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Post by tomhill on Nov 19, 2011 17:23:01 GMT -5
First I would like to say hello. I have been visiting this site on and off for a while and I really like what happens here so I decided to register. I have a question. It seems to me that food inflation is running really high. I mean, when we look at the money we spend on groceries it is up nearly 20% on last year. We buy decent food, organic when we can, and so don't often find special offers or buy 1 get 1 free etc very often. I wonder am I doing my sums right or is it as bad as I think it is?
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Post by cye on Nov 22, 2011 17:00:24 GMT -5
welcome Tom hill. It's interesting to hear someone else who has similar experience to ourselves. UK inflation is reported at only just over 5% with food inflation just under 6%. i think the figures are skewed in favour of people who regularly buy a lot of the stuff that is coming down in price, e.g., those households who may be buying a flatscreen screen tv, PC, or a mobile phone every few months.
i am not sure what shopping basket they class as 'typical' when they're arriving at these figures but it sure isn't similar to our family grocery basket. i would say we are looking at 10-20% up on last year and we try and buy wholefood, and where we can afford it, organic. there seems to be plenty of offers on rubbish food but we don't buy it.
organic soya milk is up 50% on last year's price and we can't seem to find any at under £1/litre now. organic wholemeal flour is up 30% on its price of two years ago (15% inflation).
petrol/diesel is up perhaps 20% on last year, mains gas +40%, electric perhaps +25%, wood pellets are up +20% on last year.
regarding the building materials needed to maintain an old house like ours, i keep the old invoices in a shoe box and a cursary lokk suggests the same items are 25% dearer now than they were 2 years ago (12.5% inflation).
would be interested to hear of your experiences of non-food inflation Tom (and others too)
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Post by tomhill on Nov 23, 2011 4:50:37 GMT -5
So, food in the cupboard is worth more than money in the bank? We are thinking of spending our savings on a polytunnel. I feel more confident that is a good move.
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Post by cye on Nov 23, 2011 16:36:29 GMT -5
hi there tom, that sounds like one advantage to buying non-perishable food in bulk that not many people seem to consider. sound logic indeed.
even if you buy the sort of food that the folks who produce the 'suspiciously low' food inflation figures reckon we eat, say with 6% inflation, you are looking at saving yourself nearly 6% pa by maintaining a year's worth of whatever non-perishable food you would normally be buying on a more regular basis. once this system is up and running, ignoring any bulk purchase discounts you can obtain and just assuming you buy everything retail, every bit of this food you are eating will actually have cost you just over 94% of the current retail price (100/106= 94.3%)! with most bank interest taxable, I doubt you'd be getting that net of tax from any savings accounts. Now, if you focus on bulk buying the stuff where prices seem to be rising the most, say food with 15-20% inflation, you'll be saving at least 15-20% by maintaining a buffer of one year's stock.
for those in the republic of ireland, on top of this you'll also be saving a full 3% on anything you buy before the forthcoming VAT rise!
i'd say there are many other advantages of this too, including: [1] fewer trips out to the shops - less fuel and time wasted, less opportunity to get sucked in by the supermarkets' offers of stuff we really don't need, etc [2] buy in bulk and get a bulk discount either via BOGOFs or, say, by organising a bulk purchase with your family and friends forming a buying group via the likes of the wholefood company Suma. [3] makes you think about what what your household needs for good balanced nutrition, less impulse/temptation buying of unhealthy foods/snacks, etc. get the kids involved too, get them checking BB dates and rotating stocks....
same idea could be applied to fuel, say coal. i can buy 125kg of good coal for £30, but I'm sure it will cost me >25% more next year, so, if you have the space, why not buy a few extra tonne of it now rather than put your spare cash in the bank!
what do you think?
do you know what sort of foodstuffs keep well for this length of time?
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Post by tomhill on Nov 25, 2011 4:42:10 GMT -5
The 4 core items are wheat, powdered milk, honey and salt. They keep the longest and you can get by on them but it will be dull. Cooking oil, powdered eggs and spices widen the scope a bit but it is still no party. Dried veg, beans and tinned tomatoes last a good while add useful variety. Soy sauce keeps for 3 years (unopened), but it is not that popular at breakfast! What keeps the longest is only one factor. Those who store food seriously have a saying -" Store what you use and use what you store". You will not make best use of your store if you do not know how to use the foods or the group/family don't like them. The second part of the saying stresses the importance of rotating the stock so that should the time come when you need your store, the food will be at its best. Other things worth storing are multivitaims, water purafaction tabs, first aid, matches or lighters. A battery, or even better, a wind up radio is a must. It goes without saying that a stove to cook on and a supply of fuel is central to making this all work. That is another days work.
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Post by tphase on Nov 25, 2011 14:18:21 GMT -5
Spirits (un-opened ) will keep indefinitely Wine will last too, (I know one that supposedly peaks at 30 years) and may still be useful as vinegar after its' best Beer (in dark bottles) should be OK for a few years Coffee beans in a vac-pack will be OK after a year but past their best. Any tinned food should be OK for years, well past the best before date on the tin. Food in glass jar with a lid would presumably last as long as tinned if the seal is unbroken. By the way, I largely ignore best before and sell by dates on a lot of food. It's a legal requirement which, to me, seems to have little relationship to how long the food remains tasty or is safe to eat. eg I bought regular Cashel Blue cheese once which was almost out of date. Got a round of it at a knockdown price, left it in the fridge for 3 months and ended up with lovely mature Cashel Blue (which the same supermarket would sell at a premium)
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Post by cye on Nov 25, 2011 17:10:40 GMT -5
thanks tomhill and tphase for those useful pointers. the more i think about it, the more i realise how the average joe public over the years has been trained less and less on these sorts of things by family, schools etc with more and more consideration given to those things which necessitate reliance on overseas suppliers, long haul transport, supermarkets stocking everything under the sun & open 24 hours, refrigeration, etc whether or not there's a real risk of ever needing to keep a stock of candles, matches and lighters, etc., i think it would be really useful to show kids how these things work, where you have stashed a wee stock of these in the shed, and how a household could get by during a power outage. kids are excited even entertained by this sort of thing - Perhaps we should entertain and educate them on this type of thing before they grow out of it? I had mentioned a power-free day per month to the kids and they love the idea. At a young age, and ignorant of the serious political/social/civil unrest and horrors of the time, I can remember my excitement during the ulster workers strike of '74, with power cuts, fresh food not reaching the shops and no milkman, the almost positive attitude/buzz of the adults focussing on bare essentials and busying themselves with primus stoves, candles and oil lamps.... i love the idea of keeping new cheese and it getting better with age. is blue all you can do this with? i think most people don't make the connection , i.e., that a new cheese can become a mature cheese. i was given a load of old 1980s wine a while back and it's only the really sweet whites like dessert wine that were still palatable, and it had all been good wine to start with. i put the red stuff (any of which i'd tried having been past its best) up on freecycle (bad idea - loads of emails from probable winos). i wonder how you find out which wines really are good to keep, improve with age, etc.? spirits: i recently saw a program about a scottish island shipwreck of fine malt in the second world war. the island went crazy for a few days, but when the hangovers wore off, the very finest malt was to be had on special occasions for many years to come, and stashes are still popping up to this day! do you know which spirits are reasonably inexpensive and improve with age? powdered egg was very popular at one point and many supermarkets stock it because it's a common baking ingredient store.honeyvillegrain.com/powdereddriedwholeeggsandeggwhites.aspxwww.homesweethomefront.co.uk/web_pages/hshf_rules_dried_egg_pg.htm more info & ideas please!!!
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Post by tphase on Nov 26, 2011 6:49:09 GMT -5
any hard cheese (eg cheddar, gouda) will mature or probably any cheese which is sold at different levels of maturity. You'd need to buy full rounds or wheels of cheese and store them properly if you want to keep them for many months.
dessert wine and port have added alcohol to bring them to 20% + so they last better Good Bordeaux peak at about 15 years, Chateau Musar (from Lebanon) peaks at 30 years (allegedly) but you are talking about spending a good bit of money even if you buy them young
spirits in the bottle don't improve with age but are your best bet in terms of keeping alcohol for long periods. Your main concern will be avoiding evaporation of alcohol!
cheers gerry
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Post by caveman on Nov 26, 2011 13:54:04 GMT -5
I love the idea of 'un-opened spirits', it is just so implausible! On a more serious note. This is a great thread. It points at a herd of elephants in the room. Food is getting dearer and since modern agriculture could be described as a system for converting fossil fuels into food, it is going to keep getting dearer. Cye's point about educating the wee'uns is an important one and ties in with our dependance on other systems for just about everything. I feel that our generation is probably the least skilled in tool usage there has ever been. There are people can't even fix a bike. I have seen bikes scrapped on account of a puncture! Some people see this as a mark of sophistication. I don't. My daughter (9) can use a drill, jigsaw, most hand tools and can gas weld. The 6 year old is learning to do the same. There is great freedom in having these skills. To list them here would be preaching to the converted. I would add saw blades, an axe and a few relevent books to the stockpile list.
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Post by cye on Dec 3, 2011 10:48:43 GMT -5
wine storage, hmmmmm, maybe dig a cellar to hold some Bordeaux (15yrs) & some Chateau Musar (30yrs), and while i'm digging maybe dig some more & lay a slinky of ground source heat pipe?
would this make the cellar any cooler than a normal cellar, so as, say, we could use it as a chill room as well as getting some heat into the house?
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Post by tomhill on Dec 7, 2011 3:47:08 GMT -5
This morning BBC news reported that food infaltion is running at 4-6%? There was a suggestion that shops and supermarkets are in fierce competition which is holding prices down. I wish I could find them.
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Post by cye on Dec 7, 2011 15:47:02 GMT -5
the 'fierce competition' may not be as fierce a competition as they might have you think. there may be a range of 'collaborative arrangements' between them who knows, but going on their recently publicised tricks i wouldn't be surprised.
significant media coverage this week about the tricks the big supermarkets employ to make you think you've got a bargain.
- up the price for 28 days or more, then drop it again to the original price and advertise it as a big sale. - put a 'now' sticker on it which implies it was less before when it wasn't. i guess they're not lying but it is disingenuous to say the least. - tesco had a 'double the difference' deal on for a long while which understandably made many people think they had the best prices. some guy then started a website showing all the places that did the item for less and guess what, tesco cancelled the 'double the difference' deal. - 'great deal' advertisements on large packs, whereas anyone with a calculator can see that the smaller packs work out cheaper - bananas and apples loose at half the price of bagged banana & apples. the bags used a unit of measure of 'pieces' (per single apple or single banana) whereas the loose fruit was sold in kilos, making it impossible to compare prices without actually weighing the bagged fruit and comparing price per kilo -and more....
i was surprised the media made no mention of the trick we see all the time in the big supermarkets. they put a big sign on the shelf for a special price on say a 500g pack, then they stack the shelf with the correct product but say in 350g packs. punters end up paying full whack and most never check their bills.
i wonder whether the low reported food price inflation computation actually involves following a family around for a year to draw real life comparisons, or are they getting their figures from website best prices advertised by a range of supermarkets that the average family would never visit on a typical shop?
and what about the very significant hidden costs of supermarket shopping? the fact they only employ low skilled labour and effectively de-skill a community over time. the fact they only buy snooker-ball shaped apples and tomatoes and spuds from farmers who are then forced to dump perfectly good food. squeezing breakeven prices from the farmers so the latter are forced to cut corners and maximise yield of sinlgle varieties rather than grow wide variety, native varieties, forcing the farms to use high levels of pesticide and artifical fertiliser which in turn pollutes the rivers and seas.
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Post by tomhill on Dec 10, 2011 5:48:04 GMT -5
When I go to the local markets around here I am not convinced by all the produce that I see. Much of it looks like it came from a wholeseller and then it gets displayed in rustic wood boxes on the stall to give the right impression. The small farmers stall is easy to spot. The mix of produce says it all. Seasonal veg, some entertaining shapes, all of it unwashed and a few dozen eggs in secondhand boxes. I would not be surprised if those farmers were doing their best to maximise output, using chemicals as fertiliser and pesticide when they think it is worth it. This leaves me in front of the 'organic' stall where the prices are probably close to the real cost of food.
This reminds me. I was at one of those organic stalls considering a rough bar of plesant smelling soap. I mentioned to the earthy looking owner that my daughter had a reaction to an 'all natural' soap and I got a lecture about how the soap must have been contaminated by some chemical or other and that that could not happen if the soap was made from natural ingredients. This got my back up. Organic seems to have taken on the status of a religon. You are obliged to respect it no matter how silly the ideas. Don't ask questions, just believe. I pointed out to this believer that both oil and poo are organic and if you tried to wash your face with either you could be sure of a reaction.
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Post by campbeji on Dec 10, 2011 21:22:23 GMT -5
This is an interesting thread, a bit all over the place but very interesting. We have seen our food cost go up quite a bit over the years. I don't have specific numbers (not that well organised )but it seems that £100 at Tescos seems to fill the trolley a lot less than it did a year or two back. We have started to print out and use shopping coupons for the shopping, you can save quite a lot of money doing this and you can get some really good deals, ranging from 20p off a product to getting products for free. This would be a good help if you were to be buying in bulk as many of the vouchers don't have a maximum usage on them, for example we have a voucher which has 20p off the Campbells soup range, and they have a shelf life of 2 years +. I think its a great way to save money, and if you are able/willing to buy in bulk then it can really work well.
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Post by caveman on Dec 11, 2011 9:35:40 GMT -5
This thread is drifting about a bit but all of it is interesting. We also use coupons, points, special offers and short dated discounts but we still find it tricky to keep the price of the weekly shop from creeping up. I agree with tomhills point that 'organic' carries a lot of baggage. It is almost like a socal identity. I would prefer if, so-called organic food was just labled ' Produced in accordance with Regulation (EEC) N° 2092/91'or whatever standard applied. All those images of happy farmers with rosey cheeks carrying overflowing baskets, contribute to the stereotyped image of the organic shopper. I think such stereotyping excludes people. A more clinical/ official identifier might encourage more people to eat good clean food without worrying about lifestyle choices and other guff.
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