Trying to be positive in an ocean of poo, making your own tortillas is cheap, fast, kinda fun to do with kids and you can augment them for extra flavour. You can even batch prepare them in advance as long as they're not in contact with air.
Many of those are the same. Pizza dough : once a month take 30 minutes preparing 10 rolls and in the freezer.
By far the most abundant chemical in any modern human is dihydrogen monoxide, I'm not sure that any hydrocarbon you will find in a tortilla is really even a comparison.
Nah, it's just that the comment you're responding to is being insufferably pedantic. Your colloquial use of "chemicals" here is perfectly well understood.
While the colloquial is well understood and @jlengrand shouldn't feel bad about using the word "chemical" in this way, on a nerd forum like this I think it's valid pedantry — our bodies are massively complex chemical reactions, and half the stuff I've borne witness to people in my life complaining about are genuinely useful one way or another, for example by preserving the food or making it taste better.
I understand and appreciate that you want the terms used to be correct. I feel that the tone you used probably rubbed people the wrong way. Had you for example corrected me and given me the correct terms and definitions, I'm quite sure people would have appreciated the gesture. Actually, even up to now I'm not 100% sure what I should have used :). Additives, preservatives, ...?
BTW, interestingly in a previous life I studied chemistry... Only always in French
Exactly, I despise people who say things like "everything is made of chemicals" or "vegetables are carbohydrates" when they perfectly know exactly what I mean.
Flour and sugar based products are both absurdly high profit margin and the cause of the obesity pandemic (not a coincidence), you could make your own stuff for cheap, or just cut so the majority of flour based products from your diet - either option is a positive direction.
Interesting point. With high inflation and many professions being made obsolete by AI, cooking and baking authentic cultural foods at home may become the new obsession.
on a tangent, either buy fresh tortillas (the package should be very warm, almost hot) or make your own. Get some good tortillas and you'll want the others outlawed as a crime against humanity. I'm fairly anti-government but i would be ok if a law was passed in the fine state of Texas requiring all restaurants to make their own tortillas fresh when ordered.
I find comments like this weird, I never think about purchases that small. I honestly have no idea how much I pay for tortillas normally but $7 would not even be a blip on my mental radar
Jeff Bezos was interviewed in Pay Pal days after making many millions, and as they drove across the GGB, was asked why he was still driving his beat up honda - he said "Why, just because I have some money? Its still a good car!"
FF 2020: Jeff Bezos builds worlds most expensive yacht, and is having a municiple bridge dismantled so it can pass through, and local residents want to throw eggs at it as it passes by!
>FF 2020: Jeff Bezos builds worlds most expensive yacht, and is having a municiple bridge dismantled so it can pass through, and local residents want to throw eggs at it as it passes by!
As someone from the country you're referring to: this is an internet meme... The bridge that was dismantled is meant to be dismantled for such a thing.
Jeff Bezos did not and also cannot order bridges to be dismantled.
I think we're all reading the wrong message from that quote. It's supposed to look like the guy's humble but that's just the miser entrepreneur mindset. Spend as little money on luxuries, spend as much as possible on making more money. The CEO at the company I work at is the same way, drives absolute banger cars in an effort to save money or something. I think he ends up paying more in repairs than if he just bought a new one.
Can't seem to find it - but some time ago there was a short vid on why the price of bananas world wide was a good litmus on the shipping/economic trade - it went into detail on how banana prices could be used to measure certain stress points in global trade... I cant seem to find it though.
However, in looking for it I found this, which is kind of interesting:
>>"Are there more international laws on the trade of bananas than conventional weapons, like AK-47s?"
>>"The short answer is astonishingly, yes. The global trade in bananas or banana plants is governed by at least three binding global agreements and the non-binding, though strictly adhered to, Codex food code. The arms trade is not governed by any binding global agreements."
You're confusing the Arrested Development scene with this video probably: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5RiYxGahps of Boris Johnson claiming to eat Gregg's all the time, but not knowing the price (which I could excuse him for; I have Gregg's now & then & I can only remember the price as being "maybe a little over 1£".
Even if you don't care about a few dollars, careless excess spending can drive prices up.
I don't care, really, whether the box of macaroni and cheese I buy is $0.35 or $1.69. But I'll tend to buy the cheaper, just because I don't want to contribute to the success of the higher price point. It's my fight for the common man.
All my efforts are completely negated when my wife goes shopping :(
I didnt grow up poor, and I have made "tech money" my entire career - but I very often check cent/oz on products - because I dont like being cheated at that level...
HOWEVER.
Annecdote:
I was at dinner in SF - and we were at a very nice restaurant, nice wine, food etc. My buddy was kvetching over buying this watch, which was something like $200 and was talking about how he wasnt sure if it was worth it...
I looked at him and said "We are spending over $200 on this bottle of wine tonight without blinking, which will be gone in moments - and youre kvetching over a $200 watch which will be around forever?"
> I very often check cent/oz on products - because I dont like being cheated at that level.
You have to do this in the cereal aisle! All the different-sized boxes of the same exact cereal have wildly different price-per-weight. And the largest-sized box is rarely the cheapest-per-weight!
what surprised me is how expensive plain Cheerios have become. My wife explained it as if I were stupid - they are mostly whole grains and very little garbage. All the other cereals have so much crap in them that the input price hasn't increased as much.
The grocery store near me sells a bigger box of multigrain Cheerios for less than the smaller box. The smaller box is on the eye level shelf, and the bigger box is on the bottom shelf, you have to bend down to get to it.
It has been like this for years. It is not just cheaper by unit, the whole box is just straight cheaper, but I can only assume people do not want to bend down? Even the prices are clearly visible from standing position.
Yep, it's common for the cheapest things to be on the bottom shelf as they make the store the least money. And the way to combat it - always choose something from the bottom shelf then look further up to see if there's something you would prefer.
I do the same - for some reason I agonize over purchases of "permanent" things like clothing, video games etc while not blinking an eye at spending the same on "temporary" things like restaurant meals or cocktails.
I grew up lower middle-class and for a long time my tech salary kept my mind off such things, which was nice. I wanted to forget about that whole situation.
But I recently stopped buying in corner shops because their prices are usually close to 50% higher than in large supermarkets and with food inflation it makes a difference in my budget.
I don’t think it’s “extreme privilege” to not notice a price increase of maybe $3? I could see it if you’re living in extreme poverty but anyone middle class and above shouldn’t waste mental energy on things like that
You don't have to live in "extreme poverty" to have to pay attention to every penny you use.
Expenses across the board have skyrocketed in the past year. Try and read some stories about what people living in colder, rural areas in Northern Europe (Scotland, Scandinavia, etc.) have had to deal with and you would start to get an idea.
If your rent suddenly increased by 30%, and winter heating bill tripled since last year and food costs 25% more than a year ago, then a lot of people with normally sufficient income would be having financial issues.
When a coffee costs $7 instead of $4, even if I could "afford it" is something any normal human being notices. Rich or poor. Being able to afford such change is a different story.
Do you not even look at your phone/credit card when you tap? Do you really just randomly pay things?
As an anecdote, I have a mentor/friend who made 500k+ from the 1990s to present day. He once told me in a nonchalant way, "there was a point in my life where I realized I could basically buy whatever I wanted." Hearing him say this was like a different language for me.
There were several years early in my childhood where macaroni and cheese was one of the main courses in family meals, because we didn't have much money. This was until my parents worked multiple jobs and promoted their way into respectable wealth - hearing my friend make that comment really stuck with me and I laugh whenever I'm reminded of it, like today.
Anyway, I agree with you totally. The OP comment doesn't seem like a normal thing for people to say and is rather tone deaf IMO. I could make ten times more than what I do now and would still notice yogurt being 80% more in our grocery. Luckily for me I don't have to budget when it comes to groceries, but I'm well aware of how much pain some people/families must be going through.
That is just single item, let's take buying something like 50 items a week and half of those go up by 3. So 75 more spend in week or 300 in a month. That is not exactly small amount for middle class.
It's certainly not limited to extreme poverty. I'd say the clear majority will show concern when a grocery item climbs $3.
While I wouldn't accuse you of showing "extreme privilege" for not noticing a $3 price increase... good on you for not needing to worry about that... I'm tempted to accuse you of it for thinking it's only the poor that would. That's a pretty glaring disconnect.
I also do not think about the prices of (most) individual items, because I don't want to devote that much of my memory to the constantly fluctuating prices of dozens of small-ticket purchases. BUT, I do track my average weekly grocery bill, which is much easier to do, and it's been going up alarmingly fast. Is that what you meant?
I think growing up in poverty definitely instilled a sense of 'keep a track of every dollar!'. The one good thing I did was, my income has gone up but my spending has not. So even though I could move up in terms of buying power, I have instead bough - a very little bit - of comfort via stability.