[inglor_cz]

That was my idea as well. In my household, we rarely throw away any food. More likely, we run out of food entirely, which necessitates a short trip to nearby Tesco (7 minutes on foot).

I just don't get why people buy mountains of food. It is not just food waste, but money waste as well, and most people ought to respond to financial incentives.

[wkjagt]

You can buy a lot of food, and still don't waste it. I buy a lot of food, but waste almost nothing. With three school going kids, our schedule is packed, and having a stocked fridge that lasts Monday to Friday saves time in our daily schedule. I also cook more than we can eat at supper so the kids have leftovers to take to school the next day. Our fridge is often as full as it can get, but everything gets used up. In the rare case where something is wasted, it's because I miscalculated something.

[xyzelement]

There’s an evolutionary advantage for those whose children don’t starve if the Tesco has a brief supply disruption

[kergonath]

If the local Tesco has a disruption, there’s always the Morrison, Asda, or Sainsbury a slightly longer walk or a short drive away. There are many problems in the UK, but there is still food.

[xyzelement]

You can’t imagine a scenario where your kids go hungry from this type of thinking while your neighbor with a well stock pantry can ride it out?

We had a toilet paper shortage during Covid, you really can’t imagine a food shortage?

[inglor_cz]

Not the OP (though I am the GP), but if you are planning for emergencies, the food that you stock should be non-perishable, or at least long-lasting, and you can always eat the oldest stock and replenish it with newer one.

If the main concern is food waste - as it probably was in the article that we are discussing - disaster planning is not the problem. Impulsive buying of attractive stuff that you cannot finish later is.

[kergonath]

> We had a toilet paper shortage during Covid, you really can’t imagine a food shortage?

We had a run on food as well. What happened is that we prioritised food delivery, with in some instances the support of the army IIRC. Something we understandable were not willing to do for toilet paper.

There is a simple reason for that: you cannot have a functioning country if there is a famine and governments will do everything they can to keep a grip on their country.

If it comes to this, having a well stocked pantry becomes the least of your worries as you now have to defend it against your starving neighbours. They won’t be deterred by tough guy smugness.

It’s a good idea to have stocks because it helps mitigating short-term price spikes or unforeseen circumstances such as an accident. Not having stocks won’t cause anyone to starve.

[BrandoElFollito]

We had in France a shortage of pasta, flour and yeast (for a short time). I think there was a problem with butter at some point (I remember that because I bought margarine and it was uneatable).

At the same time there were plenty of other supplies uninterrupted and au no point was someone alarming about food shortages.

[john61]

Intermediate fasting is healthy, so it is probably the other way round.

[inglor_cz]

So many interesting takes in this hypothetical.

Fatter people have bigger reserves to lean on, but leaner people can hunt the fatties down and, uh, consume their fat in a certain non-consensual way.

[xyzelement]

The simple answer is that you should keep some “just in case” calories in your pantry, not in fat rolls. Best of both worlds.

[noduerme]

Well, yeah, but the real evolutionary advantage is just to people who have a mountain of children you need a superstore to feed.

[xyzelement]

Yes I totally agree with that. It’s orthogonal. You should have a lot of kids and have a non-fragile approach feeding whatever kids you have.

[noduerme]

Totally. But in the or case, I think most people are voting for quantity over quality, and I'm not seeing a great deal of evidence that it's an insufficient method (so far).

FWIW, kids are great but I have no interest in having any - I'll leave this world to you fine folks to kill each other over.

[groestl]

Mid-term. Long term evolutionary advantage is achieved by not killing the ecosystem that fills the Tesco.

[hulitu]

In some parts of DE the supermarkets close at 20:00 and on Sundays. You don't have many choices when to go shopping (assuming that you also go to work).

[bell-cot]

> I just don't get why people buy mountains of food. It is not just food waste, but money waste as well, and most people ought to respond to financial incentives.

Consider how highly engineered and processed many modern foods are, to maximize their "addictiveness". Assume that the not-so-benevolent geniuses behind that trend have also put some real work into encouraging wasteful over-purchasing of their food products.

[watwut]

In the past, with less engineered supply chains, people literally kept storage of non perishable food just in case.

Just in case was either war or supply chain issue or crops issue. Just about only people who did not had that could not afford it.

Buying just right amount of food for next two days is modern behavior.

[bell-cot]

Well...

In the quite-recent past, it was common routine to buy (or harvest) huge (by current well-to-do standards) quantities food "in season", and stockpile it for consumption months later. Historically, cheese exists because it's a way to store the nutritional value of milk - when you don't have access to pasteurization, refrigeration, and modern "steady-ish milk production 365-days-per-year" dairy operations.

And similarly (quite-recent past, before the green revolution and massive farm subsidies), far more of most people's income went toward buying food. So they managed their inventories of stored food pretty carefully - vs. modern "meh, whatever, I'll just buy more" attitudes.

[Ichthypresbyter]

Mormons are still required by their religion to keep a year's supply of non-perishable food.

[inglor_cz]

This is certainly a possibility.

We waste our time on addictive social networks which are not exactly nourishing. We may be doing the same with our money on highly processed food which does not nourish us well either.