Price of food spectrum

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Just a focus on milk.

I normally get a gallon of Hood milk at Target for $4.79, drink at least a gallon a week.

Local grocery chains like Star Market and Stop & Shop have it at $5.69

Whole Foods 365 brand has milk at 3.69

Was at a Wegman's on the way back from Harbor Freight last night and their store brand is $2.69 which is pre-pandemic pricing

There is no noticeable taste different across the brands.

Same holds for beef and chicken but the milk is pretty much apples to apples.

What's the story behind the different prices? It's all got to come from the same cows in New England I think.

[wswartzwel]

Some stores will underprice items that are common purchases, to get you in the door, hoping you will buy the rest of what you need while you are there

[Sooner or later]

Originally Posted by wswartzwel

Some stores will underprice items that are common purchases, to get you in the door, hoping you will buy the rest of what you need while you are there

Loss leaders

[Sooner or later]

I can taste a difference. The milk I get from Braum's (4.69 a gal) tastes better than the Walmart milk ($2.66). I use at least a gallon a week. Braum's does run ads for 2/$6 quite often.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by wswartzwel

Some stores will underprice items that are common purchases, to get you in the door, hoping you will buy the rest of what you need while you are there

That makes sense except for walking around Wegman's, everything is cheaper than stores that are closer to me. Prime ribeyes were $15/lb. Whole Foods, marbled but not labeled prime is $23. Star is $19-20.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by Sooner or later

I can taste a difference. The milk I get from Braum's (4.69 a gal) tastes better than the Walmart milk ($2.66). I use at least a gallon a week. Braum's does run ads for 2/$6 quite often.

These were all across the board tasty though sometimes one gallon of Hood is much better than the last gallon of Hood. Organic milk there is a huge difference. Both Stonyfield and Horizon are like dessert in comparison. They are $6.99 a gallon and get them often. Will probably buy more with the new coffee maker that does a lot of milk drinks.

[Zeke]

We buy A2 milk. It can be towards the high end pricewise. Store labels are cheaper and I'm convinced it's the same as say Knudsen. I don't drink milk so I don't care. Once in awhile on cereal but that's junk food, so I avoid it. And that's like 3 tablespoons of milk.

[Sooner or later]

The Braum's milk is all A2

[Rusty Heap]

I prefer the stuff from Cows.

[wdfifteen]

I am generally not big into organic food, but milk is an exception. Factory dairies solve every problem with chemicals. They cut the cow’s tails off to keep them from swatting flies, then douse them (and their environment) with insecticide to kill the flies. Unlike with chemically raised feed grains, you are only one step away from the chemicals with milk.
If you’ve ever been swatted in the face with a cow tail studded with balls of cow 5hit you would understand the motivation to cut their tails, but the tails DO serve a purpose other than to annoy dairymen.

[Tobra]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Same holds for beef and chicken but the milk is pretty much apples to apples.

Are you saying that you find the quality of beef to be independent of price? That has not been my experience.

Grocery stores drop the prices on an item or two to get you in the door. I only buy stuff that is on sale, so it does not work very well on me.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

I am generally not big into organic food, but milk is an exception. Factory dairies solve every problem with chemicals. They cut the cow’s tails off to keep them from swatting flies, then douse them (and their environment) with insecticide to kill the flies. Unlike with chemically raised feed grains, you are only one step away from the chemicals with milk.
If you’ve ever been swatted in the face with a cow tail studded with balls of cow 5hit you would understand the motivation to cut their tails, but the tails DO serve a purpose other than to annoy dairymen.

We live ~20 miles from a dairy (actually, 3 dairies). The one that we primarily buy from is all Jersey cows. The cows hang out in a field eating grass. The use of chemicals is minimal. We buy the milk at the dairy. It's $8/gal, and it's not homogenized or pasteurized. It tastes better than anything you can get in a grocery store, and it lasts longer than anything you get from a grocery store.

WHat we have noticed is that when you buy organic milk, it's almost always "ultra pasteurized" or "UHT" which I think stands for ultra high temp. "“Ultra-pasteurized” means that the milk is heated to a minimum of 280°F for a minimum of 2 seconds. This temperature and time combination is much more lethal to bacteria, killing virtually all of concern."

UHT pasteurized milk tastes different from regular pasteurized milk. I've got to assume that heating it to 280º cooks the milk a bit and changes the flavor.

Before we moved to where we are near the dairy, we were buying "Mill King" milk.
https://mill-king.com/
"Our milk is low temperature pasteurized or batch pasteurized at 145 degrees for 30 minutes in order to preserve as many of the natural enzymes and nutrients as possible.

Our milk is also NOT homogenized, so the cream rises to the top.

We never add preservatives or additives to our milk, cream or cheese. It's all natural, the way it's meant to be.

Our cows are never given artificial hormones to increase production. They are grass-fed and spend the majority of their day in the grazing fields."

It's got a lot better flavor than the UHT stuff.

[Bill Douglas]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

I am generally not big into organic food, but milk is an exception.

There is a hippy town here in NZ called Takaka. Populated by hippies and Germans. Somehow they have got around the pasteurised milk laws and you can get unpasteurised milk from a vending machine. This milk really is different. Not subtle different but really different. Makes a good latte.

Prices of milk and some/most food items has gone up around here too. It's blamed on higher transport costs and handling cost.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Bill Douglas

There is a hippy town here in NZ called Takaka. Populated by hippies and Germans. Somehow they have got around the pasteurised milk laws and you can get unpasteurised milk from a vending machine. This milk really is different. Not subtle different but really different. Makes a good latte.

Prices of milk and some/most food items has gone up around here too. It's blamed on higher transport costs and handling cost.

Hell yeah, "raw" milk is awesome compared to almost all other milk.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by masraum

We live ~20 miles from a dairy (actually, 3 dairies). The one that we primarily buy from is all Jersey cows. The cows hang out in a field eating grass. The use of chemicals is minimal. We buy the milk at the dairy. It's $8/gal, and it's not homogenized or pasteurized. It tastes better than anything you can get in a grocery store, and it lasts longer than anything you get from a grocery store.

WHat we have noticed is that when you buy organic milk, it's almost always "ultra pasteurized" or "UHT" which I think stands for ultra high temp. "“Ultra-pasteurized” means that the milk is heated to a minimum of 280°F for a minimum of 2 seconds. This temperature and time combination is much more lethal to bacteria, killing virtually all of concern."

UHT pasteurized milk tastes different from regular pasteurized milk. I've got to assume that heating it to 280º cooks the milk a bit and changes the flavor.

Before we moved to where we are near the dairy, we were buying "Mill King" milk.
https://mill-king.com/
"Our milk is low temperature pasteurized or batch pasteurized at 145 degrees for 30 minutes in order to preserve as many of the natural enzymes and nutrients as possible.

Our milk is also NOT homogenized, so the cream rises to the top.

We never add preservatives or additives to our milk, cream or cheese. It's all natural, the way it's meant to be.

Our cows are never given artificial hormones to increase production. They are grass-fed and spend the majority of their day in the grazing fields."

It's got a lot better flavor than the UHT stuff.

Interesting stuff Steve, thanks for posting. This summer I'll be driving to Maine just to get some Guernsey cow milk. It's supposed to be one of the best tasting milks you can get. And it's raw.

[Evans, Marv]

In my case, there is only one large supermarket about 15 miles away, which is the nearest market. The prices of everything are high, since it's the only large market in the area. We don't use a lot of milk, so it's not much of a priority. There is a camel dairy about 35 miles away. I've always been curious about the flavor of that but not enough to stop and try it.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by masraum

Hell yeah, "raw" milk is awesome compared to almost all other milk.

I grew up on a dairy farm and we only drank raw milk if we were really thirsty and happened to be in the barn. My parents pasteurized the milk for the family in a slow pasteurizer (140 degrees for an hour as I recall). I grew up drinking whole milk all the time, but I prefer 2% now. I do notice a difference between slow pasteurized and flash pasteurized milk. The only failure I've had making cheese was when I used flash pasteurized milk by mistake.

Our milk tank had a cooler of course and a paddle that kept the butterfat from settling on the top of the milk. The paddle only ran when the cooler compressor came on. One time something happened to the cooling system and it didn't get down to temperature, so the compressor - and the paddle - ran constantly for hours. The next morning there were about a dozen softball sized balls of butter floating in the tank. Best butter I ever tasted!

The price you get for your milk is based on the butterfat content. They don't test every tankful, they come around every now and then and test your milk (as I recall it was randomly, about once a month or so). Our milk had already been tested so we got full price for what was essentially 500 gallons of skim milk!

I do notice a difference between slow pasteurized and flash pasteurized milk. The only failure I've had making cheese was when I used flash pasteurized milk by mistake.

[wdfifteen]

BTW if you've ever looked at the slimy, stringy stuff that comes out of the cow and gets caught in the filter of the milking machine you would think twice about drinking milk at all. My mother would not touch the stuff.

[Evans, Marv]

I don't remember what milk straight from the cow tastes like, siince I haven't had it since I was a very small kid. We had a cow from between the time my dad ran a dairy farm and changed to regular farming, until we moved to CA. I remember my mother taking the cream skimmed off the milk, putting it in a mason jar, & putting the lid on. She would sit in a chair and rock the jar back and forth. The butter fat would form into larger & larger lumps, which she would remove with a spoon and put into a saucer and mold into one big clump. That was how we got butter at that time. It was free except for what they fed the cow.

[Arizona_928]

I can taste the difference between brands. It’s a richness aspect imo. The same with cottage cheese. Which I’ve noticed a different taste (richness) to Walmart brand dairy depending on the production run (use by date)….


USDA does grades on these sort of things. ABC scale. Which is an interesting rabbit hole to research as the highest grade is reserved for export.


https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/dairy-official-quality-shields