Don't forget the shrinkflation. Many, many, many products are now smaller or lesser in quantity than they used to be.
God forbid you want to eat beef
I've been getting ludicrously short shelf life on some produce in the past year or so. Get a bag of carrots Thursday after work, there's mold by Saturday. I don't think that was common three years ago.
Put some paper towel in with them. It'll help reduce the moisture and give you an extra few days.
The last scraps of the warehouses are being empyied out.
Also with labor shortages even the product that gets harvested ends up languishing in poor storage at various stages before it reaches the store. Instead of a quick pickup with a refigerated semi, you're getting vans a few hours late. The boxes sit in the field for longer, etc. (Anecdote from a berry farm in my area.)
I've noticed that too
I was told im not spending more. So I guess im not?
I don't eat ground beef but the people i cook for do. I could not figure out wtf was wrong with the regular grocery store ground beef, no matter how i cooked it it was coming out weird; very dense and chewy no matter how it was cooked. Also if you ever get that weird whiff of ammonia from beef i thought it was just spoiled.
Then I learned that Pink Slime didn't go away, they just changed the laws so they could add up to a certain percentage of pink slime to ground beef without identifying it. I believe it's up to 15% where i live. Suddenly the quality difference between the store ground beef and the next price tier makes a lot of sense. Also the ammonia smell as it's part of the processing. Fucking vile what american governments allow capitalists to get away with at our expense.
I told the folks who eat it and they just said okay buy the more expensive stuff then. Trying to use the experience to nudge them towards plant based alternatives but it's an uphill battle.
Then I learned that Pink Slime didn’t go away, they just changed the laws so they could add up to a certain percentage of pink slime to ground beef without identifying it. I believe it’s up to 15% where i live. Suddenly the quality difference between the store ground beef and the next price tier makes a lot of sense. Also the ammonia smell as it’s part of the processing. Fucking vile what american governments allow capitalists to get away with at our expense.
This is like when the cacao content of Hershey's chocolate dipped so low that they were going to be legally forced to call it "chocolate flavored bar". Did they alter the recipe? No, they just had the laws changed so they're still considered chocolate.
It's like how people were really against Obamacare but loved the Affordable Care Act. All you need is a bit of a label change and the public falls in line. The public has an attention span of about 2 weeks and rarely ever follows up, so they are really easy to fool.
This is one of the reasons the new administration loves to cut education budgets. Stupider people are easier to govern.
I've been buying bison or free roam beef lately. The cheap beef we used to get is always sold out. Actually, I like this stuff better. Way less greasy.
I cannot recommend enough just getting a big ol bag of vital wheat gluten for this reason.
I use essentially this recipe to replace everything I would normally use hamburger, sausage, etc. for. It's so quick and easy! Simply replacing the seasonings/ketchup with various other seasonings/sauces as if they were the marinade (ie a hamburger uses paprika, beef bouillon, poultry seasoning, onion/garlic and worcestershire) allows for endless variation and different kinds of "meats".
If making patties, meatballs, etc., let the dough rest ~15min. then get it a little damp before forming and cooking.
Adding in a bit of normal cooking flour, chickpea flour, malt, etc. allows for adjusting the texture as desired.
Very quick and easy to whip up, no more ammonia smell, perfectly marinated flavor every time, and consistent texture with absolutely no gristle.
And hey, we're also way more likely to get sick from the products, and then we can pay even more at the hospital (if they're still open in rural American in a couple of years). Capitalism at work, folks.
Akchually according to this chart you're better off now, so stop complaining, you're fine. /s
Grocery value didn't go up. Real wages went down. We should measure inflation based on cost-of-living.
Groceries don't really get more expensive, because the methods for producing food don't really get less efficient over time; if anything, it's more efficient. So there's no real reason for them to become more expensive.
Instead, wages declined. I've already commented many times that the labor market is a free market, that means it's regulated by Supply and Demand. I.e., if prices for labor go down, as we can observe, then that can be interpreted such that supply of labor went up (women go to work too, offshoring labor to other countries, immigrants, ...) or that demand for labor went down (automation, end of growth, ...).
I honestly think that both cases are difficult, where the supply of labor could be a bit reduced by kicking out immigrants and home-shoring labor (and also, to a lesser extent, making it more difficult for women to work), which btw some advisers to trump are seemingly trying to do, but my honest opinion is that it won't bring wages up to how they were in the 1960s. Demand for labor is shrinking too, due to the end of growth and now AI and other automation techniques. I guess we'll have to face that.
edit: just to offer an optimistic outlook, i think that consumerism and therefore demand for consumer products could be stimulated by simply giving handouts to people. most people will spend most of the handouts immediately, and that stimulates consumerism. and that in turn stimulates the economy.
Groceries don't really get more expensive, because the methods for producing food don't really get less efficient over time; if anything, it's more efficient. So there's no real reason for them to become more expensive.
While I'm with you on the economic theory, the past 5 years proved that theory out the window. Yes, there were shortages and logistical issues that caused price spikes, but many grocery items never came back down, or have been held at artificially higher prices since. S&D postulates that when there are a higher number of units on the market, prices will drop. But when you have the corporate consolidation that we've seen in America where there are fewer producers (especially in name brand goods, aka one producer) as well as fewer retailers, the models don't work as they would if we were in a pure free market where producers and retailers can enter the market at any time. As such, those fewer producers and retailers can hold prices artificially higher as their businesses are scaled out (nevermind that the likes of Kroger, the largest grocer in the country, has posted record profits in recent years, as have many entities that make up the core components of the CPI), and they can leverage market position to make entering the market untenable for an upstart.
And the problem with handouts is that they come from the govt, where the treasury prints money, thereby reducing the value of the existing money supply and increasing costs on goods as suppliers and retailers raise prices because of the increased money supply, aka modern inflation.
And the problem with handouts is that they come from the govt, where the treasury prints money, thereby reducing the value of the existing money supply and increasing costs on goods as suppliers and retailers raise prices because of the increased money supply, aka modern inflation.
Yep that's why we need a wealth tax sothat the government doesn't go into more debt.
Housing, food, energy, education, and vehicles have all massively accelerated in cost while wages stay the same. We're plummeting toward a crash in the US.
Is it really a crash if 1% of the US feel absolutely no ill effects? After all they are the ones writing the headlines, not us plebs who are usually just bickering with each other over scraps.
They're just hoping Elysium becomes a thing sooner than later.
I love picking up packages and seeing 90 grams, 450 grams etc. That's how you really know that the quarterly doubling prices and shrinkflation go hand in hand :3
And it's not just package sizes! I used to drink those Naked Juice smoothies, because they were all thick and creamy, with the main ingredients being blended bananas and strawberries.
Then a little while ago I noticed they weren't thick and creamy anymore. They were super thin and watery. At first I thought maybe I just got a bad batch, but eventually realized that was the new normal. I checked the ingredients list, and sure enough, apple juice is now the primary ingredient.
I also like that they no longer align with typically required measurements for recipes. Nothing gets me off more than having to calculate fractions for amounts of ingredients.
Sam's club has sold me rotten meat twice so far this year
luckily you also get less of them for the increased price
“Waiter! This food is terrible! And the portions are so small.”
I’m glad that I picked up cooking during Covid. I don’t really eat out anymore or buy junk food. So I just have to deal with higher grocery prices… to supplement the rich.
I want to emphasize that insurance does not function to GRANT healthcare but to DENY it. Doctors grant healthcare as providers. When they prescribe it, they've granted it. Then insurance steps in and says, "wait a minute." Their only function is to deny medical care. Not pay for it - the patient does that through premiums etc. To deny it. Why do we need a healthcare DENIAL system?
The answer for why corporations need private insurance denials, is because of Hot Coffee, Erin Brokovich - we could class action sue over the bad and contaminated products companies sell us, bc it would be able to be detected. Flint, MI, was caught by testing a kid on Medicare - because they have access to healthcare. The FDA, USDA, etc should actually pay for Medicare for all to GUARANTEE their work in making sure products are safe imo. That includes these shit ass groceries without safety checks. Why should I have to pay for the government's failure to do their job? They should guarentee it and track it so they can do their jobs.
