Are people placing too much emphasis on kashrut?

Kashrut is obviously an important part of Judaism, but it feels like these days some of it is just for the sake of looking more frum than someone else.

This came to me after seeing some info that certain vegetables may not be considered always kosher due to the possibility of bugs hiding in them. Like are you supposed to pick off every leaf of cabbage before you buy it to make sure there’s absolutely 0 bugs? There just seems to be so much stuff that is unnecessarily kosher, not to mention the expense of it.

How were our forefathers who were living with far less food, far less money and far less stability keeping up with half of the laws of kashrut on a daily basis? Even 100 years ago, my grandfather told me stories about how his father barely had the money for one set of plates, much less a milk and meat set. They just feasibly couldn’t keep kosher, and neither could most people due to everything else in the world. Jews would take jobs butchering treyf animals like lobsters because it was a better job than nothing.

Now that we have this world of plenty, it feels like we’re slapping kosher labels and charging 3x the price for something that most Jews a century ago wouldn’t have even bothered with. I get the more basic laws and following those, but I can tell you my Bubbe and her Bubbe and all the way back would’ve looked at you like you were an idiot if you refused cheese because it wasn’t kosher.

I don’t really know how to end this spiel, I’m just tired of all this kashrut gatekeeping and posturing.