4 ms·

Is it really, in America? Amazing. This is not the normal human experience at all. Raw food are usually cheaper than processed ones, anywhere in the world.

yonkshi 8y ago
Not necessarily. E.g. making Ramen noodles, much cheaper to go to a ramen shop than to attempt to make it yourself. Economy of scale.
dagw 8y ago
Where in the world are you? It's my normal human experience from both the UK and Sweden. Of course the stuff you make from scratch will often have a higher quality (or at least be made from higher quality ingredients) and if you want to buy similar or better quality then it will cost more. But the cheapest chocolate chip cookies you can find in the food store will be cheaper than buying ingredients and baking.
- badpun 8y ago
  So, whatever bakery paid for ingredients, wages and owner's profit is still less that what you'd just pay for just the ingredients? What are they putting into these cookies, sawdust?
  - pjc50 8y ago
    The trick is that the bulk discount (or "small package premium") on the ingredients is huge. Maybe $300 for a tonne versus $1.50 for a kilo of flour? Note that this works for electronics as well. You could buy one resistor for a cent or a thousand of them for a dollar.
  - dagw 8y ago
    What are they putting into these cookies Cheap palm oil and other vegetable fats instead of butter, corn syrup instead of cane sugar, much lower quality chocolate than is generally available in grocery stores, various chemical stabilizers instead of eggs, artificial vanilla flavoring instead of real vanilla and so on. Plus they obviously get everything at a massive discount since they're buying everything by the ton instead of by the kg.
    - scottlegrand2 8y ago
      You might want to ask why those cheap ingredients are cheap and you will find a bunch of farmers getting huge subsidies from the taxpayers to grow otherwise unprofitable crops. Kind of like how if you remove all the subsidies given to fossil fuel producers, some forms of renewable energy suddenly become much more competitive. So when you add a whole cost center for IT, the inefficiencies of the way they operate suddenly make the cloud efficient.
      - riku_iki 8y ago
        I also think processed products usually require less effort to store and transport than some fresh ingredients.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    Wages and profit is amortized over thousands of cookies per day. You pay less than 1 cent per cookie. If you don't bake all the dough in your mixing bowl you already have spend more on ingredients than the labor at the factory. The comments on cheap low quality ingredients and bulk pricing are true as well.
- walshemj 8y ago
  It will be cheaper if you buy in bulk the local Tescos to me in the UK sells rice in 10Kg bags which is several times cheaper than boil in the bag And I am sure the local Asian cash and carry's sell even bigger bags even cheaper.

yonkshi 8y ago

Not necessarily. E.g. making Ramen noodles, much cheaper to go to a ramen shop than to attempt to make it yourself. Economy of scale.

dagw 8y ago

Where in the world are you? It's my normal human experience from both the UK and Sweden. Of course the stuff you make from scratch will often have a higher quality (or at least be made from higher quality ingredients) and if you want to buy similar or better quality then it will cost more. But the cheapest chocolate chip cookies you can find in the food store will be cheaper than buying ingredients and baking.

badpun 8y ago
So, whatever bakery paid for ingredients, wages and owner's profit is still less that what you'd just pay for just the ingredients? What are they putting into these cookies, sawdust?
- pjc50 8y ago
  The trick is that the bulk discount (or "small package premium") on the ingredients is huge. Maybe $300 for a tonne versus $1.50 for a kilo of flour? Note that this works for electronics as well. You could buy one resistor for a cent or a thousand of them for a dollar.
- dagw 8y ago
  What are they putting into these cookies Cheap palm oil and other vegetable fats instead of butter, corn syrup instead of cane sugar, much lower quality chocolate than is generally available in grocery stores, various chemical stabilizers instead of eggs, artificial vanilla flavoring instead of real vanilla and so on. Plus they obviously get everything at a massive discount since they're buying everything by the ton instead of by the kg.
  - scottlegrand2 8y ago
    You might want to ask why those cheap ingredients are cheap and you will find a bunch of farmers getting huge subsidies from the taxpayers to grow otherwise unprofitable crops. Kind of like how if you remove all the subsidies given to fossil fuel producers, some forms of renewable energy suddenly become much more competitive. So when you add a whole cost center for IT, the inefficiencies of the way they operate suddenly make the cloud efficient.
    - riku_iki 8y ago
      I also think processed products usually require less effort to store and transport than some fresh ingredients.
- bluGill 8y ago
  Wages and profit is amortized over thousands of cookies per day. You pay less than 1 cent per cookie. If you don't bake all the dough in your mixing bowl you already have spend more on ingredients than the labor at the factory. The comments on cheap low quality ingredients and bulk pricing are true as well.
walshemj 8y ago
It will be cheaper if you buy in bulk the local Tescos to me in the UK sells rice in 10Kg bags which is several times cheaper than boil in the bag And I am sure the local Asian cash and carry's sell even bigger bags even cheaper.