Well, Today Being a Federal Holiday, There is No News

The media seems to have taken the day off. However, I'll give you a run-down of what concerns me (and probably you, too).

1. Libya is LITERALLY on fire--the protesters have torched the government buildings. This, plus other Middle East unrest, is going to wreak all kinds of havoc on oil prices, even though we get most of our oil from Canada and Mexico. Wall St. doesn't care--they're placing bets solely on activities in the OPEC regions.

This means $4.00+/gallon for gas this spring and summer, and airline travel is going to be expensive and constrained.

Whatever you did last time we hit $4.00/gallon, do it again, only harder and faster--the Middle East is made up of numerous countries, and it will take some time before they all topple under the weight of protest, making oil prices stay high for quite some time...2013, maybe? There's that magic number again.

2. I am STILL appalled and disgusted by the fact that we have grocery stores in this country that willingly sell us expired foods, and worse--DONATE expired foods--with a straight face. Not "sell by", or "best by", but EXPIRED.

I took little tours around the stores I happened to be going to over the weekend, and only found 1 single outdated candy bar out of three stores, and a stack of clearanced outdated cat food cans in my health food store. All products were brought to the attention of store employees, who took steps to remove the products.

Now that the nation-wide problem has media attention on it, I'm sure more stores are going to be restocking like madmen trying to make this all go away.

The only problem is this: now that NEW stock has been ordered, it came with a *new and improved* price tag, and all the coupon stunts and store discounts aren't going to offset much of the price increase that came with it. Stores have been selling us old food in an effort to keep OUR costs down, as well as their own. Now they have to shell out for new stock, and it isn't going to be cheap with the commodity price surge, coupled with high gas prices to get it to you.

Expect our very own food riots to happen here soon--possibly later this year.

3. I'm still appalled and disgusted that coupon queens run around extolling the virtues of hyper-couponing, only to have us all buying and stocking up on expired foods. I happened to catch part of an Extreme Couponing rerun, and saw a guy hauling out 1100 boxes of Total cereal through a checkout line. All I could think about was the fact that he couldn't possibly know the expiration date on any of it, because it was in cases. Also, there was no way he could eat it all before it expired.

The same sentiment went for the other stuff he bought for HIMSELF--cases of sports drinks, sodas, other junk foods, other processed foods, 100 toothbrushes (how many people live with him?), and the little bit of produce on the checkout belt. He seemed pretty pleased with himself for whittling down $800-something dollars down to $35 and change, all with coupons, store sales, and his preferred shopper card. Junk is junk, no matter how little you pay for it.

Then I learned the cereal was for a Food bank donation, and this made me shriek again about EXPIRED foods--how does he know those boxes hadn't ALREADY expired? This is making his donation equal to boxes of air--they'd have about the same nutritional value. No, that isn't true: the empty boxes would have more nutrition in them than the cereal!

I'm struck by the same notion when I see pictures of Jill Cataldo posing in front of her stash of processed foods.

He thought he was putting one over on the store by buying cases of cereal worth around $5,000 with coupons, bringing his total down to $250 (I assume a store sale was in there as well). But it doesn't matter what his final tally was--even $250 for $5000 worth of cereal is too much if the cereal's expired! Why do you think stores donate this stuff, or give it to pig farmers?

They donate it because they can recoup at least 28% of the value on their taxes as a charitable donation. If that 28% isn't good enough, they sell it for full retail in the stores, making the bottom line look better for shareholders of the store's stock. If they can't seem to get rid of it, it goes to local pig farmers.

Speaking of full retail, stores mark stuff up before a sale to cover the implied loss, and any implied loss from coupons, making the whole notion of "discounts" moot. You may think (and coupon queens would have you think) you're pulling one over on the stores, but they have their backs covered with raised prices, and yes, they will gladly stand by and clap when your food bill gets dropped to a fraction of the subtotal with coupons and store sales--they're cheering because you're taking some of their expired food off the shelves at what ends up being regular retail in the end.

Score a big one for marketing!

My pantry stock is safe--I checked it all. How about yours?