I remember when …

You know every time I start a sentence that way, I feel like my great grandmother who, in my limited childhood memories of her, started every sentence with those three words. Anywho, I digress.

I remember when kale was the thing on the salad bar that nobody used to eat, but now it’s the cool food. I also remember when food looked and tasted like what it was; yogurt was just yogurt — plain and sour; and potato chips came in two flavors — plain and barbecue.

Then the culinary world fell off the cutting board.

First there was a nouveau food movement the whole purpose of which was to create foods that looked like other foods. The lobster bisque that looked like a cappuccino is the one I recall with shuddering distaste.

Seriously I prefer my food to look like what it is and not something else. OK, well, I’ll make an exception when it comes to confections. A cake that looks like a clown — though it’s a little creepy to cut — is permissible as is a cake that looks like a Teddy Bear, but soup should look like soup, and coffee, no matter how dolled up with milk or syrups, should look like coffee. Otherwise it just messes with your eye-to-brain-to-taste buds connection.

Food should also taste like what it looks like.

My daughter once gave me a jelly bean that for all the world looked like it should taste like coconut. She neglected to tell me that it came from a box of Jelly Belly’s Harry Potter-inspired Bertie Botts Every Flavored Beans. My eyes said “coconut.” My brain said “coconut.” My mouth was expecting coconut. What it got instead was horseradish.

It was such a shock to my third sense that my involuntary spit-it-out now reflex kicked in. Unfortunately, but much to the amusement of my then 8-year-old child, my husband was sitting right next to me and well within spewing range and so got a face full of slightly chewed shoulda been coconut but wasn’t spit-covered, sticky jelly bean.

Food should also not imitate other food or be marketed as a substitute for other food. Really. Imitation food is like impersonators. There was only one Elvis, one Michael, one John and one Marilyn. Impersonators are to the impersonated what margarine is to butter; egg substitute is to eggs; whipped topping is to whipped cream; and cheese product is to cheese — all paling in comparison and completely unsatisfying.

And then there’s potato chips. Remember those, thin crunchy, greasy, crisp, slices of deep fried potato goodness? (Yum) They were practically perfect in every way but could “they’ just leave well enough alone? Noooooo. So, first there were barbecue flavored chips. OK, I can get that, kinda sorta but now there are smoky style barbecue and backyard barbecue (and the difference would be???). There are also dill pickle potato chips (but are they Kosher?), lime fully loaded potato chips (so you have to be 21 or older to purchase? Or just drunk already to eat them?), buffalo bleu potato chips (yeah ‘cause I want to eat an endangered species and moldy cheese snack), habanero and jalapeno potato chips (grab me a bag of those babies ‘cause a snack that burns my tongue and gums sounds soooo good), sour cream and onion or cheddar cheese and sour cream potato chips (these are like a combo chip — chip and dip in one), honey mustard potato chips (this is a chip, not a sandwich or a burger for cryin’ out loud), sweet onion potato chips (as opposed to what? a sour onion chip? Now there’s another tasteless idea) and last but not least the salt chips — sea salt, salt and vinegar and salt and pepper (what’s next? Salt and garlic? Salt and butter? Salt and curry? The possibilities, unfortunately, are endless).

Who comes up these mutant temptations? And what are their job titles? Director of Bad Taste? Vice President of Caloric Catastrophe? Associate of Gastronomic Gagging?

Of all the foods pretending to be something it’s most definitely not, yogurt is the biggest transgressor. To this day I will never understand how the whole craze over substituting yogurt for other food got started or how it got quite so out of hand. I get that substituting yogurt for swishy coffee drinks, ice cream, pies, cakes and cocktails is supposed to cut calories and therefore help you shed unwanted pounds but seriously now, yogurt really should stay in its own food lane.

But does it? Noooo. Instead, yogurt veers heedlessly into oncoming dessert traffic like a drunk and crashes head on with key lime pie, peach cobbler, peanut butter, cookies ‘n’ cream, caramel, German chocolate cake, pumpkin pie, butterscotch, chocolate fudge pudding, root beer, cotton candy, tiramisu, crème brûlée, English toffee, cherries jubilee, strawberry cheesecake, chocolate éclair, café latte, piña colada, or caramel apple.

For heaven sake people avoid the culinary crash. Take a walk on the wild side. If you want crème brûlée, key lime pie, German chocolate cake, barbecued ribs or a dill pickle do yourself a favor, eat the real thing because imitations are just that imitations and no matter how much you try to deceive yourself, you’ll know, deep down inside, that Elvis has left the building and there is really no substitute.

Reach Kyra Gottesman at kgottesman@chicoer.com