Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores • Hacker News Board

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#181

Post by astrange » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

Georgelemental wrote: post #148

assttoasstmgr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that as Americans have evolved and more people seek white-collar occupations, and as women have taken more career (as opposed to domestic) paths as dual-income households become necessary to survive especially in places like SF, people have lost critical skills. Like how to cook healthy with a few basic ingredients. Most of the people I work with don't know how to use an oven. I don't think half of…

Bad cooking habits are a problem for sure, but they are not the whole story. Good cooking can only do so much to redeem bad ingredients, and American ingredients are often simply terrible. Our meat is bland, tasteless, and stuffed with seed oils (American chicken especially is execrable compared to the what the rest of the world eats). Our fruits and vegetables are bred for size and productivity at the expense of var…

> Our meat is bland, tasteless, and stuffed with seed oils (American chicken especially is execrable compared to the what the rest of the world eats).

Think you have your conspiracies confused there. The chickens are different because of being washed in chlorine. The cows are fat because they eat soy. It's you who's fat and feminized from the seed oils.

…is the current alternative health food theory.

But you can easily get grass-feed beef, and people tend to dislike it compared to grain-fed beef, because it tastes grassier and has less fat.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#182

Post by robonerd » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:25 AM UTC

astrange wrote: post #171

robonerd wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the people who have smartphones and are sick of it and pine for the old ways, but feel compelled to keep one by society increasingly expects that everybody have one and capriciously install invasive apps on it, even for things like buying groceries!

What's invasive about a grocery store app? Seems less invasive than going to the store - they could always record you there and they certainly know what you buy.

If the app wasn't spyware, they wouldn't be so keen on getting me to use it instead of using a web page.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#183

Post by hndude » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

thaw13579 wrote: post #180

throwaway892238 wrote: post #160

I guess people have forgotten the world before supermarkets (the replacement for traditional 'grocery stores'). You could not buy a pineapple or a banana or an orange. It was impossible. What made it possible were the literal overthrow of governments by corporations that acted like pirates with a monopoly on a given crop, in combination with technical and logistical revolutions. It's also amazing to see supermarkets…

I'd be curious to learn more about this, any recommended reading?

Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#184

Post by yojo » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:28 AM UTC

throwaway892238 wrote: post #160

I guess people have forgotten the world before supermarkets (the replacement for traditional 'grocery stores'). You could not buy a pineapple or a banana or an orange. It was impossible. What made it possible were the literal overthrow of governments by corporations that acted like pirates with a monopoly on a given crop, in combination with technical and logistical revolutions. It's also amazing to see supermarkets…

Per the article, American supermarkets have the same profits (~2%) as cheaper European ones, but much higher fixed costs. Some of these costs are the cost of inputs, but that only explains so much; wholesale food prices are much lower than what you pay at the grocery store.

Political wing-nuttery aside, I don't see who you think is the culpable party here.

Trade is a boogeyman - most countries import way more of their food than America does. The UK import 46% of its food, the US imports 15%.

It's probably not farmers, since most of them seem to be going bankrupt. There is a guy that's made $4 billion on pistachios and almonds, but that's not exactly your food staples.

I don't think it's the truckers, I haven't heard of anyone making a killing driving produce around.

The article has some good theories as to why it might in fact be the grocery store's fault. America's stores are larger, stock more goods, have higher-touch service, and sell fewer store brand products. This gives them a higher cost structure, resulting in high food prices without high profits. There are grocery stores in America with lower prices, places like Trader Joe's, which sell a smaller selection of store-brand goods in smaller stores at lower prices.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#185

Post by Natsu » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:29 AM UTC

throwaway892238 wrote: post #160

I guess people have forgotten the world before supermarkets (the replacement for traditional 'grocery stores'). You could not buy a pineapple or a banana or an orange. It was impossible. What made it possible were the literal overthrow of governments by corporations that acted like pirates with a monopoly on a given crop, in combination with technical and logistical revolutions. It's also amazing to see supermarkets…

The banana republics created were quite awful, no question there. But current government subsidies are there so that we don't see worse food shortages during times when food production is disrupted. Say, some guy far away declaring war on an area that produces a significant fraction of the wheat in the world, or some country that sells a lot of fertilizer and/or oil not selling it so much any more for whatever reason.

Yes, they're anti-competitive, but they have a pretty good reason to exist in countries that might frequently get into wars, since they would leave a pretty big vulnerability otherwise.

Also, a lot of the food production is sold via futures to stabilize prices and to offset the huge costs of producing it that aren't recouped until months later, but the futures + inflation are kinda working against the producers right now, especially when combined with fuel & fertilizer costs going crazy.

I'm not sure about your assertion that supermarkets have so little to do with the prices, they may not take that big a cut overall, but that really depends on how careful you are shopping given that there are plenty of products where you can pay significantly different prices for similar goods. I do agree that it's probably not responsible for most of the worrying increases, but you do still have to mind your loyalty cards and whatnot.

I think that in large part, prices are going up due to inflation, global shipping issues, disruption of large areas of farmland, energy costs and lack of fertilizer. And those last two are related due to the Haber-Bosch process for producing fertilizer, fuel is not just for shipping or powering farm machinery.

There are plenty of issues, and plenty of reason to worry about how harvests go this year, but I do agree that my worry would be more about the production side, and whether farmers can plant enough, not just the distribution side.

Things are probably going to get worse unless we have really great harvests this year, in my view. The time to deal with many of these problems was months ago, before planting started, but the second best time is now.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#186

Post by exhibitapp » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:30 AM UTC

thaw13579 wrote: post #180

throwaway892238 wrote: post #160

I guess people have forgotten the world before supermarkets (the replacement for traditional 'grocery stores'). You could not buy a pineapple or a banana or an orange. It was impossible. What made it possible were the literal overthrow of governments by corporations that acted like pirates with a monopoly on a given crop, in combination with technical and logistical revolutions. It's also amazing to see supermarkets…

I'd be curious to learn more about this, any recommended reading?

The Fish That Ate the Whale by Rich Cohen is a great book about the banana industry and government

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#187

Post by robonerd » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:32 AM UTC

angmarsbane wrote: post #159

assttoasstmgr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's more that as Americans have evolved and more people seek white-collar occupations, and as women have taken more career (as opposed to domestic) paths as dual-income households become necessary to survive especially in places like SF, people have lost critical skills. Like how to cook healthy with a few basic ingredients. Most of the people I work with don't know how to use an oven. I don't think half of…

Home Economics is no longer coursework in high school so you have generations who have made it to adulthood without basic kitchen training.

I hope they at least broke the nutrition science section of those courses off and continued teaching at least that much.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#188

Post by Thorentis » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:33 AM UTC

Australia has the best supermarkets in the world, hands down. Why? Because we grow and produce almost all of our fresh produce, dairy, meat, and seafood. There are some exceptions for seasonal things, but the Australian climate allows for almost everything we eat to be grown here.

The solution to this problem in the US and the UK is less globalism, not more.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#189

Post by astrange » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:33 AM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #182

astrange wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's invasive about a grocery store app? Seems less invasive than going to the store - they could always record you there and they certainly know what you buy.

If the app wasn't spyware, they wouldn't be so keen on getting me to use it instead of using a web page.

Nobody wants to use a grocery store web page on their phone, and nobody wants to use a computer instead of their phone.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#190

Post by MonaroVXR » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:33 AM UTC

fredley wrote: post #32

UK supermarkets are crap, and have got noticeably crapper in recent years. At even large mid-tier supermarkets you will find a paltry range of fruit and veg, and a maeger selection of almost entirely prepackaged meat and fish. I have noticed many things are routinely out of stock and it can be a lottery shopping for a specific recipe. I recently visited Portugal, and in a small city supermarket there was a bakery, me…

Is the UK supermarket the same as the Netherlands?