Stockpiling food

EssexHebridean

Trynsave2 said:

[Deleted User] said:

No. It's not the apocalypse and trying to panic people into hoarding won't help.

Is that what I'm doing? Don't think so. What I'm talking about is building resilience into winter budgets that are going to be stretched. Where is the difference between this and thinking about other significant rising costs and trying to mitigate them?

Running a sensible storecupboard is something that many folk on these boards have been doing for years - increased stocks of various things running into winter to guard against anything from prolonged periods of poor weather to  - more recently - covid infection in the household meaning that going shopping is not possible. Currently a lot of us are running at slightly higher stored levels than usual as we’ve been making purchases of some items ahead of increasing prices.  That is NOT “stockpiling” though - which is usually seen as an alarmist term paired with those idiots who felt it necessary to rush out at the beginning of the first lockdown and buy far more of all sorts of things than they were going to use in any sort of sensible timescale, to the detriment of others… 

[Deleted User]

That's precisely it - frame the discussion about sensible purchasing.  As soon as it's "stockpiling" or "hoarding" in the discussion, it becomes emotive and there's enough people already out to scare.

artyboy

I've done this for years - garage is full of staples like pasta, beans, tinned tomatoes, loo rolls, beer (erm....). Costco and places like it are great if you know what is good value.

The flip side however is that this is yet another implied tax on the less well off - people that can't afford the up front costs of bulk buying, or have the room to store it, or possibly even the means to transport it... they can't easily take advantage of what is otherwise a sensible strategy for managing overall costs.

jojaca

I stocked up massively on all tin food, rice, pasta and non food etc months ago because I was prepared for the upcoming inflation. I don't care if I get labelled stockpiler. Survival of the fittest, I will do my best to provide for my family. 

Astria

fatbelly said:

sevenhills said:

It makes sense to fill your cupboards, with 13.4% RPI inflation.
I have stocked up on tuna, beans and toilet rolls. It beats my money being kept in the bank.

Exactly.

And supermarkets realise this. 

On offer recently at Lidl was 48 cans of tuna for £17

Farm Foods do a good price (though going up) on 54 loo rolls

Makes sense to keep your freezer stocked too so Iceland will do e.g. 3 x £4.50 packs of frozen fish for £10, with 10% off for the over-60s on a Tuesday.

But don't stock pile too much frozen foods with the expected power cuts over winter threatening to defrost them all.

Already had a power cut from 2am to 8am this morning, followed by the usual sound of all the house alarms going off when power was restored (never did understand the reasoning for that)

pochase

The expected power cuts will be more like a few hours hours. Your freezer should have no problems with a 12 hour power cut if you don't open it. Most likely much more.

Also a full freezer will hold the cold better than one that is empty or half empty. So by stockpiling frozen food I will not risk it been spoilt so much, I will even protect the food already in my otherwise half empty freezer.

Astria

pochase said:

The expected power cuts will be more like a few hours hours. Your freezer should have no problems with a 12 hour power cut if you don't open it. Most likely much more.

Also a full freezer will hold the cold better than one that is empty or half empty. So by stockpiling frozen food I will not risk it been spoilt so much, I will even protect the food already in my otherwise half empty freezer.

Yes, I actually have a few bags of solid ice in the freezer to keep stuff cold if the power goes out. That said I think my freezer went from -18c to -11c over the 6 hours it had no power, with ambient temperature being 25c, so a 1c increase per hour.

pochase

Did you open the freezer during that time? I found that the temperature goes up a lot just by opening the door, and it will take a while until it goes down again.

Yesterday I have put a few boxes of frozen chickens into the cheat freezer, it was open for 1 to 2 minutes. 
Temperature went up by almost 3 degrees and took an hour before it was back to normal level.

The freezer part of the fridge freezer is even worse. 

Astria

pochase said:

Did you open the freezer during that time? I found that the temperature goes up a lot just by opening the door, and it will take a while until it goes down again.

During the period that the electric was off, no, but I did open it when the electric came back on to see if everything was OK. It is a fridge freezer - 50/50.

OC_66

Not me haha!