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Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

economist.com

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Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#461

Post by fleetwoodsnack »

bradleyjg wrote: post #445
cbhl wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Appreciate" is, perhaps, not the right word. Maybe "worry"? Younger generations grew up on a message of climate change and it can be disconcerting to walk into a grocery store and find the entire produce department to be a geography lesson. This from Peru, that from Mexico, the other from Alaska, all flown and trucked in on a cold chain straight from some far-away monoculture farm. If anything I suspect the increase…

Younger generations are filled with self righteous tiresome scolds. I don’t know where we went wrong.

Yes and you’re the enlightened wizard lmao

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#462

Post by lettergram »

sealaska wrote: post #386
lettergram wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family growing up and my family now; we make it an absolute must to eat every dinner together. We also tend to invite people over. It’s honestly the most important thing you can do as a parent. Let’s you know about your kids lives, share in the ritual, and generally bond.

Do you, or will you, allow your children to participate in extracurricular activities? Or is eating every dinner together less of an absolute priority as you claim? Your comment makes it sound like you may have some. I ask because most of the dinners I missed growing up were due to sports.

You figure it out, my siblings and I were always in multiple extracurricular activities. We’d typically eat at like 6-7pm. If something came up we’d move dinner to 5pm or later to 8pm. There’s always someway to make it work. We also tended to have breakfast together so even if we have to miss 1-2 days a week for dinner, we still eat together at least one meal.

In the US extracurricular sports and music tend to be after school 3-7pm range.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#463

Post by b112 »

jessaustin wrote: post #459
b112 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to hang my comment here! Your corn starch statement made a perfect hook, but there are a lot of gravy comments I don't understand in this thread. I don't get why people would use flavour packets when making gravy, or why people would use corn starch. Not saying it's wrong, but that it seems unneeded. For example, let's say I fry up a pork chop. I may put 1/2 a spanish onion in the pan, and I'd definitely ad…

That's a fine technique. What set me off ITT was the "a kit or a flavor packet" recommendation. I have long considered these to be egregious wastes of money. The ones that act as thickeners are mostly corn starch (which is weird for non-Chinese-food), except a 2 oz packet costs more than a whole tub of corn starch. The ones for flavor are almost entirely salt and MSG. There's nothing wrong with salt or MSG, but they…

Interesting analysis.

I think it really extends to everything, others have mentioned pre-made tomato sauces here, also baffling both for price and taste.

When I left home, pre-internet, and started grocery shopping for the first time, I recall wanting spagetti. Well ground meat, that made sense. Pepper. Salt. Noodles.

But until years later, I didn't think about the spagetti sauce I bought. I just kept buying it. It was just there, labelled as a natural ingredient.

You want to make spagetti? Why, there's the sauce!

In retrospect, I think labelling is quite effective in this way. Get 'em when first out of the house, latch on to their inexperience then.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#464

Post by WastingMyTime89 »

technothrasher wrote: post #441
Leherenn wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How late are the extracurricular activities? I'm not American, but at home we would just eat all together after, e.g. around 9 p.m. and if they were later in the evening, we would just eat a bit earlier, like 7.

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 is particularly for vegetables. Generally speaking you could shift every thing one price band compared to France.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#465

Post by technothrasher »

ramraj07 wrote: post #279
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’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…

> I remember the solid research showing people taking multivitamins die faster

Do you think that could possibly be because people who are more sickly are more likely to try taking vitamins, as a curative? So it isn’t the vitamins killing them, but the disease making them take vitamins? Of course, I’d have to see the actual study you are referencing to see if they discussed causality.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#466

Post by mark_l_watson »

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 free time as I have and they can get frozen/canned, etc. food that is fast to prepare. Everyone gets what they want or need.

That said, my wife and I also frequent the weekly farmers’ market, and I go to a tiny store where I see local producers unloading locally grown produce from their pickup trucks.

I wonder if a byproduct of inflation might be more people cooking healthier meals from bulk/cheaper staples.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#467

Post by noirbot »

m_mueller wrote: post #347
noirbot wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all going to depend on where you are. Bread seems like a big division - shelf-stable bread is a lot less of a thing in Europe, likely because of a longer tradition of bakers. If you're in a major US city though, I've never had an issue finding French/German style breads, and usually at a normal grocer, if not at a specialty baker.

It still matters what is the standard, even if you can find alternatives. It admittedly may matter more to a traveler who goes through airports and middle class hotels though, than to people living there.

For sure. I just hear the "I went to the US and there was no REAL bread to be found" and I'm always a little confused. Even the local grocer in my fairly poor neighborhood growing up had a section of bread loaves in various styles. I'm sure the selection is worse if you're in a more rural part of the US, but that's probably also towns that maybe never had an actual baker even when they were founded, assuming they were founded in an era that would have been reasonable.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#469

Post by noirbot »

morsch wrote: post #321
noirbot wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, that seems totally bunk outside of double or single-digit store companies. Even the regional US chains like Publix or HEB or Fred Meyer are as large as many EU chains outside of Tesco, which may as well be the Walmart of Europe. I'm just tired of so many articles whose whole premise is "the US isn't doing thing X that a smaller, denser, and massively older country has done." Yea, the US has issues and is respons…

Even the regional US chains like Publix or HEB or Fred Meyer are as large as many EU chains outside of Tesco, which may as well be the Walmart of Europe. Tesco isn't the largest chain in Europe. Walmart is bigger than the large European chains, by a factor of (just?) about 5 to 10. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103223/leading-grocery-... https://payspacemagazine.com/retail/top-7-supermarket-chains...

Ah fair. I mostly meant that in the sense that, Tesco is closer to Walmart's "we sell everything" offering. Your second link was talking about the largest grocer in Europe having 1300 stores across 8 countries, which is about the same size as Publix which only operates in 7 states and has 800 stores in Florida alone.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#470

Post by 2Gkashmiri »

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 family just "adjusts" whatever family needs are. families do not "move out" unless there is a house ready to move into. that means, for the most part, a family in difficult times has only daily milk and something to have with rice to survive.

i have done that, every kashmiri has been there so its pretty much normal.

About grocery stores, we still have an informal system of agriculture. there are no big chains, a farmer can bring his/her produce to a market and have small retailers who buy in small quantities (5-50kgs, depending) and sell that produce on their small shops. your "farmers market" is "the" market so the prices do not fluctuate much or like, there is no corporation that can influence prices

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