The Groceries That No One Wants to Panic-Buy | Hacker News Reader

The Groceries That No One Wants to Panic-Buy

slate.com

34 pointsKaibeezy37 comments

There was a thread on Reddit earlier explaining why there's still so much Dasani water on the shelves: https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/fji87t/what_i...

Spoiler: it's because Coca-Cola (which owns the Dasani brand) restocks the shelves themselves.

A little anecdote here. I remember when I was suffering from malnutrition issues (due to certain health problems) back in the day, I used to prefer Dasani to any other water as nothing felt as satisfying. Other water felt like tasteless distilled substance. At the time, someone told me Dasani's somewhat harsh taste/texture is due to trace amount of minerals added to it. If true, it does make some sense (at least to me) why some prefer it and others find it repulsive (plenty of anecdotes).

That last photo is from hurricane Harvey, it seems slate didn’t even bother doing the basic fact checking of reading the top tweet responses (where I found this: https://avocadbro.com/fact-check/vegan-food-photo-misleading... )

Slate isn’t exactly a bastion of journalistic integrity. It’s a left tabloid.

i'm sure that argument is very reliable, from a pro-vegan blog.

easy counterpoints: assuming it is shelf-stable, it would seem like an excellent option to buy it if you had no power? and if they are shelf-stable, why not store them - you know - on a shelf, and not in the perishable rack? seems cheaper, i don't quite follow. you don't store spam in a refrigerator. also, if the power did go off, and caused the refrigeration to fail, and supply chains were down, how did some ostensibly perishable items remain in the rack? (i guess it's possible staff checked them, or something else.)

but fair enough, neither of us are journalists. and they definitely should be doing some kind of fact checking.

I wasn't linking that blog because of anything it has to say about veganism and that picture, but rather because it's proof the picture is from hurricane Harvey.

From a sample size of two (my local supermarket, and a friend's local supermarket) people in Denmark have followed the government's appeal and stopped panic buying. I'm very impressed.

The only sold-out item in both shops is alcohol gel.

Toilet paper was on offer at the larger supermarket yesterday.

(I was also pleased to learn the Danish word for hoard: "hamstrer".)

Same here in Norway. Grocery stores are feeling pretty normal these days (didn't check for alcohol gel but toilet paper is bountiful).

Who wants to drink 4% hansa anyways.

You can buy isopropyl alcohol IPA and glycerine and make your own.

Funny thing, I am doing electronics at home and have a large stock of IPA and my wife has large stock of glycerine which she uses for cakes, mostly. Which means we can do our own alcohol thing without having to buy anything.

I'm just using soap. Supposedly it's better, and I'm barely leaving the apartment anyway.

If soap weren't available, I'd buy a 1L bottle of shower gel. It tends to be the same thing, with slightly different perfumes.

Alcohol has the advantage that you can take it with you and use it frequently because it evaporates leaving nothing. Glycerine is just to prevent your skin from drying out. It is possible to get infected through your skin if it is damaged.

I use some generic wet towels that I let dry out completely and then soaked with mixture of alcohol and glycerine.

When people say "on offer", does this mean "available for sale" or "displayed prominently" or "for sale at a discount"? Sorry, googling wasn't super helpful here.

That's the British expression for "for sale at a discount". "Bananas were on offer, so I bought two bunches." "Don't buy milk unless it's on offer."

There were several pallets of toilet roll, with a yellow A4-sized price label showing a small reduction in price.

Wiktionary is my usual reference for foreign languages, I don't know if you'd have success with English / British English: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/on_offer

Thanks!

Oh yeah? But have you tried to buy canned beans though? ;)

To me stocking up means less trips out. What's the point of quarantine if you're still doing a weekly shopping trip?

Reducing how often you're around people you're in close, on-going contact with (e.g. office mates). You can't reasonably expect people to just stay put and never leave unless you start bringing them supplies.

This panic buying is so ridiculous. If there's one thing the U.S. still does better than any country in the world, it's produce mass quantities of food. There'd need to be an apocalypse before we had trouble stocking grocery shelves over any sustained period of time. Plus, the buying patterns are totally illogical. All I see are people snapping up perishables; nobody's baskets are full of canned foods. How are people going to eat more perishables than they normally do? Are they all using this opportunity to improve their diet?

sigh

I told my wife three weeks ago that if she was worried she should start stocking up at the grocery store. But, alas, she didn't start caring until everybody else did, and then fought it out with people at Costco.

double sigh

There are people panic buying, but stocking up now is a good thing. I'm not afraid of US food production halting. I am afraid of weekly grocery trips.

> All I see are people snapping up perishables; nobody's baskets are full of canned foods. How are people going to eat more perishables than they normally do? Are they all using this opportunity to improve their diet?

my guess is that people are actually buying more non-perishables than perishables, but the supply chain has a much deeper buffer of non-perishables, so it appears the opposite is happening.

> There'd need to be an apocalypse before we had trouble stocking grocery shelves over any sustained period of time

I live in Chicago, which is one of the major nodes of the US food distribution network. I'd seen lots of photos of empty store shelves on Friday night as panic-buying set in.

I went to my local grocery store on Saturday morning and the shelves were full of everything but toilet paper. Workers were constantly bringing pallets of food out to restock as people were buying tons of food. Nobody was panicking, everyone was polite; I think the overwhelming availability of food was a calming effect.

Costco and Aldi manage their own distribution networks and may not be seeing the benefit of the hundreds of independent distributors that have this under control.

I'd like to hear about experiences in Houston - that's another huge node. My guess is that things are fine there too.

Is it ridiculous? Think this way. You have three small kids and four parents who are barely selfsufficient in best conditions. Now you know pandemic comes and people will be buying everything out.

Now, the question: will you go and buy a stock to last you couple of weeks or are you "listening to reason"?

I suspected what was coming and bought enough to last us couple of weeks the weekend before the panic here in Poland. She said I am panicking but, alas, we saw no meat anywhere for the past week.

It’s the opposite in the UK, with the exception of oranges fresh produce is fine and things like pasta, rice, baked beans and frozen fish fingers are long gone

Interesting.

I should qualify: I'm in San Francisco and have been to two different grocery and several convenience stories over the past few days.

I was in one convenience store today and I noticed the owner had stocked some shelves normally filled with cookies and snacks with different kinds of canned beans. My first thought was, "smart". My second thought was, "sigh but they're the only completely full shelves in the store".

> fresh produce is fine and things like pasta, rice, baked beans and frozen fish fingers are long gone

This is exactly what I noticed in the local super market in Boston as well.

Really weird in our local Sainsburys this morning - pasta and toilet paper shelves completely empty also no tomato soup. But plenty of everything else!

at sprouts in the bay area, i went to the grocery store on sunday and they had almost everything. they only ran out of some organic dried beans but the shelves were mostly stocked pretty well.

My local grocery store was unusually busy yesterday. People were stacking up their baskets and running around worried. Amazingly, the only shelves that were cleaned out were those that carried sliced bread, toilet paper and something else I didn't stop to check. Amazing because I don't like slice bread and prefer bidet to toilet paper. There was plenty of what I actually wanted. A lady who was checking out right behind me had only two cases of soda. I was thoroughly impressed with her bravery :)

In times like this being a weirdo who likes shit nobody wants actually pays because you can afford to come to the store the next day when everything (but the "repulsive shit") is swept off the shelves. You get to pick up what you need in peace. Of cousrse, then, you're called a bottom feeder who likes leftovers, but that's a hole another story.

The vegan food being left at the end is an old photo from a previous disaster.

It's also not like "vegan food" is some magic compound beyond the capabilities of us mere mortals... You don't need to buy overpriced ready-to-eat/processed dishes to keep eating vegan. Everything can be made with the same basic ingredients than any other food: canned beans, pasta, tomato sauce, vegetables, soy sauce, spices... All stuff that everyone buys, including vegetarians/vegans.

Please upvote https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22654623 to give IT a useful task in this crisis (yes, this a blog of mine)

Canned salmon and pickles seem to be unpopular too. Sure, pickles aren't a necessity, but if people are buying up canned tuna, sardines, mackerel, clams, and mussels, what gives with canned salmon? More for me, I guess.

At my local grocery store, every frozen vegetable package is sold out except for a tall, untouched stack of mashed cauliflower packages. My wife and I laughed so hard about the poor person who is in charge of getting those sold

First thought: "more chickpea pasta for me! Yum."

I don't remember when I've bought it by choice, but I certainly would be fine with it if it was the last thing left and I wanted spaghetti. On the other hand, I tend to avoid linguini of any kind.

Yesterday I bought the next to last loaf of any type of sliced bread at my local Lidl with the exception of the low carb bread which was fully stocked.

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