My answer:
All this technology: Radios, Television, Pocket computers that you can just pull knowledge from that also perfroms the functions of various other gadgets which are also made possible by modern technology. And of course, THE INTERNET!
Standardization:
USB-C is awesome! :D
The world just uses AC power.
Metric system
Countries all around the world agreeing to a certain set of rules: Such as in Aviation, the world agreed to use Aviation English and standard phraseology, emergency frequency is 121.5, 3-Letter codes that is unique to every commercial airport in the world.
Treaties:
My favorite thing is the Kyoto Protocol [Edit: Montreal Protocol, mixed that one up]. We stopped the ozone from getting fucked. Now we need to do the same with climate change… 👀
Co-operation:
I was at a traffic light and it’s just amazing how (almost) everyone just follows the lights, and not just try to run red lights. Yay! (okay i know its just called “obeying the law” but still, I find this interesting)
International Space Station… (at least until a certain country withdrew… 👀)
Food.
I can make a plate of food that has 10 different elements from all over the world in about 15 minutes, costing about $10.
100 years ago people barely had reliable access to salt and pepper.
This may get you banned from Italy, but international fuckery with Lasagna is awesome: mix in some taco spices and serve with nacho chips.
Once made a dessert lasagna. Cream cheese/ricotta cheesecake with vanilla and honey for the cheese layer. Forest berry preserve for the sauce, and I crumbled walnut, pecans, and raisins for the meaty bits. Fantastic concept, but I used Lasagna noodles just like in a normal lasagna and frankly they were the weak link. Just flavorless noodles running through an otherwise excellent treat.
If I ever go back to try it again, I’ll press my own noodles with spices and a touch of honey. That will be the ticket.
Wouldn’t pumpkin be more suited than pasta? Frankly the idea of sweet pasta scares me a bit.
Probably, but that wouldn’t quite have the same effect. Though a layering of pumpkin pie and cheesecake could be an alternative to jam…
Yeah. I watch some historic food shows and they make it a point to highlight that food was generally not as fresh or plentiful as today.
Pepper, okay, though I think it might be further than 100 years back for the wealthy world. However, I don’t know about salt. Okay, maybe in some areas well away from the coast, Mongolia or something, but if you have salt water and sunshine, you have salt. And, yeah, transport was more of a pain, but culinary salt isn’t that bulky.
kagis
Apparently Mongolia has a number of salt lakes, so even there, you’re not talking that far to get to salt.
And we can mine salt.
Spices that require growing conditions specific to part of the world are, I think, a lot more constrained than salt.
EDIT: Most trade historically happened by boat, and the importance of waterway transport meant that kingdoms and empires usually roughly aligned with watersheds, because if you controlled downstream of someone, you controlled their access to the sea. As long as you’re doing trade by boat, you just need to go all the way down the river to the sea to get to salt. Some rivers aren’t fully navigable, but for waterfalls or whatever, you can still transfer goods from boat to boat.
I don’t dispute the broader “we have access to a whole lot of condiments that people didn’t historically have”, though. Add in engine-powered transportation, refrigeration (including refrigerated transport), some important preservation technologies (irradiation, canning) and you also get a lot of out-of-season foods and foods that don’t grow near where the consumer is.
That’s a bit of a stretch.
IDK where you live but here in Europe there are at least 500 yo recipes with spices from all over the world. And no, not exclusively for the rich. Trade routes were always important. What they had was also certainly more healthy 100 years ago than the ultra processed garbage of today.