What are some food items that cost less than what they "should"?

otp@sh.itjust.works to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 140 points –

Bananas are ridiculously cheap even up here in Canada, and they aren't grown anywhere near here. Yet a banana can grow, be harvested, be shipped, be stocked, and then be purchased by me for less than it'd cost to mail a letter across town. (Well, if I could buy a single banana maybe...or maybe that's not the best comparison, but I think you get my point)

Along the banana's journey, the farmer, the harvester, the shipper, the grocer, the clerk, and the cashier all (presumably) get paid. Yet a single banana is mere cents. If you didn't know any better, you might think a single banana should cost $10!

I'm presuming that this is because of some sort of exploitation somewhere down the line, or possibly loss-leading on the grocery store's side of things.

I'm wondering what other products like bananas are a lot cheaper than they "should" be (e.g., based on how far they have to travel, or how difficult they are to produce, or how much money we're saving "unethically").

I've heard that this applies to coffee and chocolate to varying extents, but I'm not certain.

Anyone know any others?

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As you said, they can’t mate… so what’s your solution? Let them go extinct and we lose not only a beautiful creature but a significant part of our species food source and history? We’ve been drinking milk and eating beef since the dawn of animal husbandry

Wait you're saying it's better to be genetically experimented on, caged, forced to breed, and be killed in your early adulthood than not have children?

That's it's actually more ethical to make a creature who you later kill for your own pleasure than not to do that? because the alternative is only wild cows and cowlike creatures existing?

They're living beings, not museum exhibits ffs. Species don't have preferences, individuals do.

they didn't say any of what you said.

you are arguing with a strawman.

That's what a farm is. They're saying we should keep farming them or else they would go extinct and that would be worse than continuing to farm them.

they did not say what you said. you are putting words in their mouth.

What did they say then? What are the implications? what are they arguing against?

No that's a quote, what did they imply? what position are they defending? don't be a child, looking only at the surface. Think about it for a minute.

you are putting words in their mouth and arguing with a strawman.

you should read a book about subtext and implication. I think you're probably very young and have a mind that takes things very literally. When we say things, it implies things.

They are not arguing for the establishment of cow sanctuaries and global veganism they are putting forward a disingenuous and nonsensical defense of their own eating of meat.

>you should read a book about subtext and implication.

you should read what socrates said about rhetoricians

I don't care how old you think I am because my age doesn't matter. what I say is true or false regardless of my age. attacking a speaker instead of their statements is textbook ad hominem and expressly prohibited on lemmy.world

Point out the wild bovine to me bruh, they don’t exist, they’re one of the many species dépendant upon humans for their survival.

Ummm. Are you serious?

this reads like an appeal to ridicule, not a rebuttal

Ok you should Google wild bovine. Aurochs are extinct, cows aren't really a distinct species, and bovine specifically covers everything from wilderbeasts to yaks which all exist in the wild. So it's worth ridiculing people so ignorant of the world and so unwilling to even do a Google search.

Hell there are wild escaped domestic cows a day's drive from me lmao.

this is better, but it amounts to handwaving and anecdotes. surely you can address the logic of what they said and cite a source instead of saying "look it up"

no, there is no point in investing effort in a discussion when the other party wont. The commenter does not actually care whether there are or aren't, if they cared they would look it up.

They want to waste my time arguing against a position they have no investment in. There is literally a Wikipedia page on wild bovines, that's how low effort this is.

>it’s actually more ethical to make a creature who you later kill for your own pleasure

no one is doing that

What is meat farming? in most of the world at this point in time it's much more efficient to eat plants. Nobody with access to a supermarket is eating only what meat they might need to survive with no alternatives, you eat it for pleasure. For this pleasure someone must die, therefore you kill them for pleasure.

if you are buying food in a supermarket your not killing anything except maybe lobsters

If I pay someone to kill you only a lawyer or a pedant would argue I didn't kill you. Without me you wouldn't have died.

you literally don't know what anyone else needs. you can't dictate the diet that is right for them.

Well if someone can prove they need meat to survive and only eat the bare minimum obtained in the least terrible way I'll engage that fictional person in discussion but that is nobody you or I know so it's moot.

you literally don't know what anyone else needs, and survival is a pretty high bar. you can survive without your electronic devices. no one is saying you should

>it’s better to... breed...than not have children?

the highest benefit to any organism is to pass it's genetic material to another generation.