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#Foodprices

2 posts2 participants0 posts today

From greedy grocers to carbon taxes and everything in between:
What do we think we know about food prices in Canada and how strong is the evidence?

#Canada #AgriFood #Policy #FoodPrices #PriceOfFood #FoodAffordability #Inflation #Pandemic #Greedflation #CarbonTax

#Read all you want! #OpenAccess
#Share generously! #KnowledgeSharing
#Grow your understanding of #Food
#Repeat

canadianfoodstudies.uwaterloo.

I've long been infuriated by the endless and malicious pricing shell game that my local Safeway (Albertsons, Vons and other chains are also part of the same company, and I assume pull the same B.S.). It seems to be a very conscious effort to keep consumers in the dark as to what "regular" prices on products are, and the real value (if any) of a sale price on any given item.
For example, just walk into the soda aisle and try to figure out what the going price for an ounce of Coke or Pepsi is. There are countless buying options (larger and smaller cans, often four or five kinds of plastic bottles, six packs and eight packs, "regular" or "real" sales that apply to everyone, loyalty card prices, digital coupon, multiple purchase requirement sales, limited purchase sales, and more. It's easily possible on any give day to pay at least 100% more per ounce on the same ounce of beverage, depending on what version you get and what hoops you leap through and how much of your privacy and information you're willing to sacrifice.
Multiply this by thousands of items changing day by day, and it's an unending dance of scammery. When my grocery bill routinely drops 20-30% when I use a loyalty card, this just tells me that Safeway's "regular" prices are likely overcharging by a large percentage, if not all, of that discount.
But the pictured price tag just really cheesed me off. My wife and I live alone, so we don't need vast quantities of most items. But many Safeway sales require mass purchases, often on perishable items (and many produce items are no longer even AVAILABLE in small quantities). Often that's applied to salad, which I often eat a lot of, but not TEN BAGS AT A TIME or whatever. Four is a stretch to eat before some of it goes bad, canceling out some or all of the savings, and just pointlessly wasting food.
So I checked to see if I really needed to buy three bags this time. But it turns out, no. Look closely, See the math problem? Yeah. Buy one, get the sale price. But buy the STRONGLY suggested three, and Safeway charges you an extra penny for their trouble!
Yeah, it's ONLY a penny, but there are principles here, and again, if they do this over hundreds of thousands of sales, over hundreds or thousands of products, over months and years, it ads up. Plus, they've duped you into possibly buying more than you need AND goosed their bottom-line a little in the process.
It should be illegal. The whole SYSTEM should be illegal. And, IMHO, whoever came up with it should have their testicles or other tender parts nailed to a shopping cart out in the parking lot for everyone's enjoyment. Are we together on this?

#safeway #groceries #grocerieprices #albertsons #vons #foodprices #foodpriceinflation #latestagecapitalism

Continued thread

"Assuming temperature increases projected through 2035, which are probably understated, food inflation will increase by 0.92 to 3.23% per year, while headline inflation will rise between 0.32 and 1.18% per year. US wildfires and Europe’s recent and persistent droughts and crop failures are really just the thin end of this inflationary wedge."

theguardian.com/commentisfree/

The Guardian · Tariffs will raise prices. But the climate crisis is the real inflation riskBy Mark Blyth

_The Evening Post_, 23 March 1925:
PRICE OF BREAD
PROTEST TO GOVERNMENT
Holding that, on the figures adduced, the recent increase of 1d [ca. 80c today] in the price of the 2lb [900g] loaf is not justified, the three local #Labour members of Parliament, Messrs. P. Fraser, A. L. Monteith, and R. M‘Keen, will wait on Sir Francis Bell to-morrow morning to protest against the rise.
paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/news

Hürriyet Daily News (Turkey): Website listing supermarket prices may help fight inflation. “The searchable website… lists the current prices of goods sold by seven chain supermarkets, including discount grocers, across various categories such as food, fruit, meat, fish, chicken, dairy and cleaning products. Officials believe the application will exert ‘significant pressure’ on chain […]

https://rbfirehose.com/2025/02/13/hurriyet-daily-news-website-listing-supermarket-prices-may-help-fight-inflation/

ResearchBuzz: Firehose | Individual posts from ResearchBuzz · Hürriyet Daily News: Website listing supermarket prices may help fight inflation | ResearchBuzz: Firehose
More from ResearchBuzz: Firehose

“Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals.”

Time to crack a few eggs, and get this omelet cooking, imho. He wants a show? Give the counter programming!

It annoys me that two-pound sacks of coffee and tater tots now come in 28-oz "value sizes."

How dumb do they think we are? Pretty damned dumb, it seems!

That said, if we got outraged about every damned thing that comes across the transom, we'd be outraged all the time.

Pet a dog. Walk in the woods.

Melbourne Ska Orchestra - The Best Things In Life Are Free
youtube.com/watch?v=xUVvBF9BWd

Many Americans might feel a sense of deja vu as they read the price labels on egg shelves at the grocery store. Egg prices shot up in December 2022, after an earlier outbreak of avian flu, but eventually came back down after demand cooled following the holiday season.

But this year, prices have yet to fall. “Retail demand in January hasn’t really let up all that much,” Rispoli said. People have “gotten used to higher egg prices, so it’s not really acting as a deterrent”.
theguardian.com/us-news/2025/f

The Guardian · US egg prices expected to climb further as farmers strained by bird flu outbreakBy Lauren Aratani