UL's moving goalposts

[TravelPro]

When I hiked in the early 70s the experienced, savvy long distance hiker wore:

denim Wrangler or Levi's jeans
heavy leather above-the-ankle hiking boots, preferably European, that wore and weighed like cast iron
external frame packs
5-6 pound sleeping bags made out of wonderful new synthetic insulation that compressed to the size of a cooler
Svea 123 stoves, large gas bottles because the right fuel was hard to find for refills
GI surplus hip canteens. You saw a lot of GI Surplus gear of all types, sturdy and cheap
and so on. Average pack loads could be 30 to 50 lbs and up. 30 lbs would have been considered light by a lot of people.
The word 'ounce' rarely came up in hiker conversation.

[TravelPro]

Typo. I should have said '40 to 60 pound average pack load'. 30 lbs would have been considered extremely light, and would have been very difficult to manage with the gear--clothes, tents, bags, cookware, stoves, packs etc--available at the time.

Function and durability were important. Weight mattered mostly in that you might choose something at 6 pounds over something weighing 9 pounds. Lots of people seriously carried hatchets and folding shovels.
Fast forward and people now are conditioned to drop big bucks to save ounces, and counting milligrams.

I'll agree about food weight being a future area for improvement, and slow to evolve so far.
Much 'thru' food now is just lazy junk starch--ramen, pasta, rehydrated rice. A good lightweight alternative is protein powder, mixed in either water or powdered milk--a day's 100 grams of protein weighs a couple of ounces. Some pretty good powdered nutrition drink options too. But it's far from mainstream yet.