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Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

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Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#161

Post by throwaway0a5e »

DanBC wrote: post #75
Scoundreller wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good point though. Why/how is something unsafe for an American, but safe for an Italian or Spaniard? Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. How is a Volvo made for the Swedish market unsafe on Canadian roads? EU and Canada recently signed a trade agreement so that they won't tariff eachothers' cars, but consumers still can't buy a car from a Eu…

> Differing regulations and standards between countries usually makes no sense and just harms the consumer. It's true that they don't make much sense and that they often harm the consumer, but I vote in my regional politicians and in theory can vote them out if they impose standards I don't like. One of the problems with Europe was the perceived lack of democratic control coupled with the dishonesty from anti_EU camp…

The problem is that unless the bad regulation is hurting everyone a lot the regulations will be around for 10-50yr after you vote them out.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#162

Post by tclancy »

bamboleo wrote: post #106
pietrovismara wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> enriched macaroni That must be the lamest way of defining pasta I've ever heard. Whoever named it like that doesn't deserve italian pasta (/s)

And awkward as hell too. Maccheroni is a shape of pasta, but apparently all pasta is "enriched macaroni" in the US?

Probably a case of semantic narrowing.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#163

Post by koheripbal »

sam_goody wrote: post #97

The writing style is awesome, I literally laughed out loud. Beyond that, the article reminds us that in every industry there are powerful actors that protect their monopoly, and will coerce the government into helping them. I read an article about import taxes on sugar that were created to keep out competition, and as a result everything uses corn syrup. Other examples abound. Unfortunately, the solution of governmen…

Your sugar example is not a good example because the US setup a mandate to be totally food supply independent after the Dust Bowl/famine in the early part of the last century.

So foreign sugar sources, like any major staple, are heavily tariffed.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#164

Post by Alex3917 »

rtx wrote: post #124
Alex3917 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s hard to imagine any writer who pitched doing a piece like this to the marketing department of a pasta company not just being told to fuck off. If it was possible to make money writing articles like this, there would be a lot more of them.

Though it's hard to write this well

It's not hard, it just takes a long time, which costs $$$. That's why it's very very unlikely to be sponsored, because no CPG company is going to spend 100k to commission a writer to spend several months working on an art piece. Except maybe Red Bull, but this isn't about Red Bull.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#165

Post by NullPrefix »

ajuc wrote: post #122
bamboleo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And awkward as hell too. Maccheroni is a shape of pasta, but apparently all pasta is "enriched macaroni" in the US?

Kiełbasa and Pierogi are whole classes of products but in US kiełbasa is a particular kind of Polish sousage and pierogi basically means ruskie pierogi. That's how foreign languages work. In Polish "rower" means "a bicycle" because british company Rover sold them here first :) In Russian and Ukrainian vogzal means "train station" because there was a famous train station in Vauxhal :)

>In Russian and Ukrainian vogzal means "train station" because there was a famous train station in Vauxhal

You can't be serious. Post proof.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#166

Post by francis_t_catte »

shorsher wrote: post #159
foton1981 wrote: post #12

I am afraid this article will resurrect shortage even if it ended lately: I never cared about pasta shapes, but now I want bucatini. With 52 hacker news points there goes national stock of bucatini.

If you have a wegmans in your area, they might have it. I found some last night actually :)

Wegmans is a no-go where I live, thanks to an old 'handshake agreement' between the Wegman and Golub families, in that there would be no overlap between Wegmans and Price Chopper territory. :(

I'll have to check Hannaford and Shoprite instead.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#167

Post by ajuc »

NullPrefix wrote: post #165
ajuc wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kiełbasa and Pierogi are whole classes of products but in US kiełbasa is a particular kind of Polish sousage and pierogi basically means ruskie pierogi. That's how foreign languages work. In Polish "rower" means "a bicycle" because british company Rover sold them here first :) In Russian and Ukrainian vogzal means "train station" because there was a famous train station in Vauxhal :)

>In Russian and Ukrainian vogzal means "train station" because there was a famous train station in Vauxhal You can't be serious. Post proof.

There's competing theories but all come from Vauxhall. Either train station or gardens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vauxhall#In_the_Russian_langua...

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#168

Post by jrockway »

foton1981 wrote: post #12

I am afraid this article will resurrect shortage even if it ended lately: I never cared about pasta shapes, but now I want bucatini. With 52 hacker news points there goes national stock of bucatini.

People don't seem to take action based on these things. I was concerned about not being able to buy vitamin D because of so many articles positively correlating it with good COVID-19 outcomes... but had no trouble buying it recently.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#169

Post by jrockway »

noisy_boy wrote: post #11

Does this mean Bucatini shortage is a good indicator of wide-spread issues? Seems like its time for Bucatini index.

It seems like a major brand changed flour suppliers, falling under the FDA-required amount of iron, and thus not being allowed to import it. I don't think that is indicative of any wider issues, except that the government might be interfering with your food a little bit too much.

Re: Why Is There a Bucatini Shortage in America?

#170

Post by ruph123 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #155
gorpomon wrote: post #102

What I love about this story is that this is the tension of politics in a nutshell. What has happened here is what people would term "state capture", where someone uses the state to gain an advantage. Probably though, the solution is to not _completely_ demolish any standard of pasta and let the market solely decide, because we've seen what happens in a variety of other unregulated industries. However, I won't make m…

What I find most interesting is that the standard is defined in nutritional value, not in terms of ingredients (x percent flour, up to y percent egg, something like that). > Probably though, the solution is to not _completely_ demolish any standard of pasta and let the market solely decide, because we've seen what happens in a variety of other unregulated industries. A few relevant anecdotes on this topic: About a de…

Another anecdote:

Subway bread cannot be technically called “bread” in Ireland because there is too much added sugar in it. Ruled by their supreme court:

https://text.npr.org/919831116

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