I wonder if that’s different now. Like, a squab is a pigeon, but there’s a huge difference in how it tastes based on what it eats.

People today don’t generally eat super well, more often engage in recreational intoxication (alcohol, caffeine, nicotine or whatever, they all probably make the meat taste bad), experience more frequent periods of intense stress, and are way more sedentary than they were when most of those reports (afaik) were made.