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

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#521

Post by DubiousPusher » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:12 AM UTC

InefficientRed wrote: post #487

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…

> when I unload my cart of fresh produce, meats, cheeses and baked goods it doesn't look like the carts around mine. They are full of canned foods, frozen foods, boxed foods, etc. Canned, frozen, and boxed foods offer a much higher "calorie/dollar" ratio. Berries, in particular, are wildly expensive on this metric even in-season. A family with 3 kids, 2 cars, and median earnings (one part-time, since working to pay f…

Yup, class is a huge part of diet. No denying that.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#522

Post by SNEKmount » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 7:15 AM UTC

My contribution, the over-the-shoulder cellphone holder, is just one recent innovation helping groceries and personal shoppers to reduce costs, save time and enhance revenues and so on (https://SNEKmount.com)

Amazon, as well as owning Whole Foods, an upmarket grocer, now runs 29 “Fresh” supermarkets, mostly in suburbs of large cities. At these stores shoppers need not use a till at all, instead being automatically charged as they pick items off the shelves and walk out. Until recently, home delivery of groceries in America (unlike Europe) has often relied on gig-economy workers walking round ordinary supermarkets—a costly model.

But that is also changing. Walmart’s head of e-commerce, Tom Ward, is British and has brought ideas pioneered in Britain, such as “dark stores”, where goods are packed exclusively for delivery. In Arkansas, Walmart has even experimented with dispatching groceries by drone. On May 24th it announced that the programme is expanding to five more states.

How much these ideas will change how Americans shop is unclear. Cutting product lines is often unpopular; big cars and big fridges still support a model of big grocery stores with surprisingly high prices. Still, as consumers fret about inflation, the pressure on American supermarkets to innovate and cut costs is bound to grow.■

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#523

Post by sdfhdhjdw3 » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 12:21 PM UTC

teh_klev wrote: post #374

NickNameNick wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean personal expectations, not safety or technical standards.

Then that's what they should have said.

You interpreted one way, everyone else interpreted it the way I meant it.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#524

Post by omniglottal » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

InvaderFizz wrote: post #477

sealaska wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Drug abuse should not be treated as the cause of such a problem in our society.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#525

Post by InvaderFizz » Mon, Jun 06, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

omniglottal wrote: post #524

InvaderFizz wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Drug abuse should not be treated as the cause of such a problem in our society.

My point was perhaps too subtle.

I don't view meth as the source, but a symptom of the economic situation(hopelessness), which then causes further socioeconomic decline in the pursuit of more drugs.

Drug addiction, for many, is trying to fill a hole. That hole could be poor choices leading to a bad situation, absent or abusive childhood relationships, a self esteem model that has been largely destroyed by the culture that person lives in, a lack of role models, many things. They can be internal issues that the individual is primarily responsible for, or external issues that are the result of being dealt a bad hand in life. Most likely a mix.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#526

Post by bpye » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 5:39 AM UTC

AngusH wrote: post #389

bpye wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from the UK to Canada and still miss UK supermarkets to a degree. That said, I went back for ~1 month last summer and often ended up needing to go to multiple supermarkets to find basic things such as chicken breasts... If Brexit isn't the cause I'd be very surprised.

More likely covid was the issue (assuming you went in 2021?) A lot of unavoidable staff sickness has caused major troubles in manufacturing and delivery of goods. Plus some real stupidity relating to tax and licensing of lorry drivers. :-( Yes, brexit has had an effect, but I think covid is more significant.

Yeah it was August of 2021.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#527

Post by methuselah_im » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 5:58 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #473

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No post body was provided.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#528

Post by everforward » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 7:37 PM UTC

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #280

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…

One of the problems with Americans and food is that we've been conditioned to have sugar in absolutely everything, and the 80s made it worse because of the low-fat fad (they just increased sugar content to maintain mouthfeel). Ask any Gen Xer and they'll regale you with nightmares of the dominance of oat bran in 80s cuisine. On the one hand, you get a muffin. On the other hand, it tastes like cardboard flavored with…

I think an unrecognized part of this is the crazy variety of foods we've become accustomed to via restaurants.

I don't mind cooking from scratch. I find it rather fun and relaxing. Fresh ingredients are problematic, though. I can store a ton of frozen/canned food that's good for a long time and eat what I want, or I can buy fresh ingredients and then I'm pretty much locked into those choices whether I want it or have time to cook or not.

Places like TGI Fridays, Chilis and services like Doordash give people a huge range of options that you just can't replicate without frozen/canned foods. If I tried to buy ingredients to make anything a Chilis can, the vast majority would spoil before I could cook them. The food would probably be better than Chilis while it was around, though.

We got used to getting what we wanted, instead of what we had. The only way to replicate that is long-lasting food.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#529

Post by JJMcJ » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 12:25 AM UTC

phonypc wrote: post #471

watwut wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

Clean? I rinse them under running water. This isn't a TV cooking show. It's just home cooking.

I should mention that the mushrooms are always cooked well.

Re: Americans are poorly served by their grocery stores

#530

Post by JJMcJ » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 12:27 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #376

watwut wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of cooking time can be done async tho. Rice can be put in a cooker and prepared ahead of time. Some cookers even let you specify a time in the future when it should be ready. Similarly, marinading develops a lot of flavor over time that you could be doing work or errands.

Or prepare four or more servings. Put in refrigerator or freezer depending on how fast they will be consumed. So the 20 minutes, let's say, turns into 30 but split over four or six meals, so it's not so bad.