Food bank users declining potatoes as cooking costs too high, says Iceland boss | Hacker News Reader

Food bank users declining potatoes as cooking costs too high, says Iceland boss

theguardian.com

17 pointsperihelions19 comments

Something smells off to me, and I don’t think it’s a gas leak.

People have been eating potatoes in much worse economic conditions and with much lower technological sophistication than we have now.

Indeed, it’s probably cheaper to boil a potato now than at any point in history. Are people these days really suffering more than Irish or Eastern European peasants 200 years ago?

I suppose those peasants had free access to firewood (labor not withstanding), modern people are generally discouraged from raiding nearby woods regularly for fuel. That's all I can think.

Fair, but the modern equivalent exists which is plugging a slow cooker into an outlet that you don’t pay for.

If you’re in a tower block, I’m sure a neighbour would oblige you, or if they were also needy, you could boil their potatoes in exchange for helping you keep your clandestine cookery secret.

Safety-wise even if something like this sounds surprising, it could be best to assume that all the statements are correct, and then work backwards to try to determine what the cause is/was, and possible solutions.

>work backwards to try to determine what the cause is/was, and possible solutions.

Saving journalism is a large task.

There's always this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws

200 years ago they cooked on open fires, which was dangerous. It's even more dangerous today. Indoor fires are not only a fire hazard, but a carbon monoxide hazard.

TFA is about cooking with gas stoves. If your income was marginal a few months ago, then you can't afford the increase in gas prices. To switch to "lower technological sophistication" would likely get them thrown out of their homes.

If you've got electricity, and a microwave, it would be safer. But a lot of poor people can't afford those. Living at the margins means you have no room for any kind of unexpected cost.

Okay, I'll bite: what food is cheaper than the boiling of a potato?

Potato cooked over an open flame. You eliminate the middle man of the water bath.

I've been noticing a shortage of cartridges for isobutane stoves and propane since 2020. It may be that the food bank users are using camp stoves instead of residential electric or gas ranges. However the article makes zero mention of this so who the heck knows.

Boiling whole raw potatoes requires a lot more stove time than pasta and rice dishes. Also a lot more fluids and bigger pots. But it's still a stretch. I know for hiking I prefer dried foods because they are lighter.

That’s not really how people cook in the UK. Most houses will have a direct connection to the gas main or they will be using an electric cooker.

What I mean is that the user of a food bank would be un-housed or homeless.

That still doesn't sound right. There is a homeless problem in the UK but in terms of people living on the street that number is quite small. Food bank usage on the other hand is huge. The situation in the UK is quite different to what we hear about the US.

I did an experiment and given that my power (from National Grid!) costs about 16 euro cents per kwh, it costs me ~3.4 euro cents to cook a 180g potato, and ~18 euro cents to buy it in the first place.

Also, bringing the water to 100C over 10 minutes, and cooking covered on low for almost an hour, use roughly equal amounts of power.

Yeah, power is super cheap. This is why the only thing I could think of is maybe a camp stove, which is orders of magnitude more expensive.

I suspect the real problem is poorer people in the UK tend to be on pre-payment meters. If they haven't got enough money to feed the meter they can't cook. Even though it was probably the crapy resistive heaters the landlord put in that drained their meter.

Apparently sun dried potatoes can last for years, but it's too cold and humid in the Uk to do it easily.

One would need to jury-rig something like these out of stuff they already have, and it would only work if they have access to a place that gets enough sunlight... So it's a very long shot. https://www.rootsimple.com/2012/08/how-to-dry-food-with-the-...

Then, reserve money for a planned cooking date in the future, store the sun-dried potatoes until an opportunity to cook them arises, or find a time/place where it's possible to do it for free.

I had the thought of collectively cooking them for efficiency. In my optimistic mind I imagine a "sun dried potato party", but being quite frank the societies we're talking about like the UK aren't safe enough for the average person to just trust their neighbor, and when it comes to arranging an event like this, people's schedules conflict and they flake frequently.

If I was super poor and stressed out from working lots, would I want to do this? I'd certainly rather not. I'd rather get a loaf of bread, some easy-open cans of protein rich foods like beans and tuna, maybe some fruits. I'd also want to have electric cookery donated to me, so I can just boil the bloody potatoes and mash them like a normal person.

Would a pressure cooker help here in lowering the cooking cost?

Actually no. The same amount of energy is required to boil water to start with but then you need more to "super heat" due to increased pressure.

The geniuses at the Guardian can't seem to crack this puzzle....

Would anyone here take a wild guess at why cooking costs in the EU and by extension Ireland might make potatoes too expensive to cook?

Hint: it's not Putin.

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