What you're going to miss out by buying your preserved goods is assurance of quality and variety. There are a lot of deceptive labeling practices in the food i

What you're going to miss out by buying your preserved goods is assurance of quality and variety. There are a lot of deceptive labeling practices in the food industry. Things like an ingredient list that says your food contains "natural flavors" without saying what they are, or not having an ingredient list at all. When ingredients are listed it's common not to have quantities listed, and virtually never do you see any account of the sources of those ingredients. Of course there's no way to tell whether they're telling the truth either, and no way to know how the food was prepared or how sanitary the preparation or ingredients were, what mistakes or accidents happened during the manufacture, etc. As to variety, there is usually not very much variety at all in preserved goods at the grocery store. Pickled or fermented goods are packaged at the time of the manufacturer's choosing, so you really have almost no choice as to what stage of ripeness or what flavor the product is to have. Compare this with preserving your own food, where you have complete control over and knowledge of the ingredients, source of the ingredients, method of preparation, flavor, degree of ripeness, and virtually everything else. You can completely customize everything to your needs and desires, and don't have to settle for whatever the manufacturer chooses to give you. It really opens up a whole world of possibilities that store bought food just doesn't offer.