6 ms·

Good list. The problem, at least here in the UK, is that these cheap foods/ingredients are exactly what we're seeing empty on the shelves now. Unfortunately for

• bluedino 7y ago
  Rice and beans have been gone here in the USA at my local stores.
  • syshum 7y ago
    Flour and Sugar are also gone here. Bread is limited supply
    • jb3689 7y ago
      I find it funny that we can find plenty of bread but flour is a completely different story. I'm a little surprised the demand - I recognize how useful flour is, but I'm surprised so many people actually feel confident enough to do anything with it (not that baking is that uncommon, but I only know a few people who know how to stuff like bake bread). On the other hand I guess it is the perfect time learn
      • syshum 7y ago
        I suspect that many people are just buying it because they found it on a list of things to buy from the internet Many of them will probably stick it 20 pounds of flour in their cabinet and never use it for anything. I do use it, I make biscuits, and gravy every sunday... I have enough flour to last awhile and was not in the market for any but I did notice that section that normally had a pallet of each was empty in my store.
      • Theodores 7y ago
        Under normal circumstances I make a loaf of bread every other day for sandwiches, using a bread making machine. So that is 500g of flour, 350ml water, 25g butter, 1 tsp of yeast, 1.5 tsp sugar, 1.25 tsp of salt. My 'peacetime' rationale is to have fresh bread with no additives in it. There are spin off benefits such as the baking smell. Over the last decade I have worked in different companies and never met another person with a home baking of bread routine. Sure some people have a bread making machine in the loft or have a mum that does it on occasion but making bread from flour is a rare thing in the UK. So what is going on with the supply? Truth is that bread flour is not a fast moving item. If I buy a 1kg bag on a Monday and another on a Friday then there won't have been a lot of restocking in between. I will be buying from the same batch. Therefore it does not take a lot of panic buyers to take all the stock off the shelves for the few people who regularly buy to find themselves with 'flour anxiety'. If you do use a kilo or two of flour a week then you don't have more than two to three kilos on hand. This will be for variety, e.g. strong white and wholemeal, which can be combined with something else, e.g. spelt or granary, for variety. In truth flour does not keep indefinitely, it will develop a horrible taste over time or even get weevils. Flour is also heavy, so if you have to carry your shopping by bicycle or on foot then you are not buying sacks of the stuff. Car drivers with large boots/trunks can behave like a horde of locusts, snapping up vast quantities of items like flour that don't cost them a lot to pay for, store or carry. Meanwhile, people who are buying flour partly due to reasons of making their bread more affordable are less likely to have a car or even large cupboards.
        • bluedino 7y ago
          Flour and yeast were one of the first things to go. As was regular bread. Either all the bread machines were dug out of the closets or those bread recipes from Pinterest are getting put to work.
          • syshum 7y ago
            I normally buy a premium brand bread, and right now all I can get is generic store brand white bread....
            • masonic 7y ago
              At a Sunnyvale Safeway yesterday, there was a full wall of breads spanning multiple brands and grains. I paid $1.49 for a loaf of their own multigrain bread (e-coupon price).
        • syshum 7y ago
          The standard size in the US is a 5lb bag, or about 2.26kg it is not uncommon to find 10 and 15 lb bags in most stores as well
      • maxerickson 7y ago
        A family can use 200 pounds of flour up before it spoils. Hard to freeze that much bread. And then there are lots of people where a $100 hedge is a pretty simple choice. (I bought 5 pounds of flour, about on the normal schedule)
      • blaser-waffle 7y ago
        > I recognize how useful flour is, but I'm surprised so many people actually feel confident enough to do anything with it (not that baking is that uncommon, but I only know a few people who know how to stuff like bake bread). No offense but you sound incredibly sheltered. No one did any cooking in your house growing up? Most of the uses of raw flour are incredibly basic, straightforward recipes. Literally add water, some kind of fat or oil, and maybe a leavener to flour and you're in business. Cakes, pastry, bread, roti, whatever. Use it as coating for fried chicken, or to thicken a stew. Make flour tortillas, or yorkshire puddings, or muffins, or all verities of noodles. Hard tack will last forever, if you hate yourself but want to store something for years. The learning curve is trivial -- my mom made me roll out biscuits when I was 11 -- and flour will last forever as long as it stays dry and bug-free. Old flour isn't as tasty as the freshly ground, but you can still make a fine loaf of bread at home with 8+ month old flour; source: made a high hydration loaf last night.
• double0jimb0 7y ago
  In that case, expensive things won’t be expensive for very long.
  • chrisseaton 7y ago
    I don't understand - something that is already expensive, that will get more essential over time if other stuff runs out... will get cheaper?
  • captainbland 7y ago
    This seems like a misunderstanding of how supply and demand acts in the real world. I didn't say people weren't buying premium products at all - they very much so are. They're just not selling out at the insane rate everything else is. If anything this suggests that the inexpensive products would (assuming we were operating an idealised free market, which we're kind of not because stores are now attempting to limit purchases) become more expensive to match the premium products - but then of course the premium products would sell more (more utility for the same money) so things would balance out again. Retail pricing logic suggests that brands would rather price relative to the baseline pricing anyway. It's more likely to be generally inflationary unless of course suppliers manage to meet the current demand and even if they do there's a big risk that demand will crash suddenly at some point which could cost the suppliers or retailers greatly as well as they overproduce items that never get bought and cost money to store. It's a big mess, really.
    • double0jimb0 7y ago
      But you realize the reason expensive things are expensive is because there are enough people willing to pay the premium. If demand for premium products diminishes, premium product producers can either lower prices to meet demand at lower price point, or lower production to new lower levels of demand. Either way there is a present glut of expensive things without enough demand, so existing oversupply is liquidated. So expensive things get less expensive.
      • captainbland 7y ago
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  Does the UK also have price gouging laws in this crisis? Those are what produce the empty shelves.
  • smnrchrds 7y ago
    Do you have any evidence for this? I don't meant referring to economics textbooks. I mean concrete evidence that empty shelves right now due to this epidemic are the results of price gouging laws. For example, showing that states with price gouging laws have empty shelves and states without do not, when controlling for other factors.
    • megous 7y ago
      You can't control for other factors in an economy. Every economic textbook will have a demand and supply graph, it's not hard to see what happens when you fix a price arbitrarily and shift the demand curve in that graph to simulate a higher demand. Demand and supply no longer meet -> shortage.
    • BurningFrog 7y ago
      > I don't meant referring to economics textbooks. If you don't allow referring to the vast empirical literature on price controls, you've already decided what you want to believe.
      • smnrchrds 7y ago
        Flu can cause fever. Every fever is not caused by flu. Every flu does not cause fever. I am like a patient asking the doctor is they have evidence this fever is caused by flu, not for example COVID-19. I wouldn't want to be referred to medical textbooks telling flu causes fever as your only evidence.
      • epistasis 7y ago
        Economics textbooks takes on price controls are very different from price gouging controls, as they operate on different time scales. Price gouging controls are much more likely to prevent shortages than cause them, as they prevent market manipulation, which is another topic that economics textbooks have some good takes on.
• zxcvbn4038 7y ago
  I bet all of the survivalist guys are sitting guys are sitting in their bunkers with their prime rib MREs and laughing at us right now. At least people are panic buying a range of items, usually it’s just milk, eggs, and bread. What is the grand plan there? French toast three meals a day for a month? Custard? Really runny scrambled eggs on toast? You might want some raisins if your going all-in on bread pudding. I bet a lot of it ends up getting thrown away.
• robocat 7y ago
  If you have any ethnic food stores near by, try them. They tend to have cheap dry goods, with high food value. Although you may not be so familiar with everything, some initiative helps. Also, keep your eyes open for unobvious cheap food - people panic buy the food they know e.g. in NZ: wheat flour, pasta, tinned tomatoes. But while there was no flour, there were still dried beans and other products that have more food value on shelves that were still great value per $.
  • captainbland 7y ago
    Good advice. Although I do worry about how long that'll be true for given the empty shelves seem to expand to a new product every few days. Hopefully the supply chains will adjust or panic buying will slow down before it becomes an issue.