If by "bad" you mean "steamed rather than boiled" then you can blame capitalism: it's cheaper/faster to steam them. But if you're talking about Honey Nut Bagels, then I think you've hit on something that's pervasive throughout the US: if you want to get a speciality product to The Masses, you have to find out why they don't consume it in the first place and then offer something different. Afterall: they don't consume the product, *because they don't like it* ...
This is exactly why we have CNN and FoxNews: Someone decided that news needed to have a Big Big Market, and the Big Big Numbers don't consume news because they don't like it. So they came up with something else that They might like: watered down soundbites and Snake Scares, ten minutes out of every 30, all day long.
I hope they are happy now.
/jordan