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Posted on 2009-01-27 at 6:12 p.m..

Buying Foods in Bulk

an article by Phoenix

I mentioned once that "buying food in bulk" was something that sheep do. In response someone wrote me:

"I always buy my grains and nuts in bulk. It's better for baking. But seriously, I know you think of "bulk foods" as being synonymous with "too much" food, but it's really not. It would be bad to buy unhealthy food in bulk, of course, but you shouldn't be buying unhealthy food at all. I buy bulk all the time. As long as the food is shelf stable and you have space to store it, it just makes economic sense. Not only is the food cheaper per unit, but I can make only occasional trips to the far away commissary, saving on gas, and then just go to nearby farmer's markets for fresh things like produce. That usually just involves walking."

I wrote the following back:

In terms of bulk foods.... A lot of things that are shelf-safe, such as peanut butter, are only shelf-safe because of the hydrogenated oils, which is of course another disgusting product of money-hungry large companies. Organic peanut-butter has to be refrigerated after it�s been opened and doesn�t sit for years on a shelf without going �bad.�

�Normal� peanut butter has gone bad the moment they added the hydrogenated oils to it.

I can definitely see buying nuts in bulk. That makes tons of sense. Pasta and grains however, while not �big evils� like high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated oils, are the undercover fat-makers that everyone seems to think are �healthy.� Try eating no grains, or pastas or sugar for a couple weeks, and you will see the difference.

I never eat dried fruit, mostly as a preference for things that are not hard and chewy, but in general, nothing wrong with that. But yeah, those giant tubs of peanut butter, and the huge bags of chips that are bigger than family size, and the huge bags of sugar... It just creeps me out.

One truth about having a lot of something however, is that the more you have, the more you will use, and faster. If you know you have one roll of toilet paper, you try to use as little as possible, even allowing to leak through to your fingers, because, after all, that�s why you wash your hands throughly. However, if you have an entire cupboard of toilet paper, you don�t worry about it. If you have an entire tube of tooth paste, you squeeze it out over your entire tooth brush, but if it�s running low, you use just a dab. It�s human nature, and even if we�re good about it in some areas, we�re usually like that in at least some aspects of life.