Unecessarily Packaged Food

[AZRedhawk44]

I came across the attached pic on bookfaces, but I really started noticing it with corn in particular, maybe 10-15 years ago.  Very irksome to me at the time.  I was single, I like corn, I don't want to buy 4 or 6 ears of it though.  And I'd rather just buy a closed ear, maybe peel back a corner to inspect it on the pile in the produce aisle.

I don't think I've ever seen a peeled orange or banana like the pic shows.

What drives this?  Is it the ever-increasing need to barcode everything?  Paving the way to fire all the cashiers at the grocery store since produce is a sticking point?  Is it the need to constantly add "value" to products, much like the claims of "fresh squeezed" or "farm fresh" that you hear in fast food commercials?  Having it already peeled is a labor saving point of attraction?  Or are plastic products truly this cheap that it makes economic sense to have a person or machine peel corn/oranges/etc and then styrofoam and shrink wrap them?  Is it consumption laziness?  I've heard that foods that require more hand eye coordination lead to better problem solving skills in children.  Bone-in chicken, pitted cherries, an orange you have to peel, things like that.

Do shrink wrap plastics come off a different distillate tier in a refinery than gasoline, and that product just becomes waste if it isn't cheaply resold or even given away?

Why is EVERYTHING packaged?

[Fly320s]

Packaged peeled fruit?  Never seen that.

I have seem half watermelons that are wrapped, but that makes sense to me.  And plenty of veggies that are packaged.  I never buy those; I like to pick out my own fruit and veg.

[Jim147]

They don't do that around here but when in season the grocery store buys out of the horse drawn Amish carts.

[charby]

I've seen pealed oranges for sale. I was wtf.

Subway does sell bags of sliced apples.

[zahc]

You haven't seen anything if you haven't been to Japan. They are obsessed with individually wrapping everything. I think they think it helps give them a psychological edge in jacking up the price. Kind of like pricing things like x.99....you can charge more for 20 lovingly wrapped individual apples than a bag of 20 apples kind of thing. I've noticed the trend in the US a little bit, but our Buy-N-Large culture cancels it out. It's just another aspect of the package shrinkage treadmill.

[Bogie]

I had two customers today who had never been taught how to read a dipstick.
 
One of 'em had a car that left a trail of oil on the road to where it got pulled off, bit a big black puddle underneath.
 
Never been taught.

[JTHunter]

Have you ever heard of "VAT"?  It stands for "Value Added Tax" and it allows the manufacturers and producers to charge more for the "added value" of them cleaning and portioning out something for you.

[Doggy Daddy]

I've seen pealed oranges for sale. I was wtf.

Can't recall whether I've seen that or not, but it does ring a bell.

[Fly320s]

Have you ever heard of "VAT"?  It stands for "Value Added Tax" and it allows the manufacturers and producers to charge more for the "added value" of them cleaning and portioning out something for you.

That is not how VAT works.  VAT is a tax.  It is in the name.  The manufacturers can charge whatever they want regardless of any taxes.

From Wikipedia:  How a Value-Added Tax Works

A VAT is levied on the gross margin at each point in the manufacturing-distribution-sales process of an item. The tax is assessed and collected at each stage, in contrast to a sales tax, which is only assessed and paid by the consumer at the very end of the supply chain.

[Grandpa Shooter]

Isn't this individualization of foods just part of the grab and go meal trend that started many years ago?  I remember when the grocery store deli's started advertising fully prepared meals for couples and families so they could just grab it and go eat it.  Over the years food packaging has been increasingly individualized so that folks could just grab it and eat it.  It makes sense those same folks don't want to peel it and have trash in their cars, or apartments they then have to take time to dispose of, that would take effort.

[fifth_column]

Paving the way to fire all the cashiers at the grocery store since produce is a sticking point?

This rings truest to me.

[K Frame]

"I've seen pealed oranges for sale."

That concept does ring a bell.... 




I've seen stuff like this in some stores, especially the higher-end botique stores that market organic/healthy really hard... Whole Foods Market comes to mind...

It's the height of pandering to the  "I'M SO *expletive deleted*ing BUSY I NEED EVERYTHING TO BE DONE FOR ME!!!!!!" Soccer Karen Mom crowd...

A sort of horrible, final conclusion to the prepackaged convenience food revolution that started during and after World War II when so many women entered the workforce for the first time.

[MechAg94]

I think people get the idea the extra cost is worth the convenience.  Usually it isn't.  I used to hand pick apples and put them in the little bags.  I started just buying the bags of apples because I wasn't really picking better apples anyway. 

Pealed oranges don't makes sense to me at all.  How do you tell if it is fresh?

[HankB]

I've never seen peeled bananas for sale. The only peeled oranges I remember seeing for sale at the grocery store were also canned - mandarin oranges. Watermelon slices & cubes are common and have been for decades, as are diced melons - all at a price well above that of the whole fruit.

[Pb]

Packing fruit like that doesn't make much sense but...

There is a lot be said for the value of food packaging in general.  I recall reading about a study of household garbage, comparing the USA versus Mexico.  Garbage in the USA had much more food packing than Mexico.  However, Mexico had a lot more food waste.  Apparently the extra packaging in the USA reduces food spoilage significantly.

[Devonai]

What's old is new again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

[WLJ]

Bananas already come in a natural bio degradable package that is also fun to leave on sidewalks.

[230RN]

My old geriatric paranoia about marketing strategies tells me that it's better to charge $1.52 for four units of produce all packed up "so nobody can sneeze on them" than $0.38 for four individual ears of corn (or whatever).  Besides forcing the choice to buy four of them when all you needed was three.

Besides, if you get used to buying "a package" of something that contains four of them for $1.52, You also got used to the idea of buying "a package" of them and when they cut it back to $1.52 for "a package" of only three of them, you don't really feel the price has actually gone up. This kind of *expletive deleted*it is why the Government's figures on inflation rates are false.

Consider a ten ounce package of Balzac Bikini Shaving Cream that costs the same as the previous package of 12 ounces of the stuff . Guess what? That's inflation right there, but isn't counted as a price rise because the price per package is the same.

You may have noticed this kind of strategy / tactic / scam with hot dogs over the years.  If you've had some years under your belt to observe this.

Interestingly, quite a while ago I started to have the produce clerk cut a head of lettuce in half for me, which they're happy to do, and he'd put the other wrapped half back with the other whole heads.  On at least several occasions I have gone back to the produce section a short time later and found that the other half is also gone, so there is an actual demand for half-heads of lettuce.

Fancy that.

Terry "Scams Abound," 230RN

[Jim147]

Years ago in highschool we had old guys come in and cut a dozen egg carton in half or just get one stick of butter out of a pound.

I understand it was a cost or waste thing but piggly wiggly was not set up for that and always had to have a manager co e over.

[230RN]

Bananas already come in a natural bio degradable package that is also fun to leave on sidewalks.

Unless it happens to you, Nelson. 

           

Empathy is an unpleasant bitch if you ignore her.

[JTHunter]

What's old is new again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

In 1964, we went on a family vacation to the NY World's Fair.  We ate at an automat that looked nearly identical to that one in the link from 1936 Manhattan, partway down the page.

[zxcvbob]

I bought a half a pound of tea yesterday.  (every once in a while I remember that I like iced tea)  It was much cheaper to get a box of 100 teabags than a box of loose tea.  Same brand even.  I can't figure that out, unless maybe the bags contain tea dust and the loose tea has mostly whole or chopped leaves.

[JTHunter]

Consider a ten ounce package of Balzac Bikini Shaving Cream that costs the same as the previous package of 12 ounces of the stuff . Guess what? That's inflation right there, but isn't counted as a price rise because the price per package is the same.

You may have noticed this kind of strategy / tactic / scam with hot dogs over the years.  If you've had some years under your belt to observe this.

Interestingly, quite a while ago I started to have the produce clerk cut a head of lettuce in half for me, which they're happy to do, and he'd put the other wrapped half back with the other whole heads.  On at least several occasions I have gone back to the produce section a short time later and found that the other half is also gone, so there is an actual demand for half-heads of lettuce.

Fancy that.

Terry "Scams Abound," 230RN

Not just hot dogs.  Look at what they have done to ice cream.  From 64 oz. half gallons to 56 oz/1.75 qts. and 48 oz./1.5 qts. 

[Jim147]

The 12 ounce bacon packaging always upsets me. They did the same thing with bags of IQF chicken. Used to be 3 pounds now 2.5 is a big bag.

[WLJ]

1lb cans of coffee that are now 11.5oz