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

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#471

Post by phonypc » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #352

JJMcJ wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fast with few ingredients Slice an onion. Slice mushrooms. Fry up with ground beef. Add a little water or soup stock or bone broth. Let simmer for a minute. Quick meal. Just one of a million examples for quick recipes that take minimal skill. You can even run the veggies through a chopper or food processor.

I often cook like that but pre-packaged fast-food is in fact faster to cook. I am not saying it should be eaten all the time, but the receipt you describe is not that fast. Mushrooms specifically are time consuming to clean in any non symbolic quantity. And you also need rice/potato with it unless you go keto in which case you need much more cleaning/slicing mushrooms and more meat.

> Mushrooms specifically are time consuming to clean in any non symbolic quantity.

FWIW, in my ~10 year professional cooking career I think I've washed a batch of mushrooms a grand total of 2 times, only because they were uncommonly dirty. You've probably eaten unwashed mushrooms many times in restaurants. Eating a little dirt probably isn't going to hurt you. If there's anything pathogenic on them a rinse in water isn't going to do much.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#472

Post by LBJsPNS » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

bruce511 wrote: post #295

WalterBright wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regularly grind up a pile of vegetables in the vitamix and drink the result. Prep time is 5 minutes. Cleanup is 1 minute. I'm not really buying the "no time to eat healthy" thing.

The time involved in living healthy is not in the time it actually takes to make a meal (which is trivial, and can easily take less time than the round-trip to a fast food outlet.) The real time it takes is in the time you need to learn a bunch of skills that make that possible. In an ideal world you learnt those skills at your mother's knee, but we are now 3 generations into "fast food" so it's probable that was mis…

"chocolate doesn't like garlic"

Mole (https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/223261/authentic-mole-sauc...) would like a word with you...

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#473

Post by mark_l_watson » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:12 PM UTC

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #470

mark_l_watson wrote: post #466

I can’t really agree with most of the article. I think that while there is some price gouging, mostly food price increases are simply an effect of inflation. I like the generality of super markets. I like to cook so I buy whole grains/rice, lots of fresh produce, a variety of foreign/exotic spices and prepared sauces, and occasional free range/no feed lot beef. On the other hand, I know people who don’t have as much…

i live in Kashmir valley which has historically survived on rice as a staple diet. even today, due to political, historical and social reasons, everyone (actually everyone) has a stock of 100-400 Kgs of rice at anytime during the year. this "stock" is religiously followed by every household. This also means for a small family, "survival" in case of trouble is much more reasonable because like rice, historically every…

Thanks for your comments, very interesting.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#474

Post by ramraj07 » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

herbst wrote: post #391

ramraj07 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d trust a good can of tomatoes before I touch the borderline unappealing off season strawberries they have in those markets. Happy that you’re trying not to judge but looks like you still have a ways to go before getting off a high horse. As oogway says, “one often meets their destiny on their path to avoid it.” When I remember the solid research showing people taking multivitamins die faster I keep thinking what m…

Sure they are fresher (if the fruit accepts being frozen) however I don't see why they would have less chemicals. Most chemicals people try to avoid are used for growing and not packaging. The only way to avoid these is buying trustable organic labels. Please don't build a illusion of fair, non organic farms somehow working in a natural way when they actually are just as profit oriented as any other big company.

You can buy organic frozen food as well, you know.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#475

Post by pnutjam » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #464

technothrasher wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many Americans would look at you like you were nuts if you suggested regularly eating dinner around 9pm. I'd say 5-7pm is the most common here. Often when trips to Europe come up, the discussion is about how you can't get dinner at 5pm because the restaurants aren't open. Although my last few trips to Europe I noticed there are more restaurant choices in touristy areas that open early just to get the American…

I think you have found the heart of this issue. As a French I wasn’t understanding the points being made about extracurricular activities but here a 7pm dinner is considered early and most people will eat around 8 up to 9. To be fair few people leave work before 6:30pm and being home before 7:30pm would be exceptional. My beef with US supermarkets the only time I went there is how poor is the quality to price ratio i…

My young kids are in bed by 8pm, if we don't eat at 6:30 or earlier they get indigestion from trying to sleep right after eating.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#476

Post by WalterGR » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

fny wrote: post #281

kjeetgill wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope this doesn't get buried. I don't know enough to agree or disagree, so I'd like to see how people respond.

I'm sending you articles pre 2022 from various sources just to make the point these effects were well understood and foreseen before the Ukraine war. While I include articles here about Biden's spending, it's worth noting Trump also spent a truckload of money. Use archive.ph to read anything paywalled. [0]: Energy and Food Security: Linkages through Price Volatility https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S…

How has Biden's stimulus differed from Trump's?

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#477

Post by InvaderFizz » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:30 PM UTC

sealaska wrote: post #382

klodolph wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American. Everyone I knew had dinners with the whole family most of the time. The Thanksgiving issue is when your bigoted aunt / uncle / cousin / grandparent shows up. Or your dad and uncle fight over something that happened fifty years ago, or your grandma acts like an ass to your lesbian aunt, or something. Just to pick examples from personal experience.

American. 28. Grew up going to an inner city school with a bit of a class divide. Thinking about it now, the upper class families were more likely to eat dinner together; but I knew very many classmates that did not.

American, I have a decade on you. Grew up in the rural south east, 50+ minute school bus ride every day being bussed into the inner city to maintain the 40% white ratio. (Without bussing and zoning, the school would have been more like 5% white, or less.)

Families eating dinner together was the norm, and this was not a rich area.

Today this is probably less the case, the past 25 years have not been kind to the area. Loss of opportunity and rampant meth abuse has caused a lot of issues.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#478

Post by computerliker69 » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #172

I grew up in Montana so I am probably one of the few millennial Americans that probably recalls what life is like before supermarkets. They were just becoming a thing there as I was growing up. (Very, What's Eating Gilbert Grape.) We had an IGA in the small town I grew up in. The fresh food options there were borderline Soviet. We went to a butcher to get our meat when we didn't have meat from hunting. We got produce…

I grew up in northern MI. We had an IGA too. Supermarkets were 1hr+ drive away. Cool that our experiences were so similar.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#479

Post by iggldiggl » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #440

usr1106 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My daugther was born in Finland. She always loved to eat fruit. When she was 2 we went to Australia and suddenly she did not want to eat "the same" fruit anymore. Well, they really tasted like fruit and not like colored water. The UK might be marginally better than Finland, but they also get a lot of imported watery taste from Spain etc.

>they also get a lot of imported watery taste from Spain etc. A lot of this is just eating out of season fruit grown in greenhouses and picked early to be transported to be "ripe" on the shelves. Eating fresh Italian tomatoes in February is as poor an experience as eating UK tomatoes in February, but eating them in June is likely to be much better in both cases.

Though with some bad luck, your tomato won't be tasty even in June:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190601232951/https://www.tages...

(Farmers allege and a Swiss supermarket chain actually confirms that for their supermarkets they prefer tomato varieties that "deliver a consistent taste all year round", so instead of mediocre tomatoes in winter and great tomatoes in summer instead you get mediocre-tasting tomatoes all year round…)

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#480

Post by iggldiggl » Sat, Jun 04, 2022, 3:04 PM UTC

88913527 wrote: post #102

algoatecorn wrote: post #3

With the emergence of dark grocery stores, there will be major opportunity in the space of personalized nutrition. Shoppers will be more connected with a mobile app when it comes to their grocery store experience, and those apps have the potential to steer you toward an optimal diet that saves money and improves health. I strongly believe personalized nutrition and shopping experiences will have major impact on non c…

The average grocery store carries 30,000+ items, I don't know how people will find new products in a world (decades from now) where dark grocery shopping is the norm. We all only have vast awareness because we know of the goods by walking the aisles. The web apps for grocery shopping have carousels that might showcase to you two or three new items, but there simply is nothing analogous to aisle walking. You can't eve…

I feel the same way about books: In terms of enjoyability and chance discovery, browsing through amazon.com or whatever just doesn't compare with browsing the shelves of an actual book store or library.