Yeah...Going back that far it was desiccated liver pills, cottage cheese & raw eggs for me...Wow do things change.
When I first started lifting after high school, whey or egg protein was only available in boutique stores like GNC or Vitamin Shop, and creatine was only available through body building magazine ad mail order. Now, Walmart carries multiple options for whey isolate, and they even have their own store brand creatine and regular (non-isolate) whey powders to boot.
Another big change is the prevalence of "cage" style racks (like skeletonized boxes), those are everywhere now, available to consumers. Those things are awesome, a huge improvement over the racks available when I got mine, mine's OK but there's no safety system on it, I only have one set of hooks, there's no pull-up bar on it (it's too short for that).
(Incidentally this kind of change people might want to call "capitalism" (Marx certainly did), but it's really just America and the American idea; Marx and others were just jealous. American economic policy paved the way for this kind of rapid development and improvement of the market, where, even just in this tiny case, you go from having to jump through hoops and paying premium prices to being able to get "swole" just at Walmart.)
The only thing I don't like about the market changing like this is Walmart no longer stocks Olympic 2" plates like they did 20 years ago. They were selling 45-LB chips for like 25 USD each back then. I can't believe I didn't back up the truck when I had the chance lol, now dirty old used chips sell on Craigslist around here anyway for like 60 USD minimum each! Brand new Rogues and Yorks are like 80 each. It's crazy.
Dude...Free markets don't belong to and are not are provided by governments...Government's only restrict them. They could be useful to protect them but inevitably this winds up as the "protection racket" it is. You're all jazzed because you think the one you live under provides/ed less restrictions than the others (debatable at this point). Being less bad is not a ringing endorsement.
Unless you are talking about our rampant consumerism...Well, yes that would be uniquely American...Just as the mobs on Black Friday are.