baselines

Okay, then let's look at this from a psychological point of view. There is something called the Just Noticeable Difference (JND), or Weber's Law. What is the Just Noticeable Difference? It is the exact minimum amount by which a stimulus must change for the human brain to notice it.

They reduced the chocolate size, the material, or the quality of the ingredients just below that JND threshold so that the human brain cannot decipher or detect the difference. After a lot of time has passed, decades, then you can visibly see the difference between the first product and the second product. Over the years, you cannot see the difference because of this JND or Weber's Law.

Okay. The second thing is economic and sociological. It is also known as creeping normality or shifting baseline syndrome (building on Daniel Pauly's original idea of generational blindness to change), which means that the change in quality overall happens in such incremental steps over the years, as demands change, that the human brain cannot recognise it. To be sure, companies do thorough research on both of these: creeping normality or shifting baseline syndrome, as well as the Just Noticeable Difference (JND), to maximise their profits, maximise their output, and earn the most from it.

Some more things you might want to search for yourself, which might be hidden inflation, quality fade, decontenting, crapification, or enshittification. This is my favourite term, which I will not explain, obviously—though anyone watching digital platforms decay or seeing news publishers challenge the DPDP privacy law in the Supreme Court knows exactly how quickly digital ecosystems can shift beneath our feet.

Creating Tomorrow's Nostalgia Today

The amalgamation of all these leads to the starting of our line: "In our times, in our stuff, in our this and our that."

So, the things your parents or grandparents are saying might actually be true. Or they might actually be false. So you need to decipher what it actually is. With the classification I have given you, you can actually see the difference.

Before we end—as I pen this reflection on Diwali (8-11-2026), and whenever you happen to be reading this—here is a small piece of advice from my side: enjoy your day, your time, your family, your friends, and every little moment that you get to experience. Don't spend too much time thinking about how things used to be or how things could have been. Just live it.

Because someday, these very moments might become a part of your rosy retrospection, or perhaps something you simply look back upon with nostalgia. But remember, this particular moment, this particular Diwali, will never come back. So make the most of it while you have it—and if you want to celebrate the festival of lights through timeless verse, do read our collection of evergreen Diwali poems in Hindi.

Happy Diwali! 🪔

Thanks a lot. Have a nice day.

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Written by Harsh Nath Jha

Founder & Editor-in-Chief at Sahityashala and Editorial Executive at News4Bharat. Exploring the intersections of economics, human psychology, sports analytics, and literature.

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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Why did food and snacks taste better in the 90s and 2000s?

Food often tasted richer in the 1990s and early 2000s because of two combined factors: skimpflation (manufacturers replacing real butter, ghee, and cane sugar with palm oil and artificial sweeteners to cut costs) and the dilution effect (switching from organic, hand-grown produce to high-yield, pesticide-intensive commercial crops).

2. What is the difference between nostalgia and rosy retrospection?

Nostalgia is a warm sentimental longing for the past that still allows you to appreciate the present. Rosy retrospection (the Good Old Days Effect) is a cognitive bias that exaggerates how great the past was while actively berating and devaluing the present—even when objective data (such as modern cricket win rates) proves the present is stronger.

3. What is shrinkflation vs. skimpflation with real-world examples?

Shrinkflation is reducing the quantity or weight of a product while charging the same price—such as a biscuit pack dropping from 12 pieces to 10, or a Milka chocolate bar shrinking from 100g to 90g. Skimpflation is keeping the size and price the same but downgrading the material quality—such as replacing pure leather shoes with synthetic Rexine.

4. How do companies use Weber's Law and the Just Noticeable Difference (JND)?

In consumer psychology, Weber's Law defines the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) as the smallest change in weight, size, or taste that a human brain can consciously detect. Corporations intentionally shave off grams or tweak ingredient ratios just below this JND threshold so shoppers never notice individual reductions until decades have passed.

5. What is shifting baseline syndrome in everyday consumer life?

Shifting baseline syndrome (or creeping normality) happens when each new generation accepts a degraded state of quality as the normal standard because they never experienced the original baseline. What your grandparents recognized as a downgrade becomes your "normal" starting point.