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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   41971 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Fruits and vegetables are cheap here in America too. We call it “shoplifting.”

Food anywhere else is surely more healthy than ours. But I find American food is more tasty and agreeable to my palette than a lot of other ethnic foods simply because I was raised on it. Chinese and Mexican food I have a very weak spot for. But I have idea who the hell coats raw vegetables in syrup. That sounds disgusting.

Who the hell steals vegetables?

Statistics are predictably elusive, but all I could find indicated that meat, cheese, and infant formula were the most popular stolen foods. Excluding alcohol, that is.

I also object to the idea that vulnerability to theft makes anything cheap, but I recognize that was tongue in cheek.

Statistics are predictably elusive, but all I could find indicated that meat, cheese, and infant formula were the most popular stolen foods. Excluding alcohol, that is.

Meat theft is a big enough deal in my (Canadian) corner of the world that some of the grocery stores were hiring extra security to watch over the meat section for a while there. I happened to see displays in the staff areas of one of these stores listing the most commonly stolen items and the other things mentioned here (and yes, laundry detergent too) were all on there. As for alcohol, you have to show ID through a secure window to even be let into the liquor stores.

By comparison they couldn't possibly care less about theft in the produce section.

Around here it seems to be laundry detergent for some reason. Don't ask me why, but every store has Tide locked up so that you have to get an employee to get it out for you.

What a coincidence. Detergent is locked up where I live also.

I went to Home Depot recently. I hadn't been in a while. Shocking how much was locked up. The installed metal gates across many shelves. For the most part not even that expensive of stuff. But I know that the organized shoplifting gangs target them in particular, do they're presumably responding sensibly.

If I were going to steal from Home Depot I wouldn't go for the power tools, I'd go for boxes of screws. That crap is expensive.

Crackheads being paid in drugs are, unsurprisingly, not the best planners. Plus power tools are probably easier to fence because they’re the responsibility of the individual workers, rather than purchased by the company on an account- it’s pretty easy to just take it out of the box and call it ‘gently used’.

Same reason as cigarettes in prison. It fulfills all the criteria for money; nonperishable store of value, fungible, everyone uses it, solves the coincidence of wants problem, easy to transport, etc.

Laundry detergent, razor blades, and baby formula are the big three of ghetto currency.

Who the hell steals vegetables?

You’d be surprised.

I also object to the idea that vulnerability to theft makes anything cheap, but I recognize that was tongue in cheek.

Thanks for noticing. Lol. A friend of mine impressed it upon me once: “you know if you shoplift you don’t pay taxes right?”

"you know if you shoplift you don’t pay taxes right?"

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the IRS expects you to declare the value of stolen goods (not returned within the calendar year) as income.

I hear that’s how they got Al Capone.

Even without shoplifting, fresh fruits and vegetables are generally more affordable and easily available in the US compared to Japan.

Syrup was an (in my opinion, mild) exaggeration in reference to the dressings I've seen people use for their salads.

I was partially referring to the ingredient quality in the US as well. I don't know enough about the food industry to have a definitive explanation for why (I suspect it has to do with optimization for mass production and shelf stability over flavor), but when I compare eating almost anything in the US to its equivalent in Italy, Japan, etc., all of the food feels somehow flattened or hollowed out. It's very difficult to describe, but I've spoken to many people from other countries across Europe and Asia who agree that there's something very "off" about the food here. I think this is most obvious with breads and meats. The US tries to compensate by setting sugar, fat, and salt settings to 11, which only makes the experience worse.

US produce is harvested underripe to give it maximum shelf life.

But I have idea who the hell coats raw vegetables in syrup. That sounds disgusting.

I believe that was intended to be a disparaging euphemism for salad dressings.

disparaging euphemism

Fun fact, the little-used word for this is a “dysphemism”

When you know people that put ketchup on burritos, this one doesn’t come far out of left field.

Definitely had me fooled.

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