You're right, they're much more palatable these days. But even decades ago, roasting them with a liberal amount of salt, and maybe a bit of lemon juice on top, they were still decent. Boiled to mush with a single-digit number of grains of salt tastes bad regardless of the decade.

My theory is that back when most people smoked regularly, adults couldn't taste anything and were generally not great in the kitchen because of it.