For anyone wondering, Trader Joe's sells these in the US! They're great, and they're "real" Bamba and not a TJ's replica.
Peanut butter cheetos sounds like an incredible proposition, I'm going to be looking around for them this weekend!
Also at some point one company asked the cookie company to create a recipe to imitate some other product so they could compete. Except the cookie company was the one making that other product. So they copied themselves, it wasn't too hard...
Any difference in consumer price of the identical product would be largely due to advertising.
It’s not that brands spend money on ads so they have to raise the prices. It’s that advertising enables brands to charge more because they can
You know, collusion. Or emergent behavior that's essentially the same (but even that, while not necessarily illegal, is still bad for consumers).
People who work at Apple use AWS and people at Amazon use MacBooks. It's all complicated, but not sinister.
They did always have that one small change in there though, so that it wouldn't be exactly the same. Nothing you'd ever notice as a customer. Just a technicality so that each one could claim their own unique formula.
I think with another type of product it wasn't the thickness but a slight difference in the ratio of the flavorings - more raspberry and less blueberry here, more blueberry and less raspberry there.
that's the factory, but brands don't come from the factory, they come from the market, and have different reputations, strategies, customers and distribution channels. If you have a giant computer controlled cheese puffery, it's not that big a deal to change the formulation of the cheese, change the logo bags, etc. all on the fly, and it's much cheaper for you to do it than a smaller less sophisticated operation making you more customizable and still the low-cost producer.
did you know that even if you aren't a very big pizzeria or bakery you can order custom-milled flour from King Arthur for your restaurant? Their factory can handle it, and it engenders brand loyalty from fussy chefs.
I didn't. Although I'm not that surprised given I think King Arthur Flour has maybe around 500 employees or so including a cafe, retail shop, and cooking classes and sells a pretty premium product. (Was actually surprised the number is so low. It's also employee-owned.)
Should bulk cheese puffs be state owned?
Lots of national brands have a "this is not produced in a factory or machine that produces any store brand".
actually, the companies don't have a problem with it, the customers do. customers (it's human nature, maslow's hierarchy, etc) cling to their beliefs about themselves and their identification with products that reflect their values. Companies would rather cut costs and sell one-size-fits-all products, but they need to give customers what they want, and different customers want different things.
> Lots of national brands have a "this is not produced in a factory or machine that produces any store brand"
and many people have the need to think that they are "better" than store brands, or more likely on HN, that they "see through" all the marketing, so companies market to you "transparently"... if a brand says "this is not produced X way" and you didn't even mention X, hmmm, do you really think they haven't figured you out?
if you are the cheese puff king, the most expensive thing you can do is not sell everybody exactly what they want, and you probably have redundancy in your manufacturing facilities, so why not segregate which products are on which machines, so long as a market segments aren't too small.
https://www.costcobusinessdelivery.com/kirkland-signature-to...
"Bamba Peanut Snacks contain just four, simple ingredients: corn grits, peanut paste, palm oil, and salt."
Why do you say this? Just curious. Palm oil is one of the better plant oils, no?
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/palm-oil...
It is a saturated fat, but it's being mixed with highly unsaturated peanut oil, so the whole-product average is probably insignificant.
It’s actually insane, and palm oil is at least 400% better than the next best.
Edit: coconut oil production is variable depending on where you check. It might be half as good as palm oil.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/oil-yield-by-crop
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-plant-oil-yield-...
No, palm oil is terrible and everywhere in ultra processed food because it's extremely cheap.
There are few healthy vegetable oils and they tend to be very expensive: olive, macadamia, coconut, etc.
EDIT: I stand corrected, it has moderate amounts of PUFA, but terrible Omega 6 to Omega 3 ratio (45/1), which is thought to have metabolic consequences.
Yum.
Depends on which port and which personnel.
The better informed are all aware that after discharge, if the remaining barrels of benzene or methanol can be completely removed by suction and evaporation from the designated edible oil compartments and all associated pipelines and hoses, there is never any cleaner equipment.
Considering earlier voyages, there is no way 12 hours of shipyard cleaning is going to be as effective at removing traces of previous cargoes like acrylonitrile or spent transformer oil, compared to a full voyage when loaded with hundreds of tonnes of such a clean, strong solvent as high-purity benzene or methanol.
So you can only imagine whether everyone involved will all play their supposed part to the fullest extent you might have in mind when preparing for bulk edible oils. Every time.
Sometimes expediting the movement will have to take precedence, other times there "just might" be the attitude of "why bother?"
And when you're the one climbing down inside the vessel compartment to inspect for cleanliness, there can be quite a bit of pressure not to reject a tank that looks so clean (as long as there is no obvious wetness) compared to some of the other choices on board the same ship. Once any of the crew or yourself has been down there and come back up without immediate ill effects, it's been long thought it can't be that bad unless you actually saw something wrong visually.
Certificates of Cleanliness, if required, will always be a part of the paperwork package.
And may I remind you it's the methanol that carries the skull & crossbones, not the benzene.
Peanut I found out are technically legumes, where as pecan, almond, cashew, walnut, pistachio, etc are tree nuts.
So while we call them all "nuts", peanuts are quite different than tree nuts.
Daughter developed severe tree nut allergy(that we don't leave home without 2x EpiPen) by age 3.
Had pleanty of foods with peanut butter, but seldom tree nut exposure (outside of mixed nuts which she was too young to consume).
She can eat peanut products just fine, but we end up telling everyone all nuts allergy including peanuts... As some people don't know the difference.
Now I am finding everything "peanut free" is not always tree nuts free, there's different labeling =/
Cashew is in alot of vegan foods and South Asian dishes (though alot of restaurants stopped using cashew based thickener now, some still do).
https://www.target.com/p/osem-bamba-peanut-butter-baby-puffs...