Americans, it turns out, would rather visit a store than buy food online

Post by thejynxed » Wed, May 27, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

alleyshack wrote: post #17

bdcravens wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now you have to consider the automatic substitution of equivalent items when something is out of stock. My dibetic friend was telling yesterday that they substituted regular mt dew for his order of mt dew zero sugar. Typically you have the option to indicate that you do not want any substitutions.

They don't always respect this. I've had multiple Instacart shoppers replace items without marking them as replacements, including replacing some of them with things I explicitly indicated I did not want as replacements.

Post by ip26 » Wed, May 27, 2020, 8:36 PM UTC

jdsully wrote: post #95

nitwit005 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But when a crop is complete, farmers plow everything back into the soil. Some of it ends up as organic matter that is supporting soil health, and that is okay, too. Basically declaring that the waste is not waste. Solving problems by changing definitions.

If a field is harvested too efficiently it needs to be left fallow to rebuild lost nutrients. Leaving some in the ground is not waste by any definition.

Post by mandelbrotwurst » Wed, May 27, 2020, 8:39 PM UTC

elliekelly wrote: post #79

basseq wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if quality is there, how ripe do you want? Are you going to use those avocados tonight, or later in the week? Do you like green bananas or ones that are turning brown? Let alone the "what looks good today?" or "what's on sale today?" method of shopping! Even packaged goods are tough. When I'm in a store, I know quickly which product I want. I may not remember the brand name, but I can scan the shelf and find it.…

I’ve noticed Wegman’s has recently been separating fruit by “ripe today” and “ripe in a few days” and it’s really great. Especially for things like peaches and avocados that seem to have a pretty limited window between hard as a rock and rotten.

Post by mbrameld » Wed, May 27, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

TuringNYC wrote: post #130

denimnerd42 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get any discount in this case though. You're still paying $2-3/lb for bruised apples that are like you said literally waste at that point and $2-5/lb for chicken that if you picked out yourself would be of higher quality. Even if they did give you a price break for lower quality food. They'd still do things like give you a pineapple that will never ripen before it rots like we received last week.

When I lived in Brooklyn, the standard at most fruit/veg vendors was to have the best stuff inside and the bruised stuff outside (e.g., at 40cents/lb discount.) We usually brought from the outside and did the math on whether the recoverable portion was worth the discount. Unfortunately the supermarkets do not work this way -- they seem to have one class of goods. I'm not sure what happens to their bruised goods, but…

Post by dwighttk » Wed, May 27, 2020, 8:44 PM UTC

kerkeslager wrote: post #14

elmerfud wrote: post #2

It's not that I want to visit the store it's that I can't trust the store people to properly pick out fresh produce or good meat. When the stock person just takes a bucket of apples and dumps them in without care so most of them are bruised, why would I want that same person selecting which apples to send me? Often times to find 3 apples I have to examine 10+. Most of the produce selection is this way. Meat selection…

Playing devil's advocate: an enormous amount of food waste is caused by people simply refusing to buy ugly food. It's literally less wasteful to shave off most of a carrot so that it's a baby carrot, than to try to sell the same carrots as-is. There's nothing wrong with the ugly carrots--but they'll rot on the shelves. Bruised apples are perfectly edible. Maybe you just don't like them, and that's fine--there's no ac…