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by rqtwteye 1031 days ago
Sometimes I buy sugar free corn flakes and although they should be cheaper theoretically, in reality they cost a multiple of the super sugary flakes. It would be great if we could get more products that aren’t sweetened when you buy them. Like corn flakes, cereal, bread, chocolate milk and lot of others.
3 comments

This is a grocery store and grocery distribution consolidation/duopoly/monopoly problem, which is a separate issue than the food that is sold.

This is actually one reason I love FBA - I can buy all sorts of small brand specialty health foods from Amazon, bypassing what the local stores choose to stock (or, more often, not stock).

Amazon's anticompetitive practices mean this will become harder in the future however, as they will use this sales and pricing and customer data directly against any mom and pop product that becomes sufficiently successful.

We really need better protections for small businesses that sell via giant online platforms. There is no shortage of healthy, tasty food, people who want to sell it, or people who want to buy it.

Hehe, a while ago I embarked on a quest to find the lowest-added-sugar corn flakes.

6 or 7 supermarket chains further, sometimes a dozen products in same category, end result: not one (0) without added sugars. Anywhere. And all in a similar range, iirc.

So basically the same product everywhere. Just minor tweaks (or with/without chocolate, eg.) + packaging, brands & pricing differences.

Just goes to show how powerful food conglomerates destroy consumer choice.

I assume a lot of food is produced like toothpaste. I used to know a guy whose dad had a factory that produced toothpaste and shampoo for almost all big brands. They did R&D for them and just put slightly different recipes into the branded boxes. That means that a lot of shampoos and toothpaste (and probably) are basically only slight variations of the same thing.
Corn flakes and chocolate milk (I'm so confused by the mention of this) are junk food products made with sugar. It makes no sense to have them sugar free. As for cereal and bread, it should be trivially easy to find these without added sugar. I don't know where you live but I'm confident you can find these.