Bagels and shrinkflation
A few years ago I started shopping at Lidl and came to really like their bakery.
I noticed over time that their bagels became smaller.
Smaller than the bagels at Giant supermarket, and two real bagel shops I eventually found. Currently "everything" bagels at Lidl are 79 cents each. At the real bagel shops "everything" bagels are $2 each.
The Lidl bagels are smaller, the "everything" bagels don't have salt or nearly as much. I like them better than the bagels from one of those two "real" bagel shops.
Thankfully, the smaller Lidl bagels have fewer calories!
I remember a few years ago I saw several articles about bagel places scooping out some of the bread for people watching their weight.
Duh, they should have just made them smaller.
The Lidl bagels are still large enough to make decent sandwiches.
It reads a bit like "Four legs good, two legs better."
Or the rationalization of an abused spouse. "Oh, he didn't mean to hurt me."
It's fine to like and buy smaller bagels, I've seen both large and small in grocery stores for years.
But let's not pretend these companies are trying to do anything other than pull the wool over our eyes.
Bacon is one of the greatest visible offenders out my way. You can still find full 1lb packages, but they're tucked off to the side, and all of the sales and signage points to how much of a great deal the 3/4 lb packs are, despite being a higher cost/oz.
So many Millenials are commies now because we want to buy goods without having to clip coupons, download apps, fill out surveys, agree to device tracking, purchase history analytics, opt in to spam, study daily/hourly/seasonal price fluctuations, and evaluate hundreds of credit card options to avoid getting ripped off.
I want to say "I want a burger, fries, and a soda" without having to sit there with a calculator to know if the combo is actually a deal or a 10% markup over buying individually.
I don't want to have to study whether I should wait 5 weeks to replace a broken fridge to save $500.
I want the price to be the price. No coupons, no sales, no discounts. Goods near spoilage should be given out for free, and nonperishable excess inventory can be resold to dedicated clearance stores.
No bulk purchase discounts for retailers. If Walmart wants to negotiate a lower cost/unit with a manufacturer, that becomes the new price that everyone pays.
I don't want this.
A common mental trap many people fall into without realizing it is to unconsciously assume that the rest of world is like them, thinks like them, and that their demographic is the "main character".
People in general, want to buy things without having to jump through hoops.
I also can't remember the last time anyone accused anyone of being "communists". Especially since republicans have had trump who is BFFs with Putin.
I don't have a problems with smaller sizes as long as it is reflected in the prize. Lidl bagels are smaller, but they are also cheaper than other bagels.
I agree with the rest of what you had to write.
That was self-identification, not accusation.
We're big kids living in an old man's world.
I didn't take it as an accusation ( an accusation of what? ). I took it as "we are the world".
Ironically, something Baby Boomers were often accused of by generations older than theirs. Interestingly, Baby Boomers are often accused of never fully growing up either.
Sorry, I latched on to that bit and misunderstood. You could F/R for 'socialist' and it still generally holds.
"You call that socialism? We'll show you socialism."
Interestingly enough, the "accusation" at the Millennial fits me, as a gen-xer, and I know I'm nowhere near the target audience.
It's funny how the world you grew up in and the worldview you obtained from it really skews things.
Communists maybe in the sense that government control over how advertising happens is the only way to achieve this?
We already have government control over advertisng. Just the laws are weak and outdated.
I'm more in favor of a full state-owned food production chain from ground to mouth.
What?
This is my favorite thing about buying hard alcohol in Oregon, followed closely by the lack of sales tax. The state controls the shops including pricing, so you pay the same just over the border as you do in the rest of the state. They even have a website where you can check pricing and inventory.
Setting aside the specifics of bagels, here in Portugal supermarket profiteering through shrinkflation, markups, fraudolent "discounts" and more are pretty extreme across the board. More and more I just want to buy basic ingredients and learn to make things at home.
It has been a while but a friend once gave me a kit for curing bacon at home and I remember the result was really good.
If it's any comfort, the basic ingredients are also suffering shrinkflation, if in less obvious ways.
One store me sells 5lb bags of sugar for one brand at a higher price per lb than the 1lb bag from the same brand, which is counterintuitive and works because of the deeply engrained 'buying bulk is cheaper' mentality.
It'll be a trick like 'buy 2, get 1 free' on the 1 lb with '$1 off the 5 lb', with both marked up over usual price. Unless customers are willing to sit down and do the math, it's such a slight difference most won't notice.
You might say"'oh it's just bad sale timing," until you notice that sale never materially changes prices, just wiggles the math around using different words and baseline prices. There is no bottom to the pit of evil that is marketing accounting tricks to fool customers.
We make our own yogurt and bake our own bread using a recipe that doesn't require kneading or punching. We eat soup or chili most days based on dry beans, lentils or split peas. It saves significant money.
This is awesome. How have you come into the possesipn of the knowledge that you let's you do such feats? Would you be able to share? I am not yet at a point where I need to do what you do for finatial reasons, but I would still like to utilize and dessiminate the knowledge. Bowl food is some of the best food, closely followed by good bread (I can take or leave yogurt, although I might be biased from never having tried the homemade stuff)
Edit - I am voicing my own cooking philosophy here, cooking for my family. Cooking is a skill that can be polished to great effect. However, for the basic level I am aiming for, soup is really not difficult although if using dried beans, it is important to pre-soak them in water long enough. Soaking is not necessary for split peas or lentils. Cooking is a more forgiving process than baking, so I get creative based on themes. I use beans, some meat for flavor, onion, sturdy vegetables that will stand up to long cooking times, sometimes greens, sometimes mushrooms, a bay leaf. One can add rice or barley if desired but we tend to eat it with bread. We do water based soup rather than cream soups but both are possible. Easy recipes are fairly easy to find either written or on youtube.
I will come back and add in our bread recipe.
Edit - if you haven't cooked or baked much, you might need to buy some basic equipment for measuring and pots and pans.
From Wikipedia:
So, perhaps it’s returning to an older tradition :)
Oh no the sources and archives are gone. I wonder they were thin ones or miniature fat ones? I love how bready they are tho I'm glad they're huge now
TIL that there were bagels in the U.S. as early as 1915.
For more fun facts about bagels, there's a podcast that I listen to called Gastropod and they did an episode on the history of the bagel: https://gastropod.com/the-bagelization-of-america/
Oh cool.
Bagels are very old. Where there are Jews, there are Bagels.
It makes sense that it'd really see an uptick in the states starting around WW1 though.
Family apocrypha is that one grandfather came from Russia in 1905 as a draft-dodging teenager stowed away in the bilge of a ship, having nothing to eat but a string of bagels around his neck.
One problem with modern bagels is portion sizing and calories. Here's some data [PDF warning] from a relatively traditional bagel maker. The 57 g "mini" bagel is the original pre-1915 size referenced in the Wikipedia article. I don't have a problem with smaller bagels (and actually want a smaller bagel I can eat as a single serving before it goes stale) as long as the price is proportionate to the quantity and quality.
I'm not in a region covered by Lidl stores, so I can't say whether their bagels are made by the traditional "boiled then baked" method. All the grocery store bagels I've ever tried have been made in steam ovens, with higher water content dough and more conditioners, which makes for a softer crust and spongier interior. They usually don't get the 12+ hour proofing time that develops the classic sourdough-like flavor. I grew up eating the very traditional Detroit Bagel Factory products, so I'm particular about them and don't consider Lender's, Einstein Bros., Costco, etc. "real" bagels - they're just circular white bread with toppings and flavorings.
***If you're ever in northwestern Michigan, Bubbie's Bagels makes the genuine article, but they're huge - at least 6 - 8 oz. and ~ $2 each by the dozen.
I also like the idea of smaller bagels because they can have a higher ratio of crust to interior and be chewier [a six-inch diameter bagel with a one inch hole may have nearly four times the volume of a four-inch diameter bagel with a one inch hole].
Tell me you are an engineer without telling me you are an engineer. :-) lol
Per the profile, I am an everything bagel.
I'm imagining the scene from Fifth Element, where Korben Dallas is identifying himself to the police: "are you classified as a meat Popsicle?" You: "Negative, I am an Everything Bagel."
Hah, I was thinking of the exact same thing.
I'm guessing the smaller Lidl bagels are still same price?
Up here we don't have Lidl and our breads are price fixed across suppliers. But they do also have thinner / skinny bagels like Lidl's
I think Lidl bagels started off slightly larger. Still, they are a better size for me and cost only 79 cents. Bagels in Giant supermarket cost a few cents more. Bagel shop bagels cost $2.
"Skinny bagels" was the term I was looking for to describe regular sized bagels, but with less bread ( scooped out or made differently ).
Lidl bagels are not skinny bagels. They are smaller bagels.