[Xcelerate]

> all food is beginning to taste the same

This is the one that makes me sad. I lived in a variety of places while growing up (countries, states, etc). Different countries had very distinctive types of food in the 1990s. Living in the U.S., I still visit Europe quite frequently, and it seems like all food is converging toward sameness, and not in a good way.

About a decade ago when my income began increasing I started going to Michelin star restaurants for the "novelty", but now that I've been to enough of them they all seem more similar to each other than different. It's much more challenging to find an authentic old restaurant in e.g., Lyon, that has quality food that hasn't changed over the decades (hint: these restaurants typically have ratings between 3.9 and 4.1 on Google — Americans tend to drag the score down because some aspect of the food or culture is unappealing to them, reinforcing the article's point).