It was always a good joke to point out that Perrier was more expensive than petrol. The joke just got better. Coke in a small 7½ oz. can costs US$8.50 a US gallon and, better yet, 50-140% more per ounce than Coke in an old 12 oz. can. The full article is here. Money quote:

You’ll save money by buying 12-ounce cans and pouring a third or more down the drain.

But of course, nobody does that. Just as nobody buys a large portion because it is cheaper per bite and doesn’t eat it all. Marion Nestle has this to add.

I once asked a group of retailing executives why the cost of smaller size containers was so high (surely the containers don’t cost that much. They said: “if customers want smaller portions they ought to be willing to pay for them.” Oh.

Or, to put it another way, “Screw you, consumer.”

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What should an ambient sausage be?

February 3, 2010

Some things are too bizarre to make up, or to believe, and such is the story of the “ambient sausage rolls”. I saw it first at Yahoo News, which explained that the Plain English Campaign had informed the Co-Op, a supermarket, that the “ambient” label on its sausage rolls1 had “bemused” members of the public [...]

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Food news (new series): How to feed the world

February 2, 2010

Start: 95.4 Last week: 88.4 This week: 89.3
There’s nothing to say I can get serious here from time to time, or that I can’t cross-post to anywhere that’ll have me.
There’s a fascinating paper in last week’s Science Express1 from a heavyweight bunch of scientists and advisers in the UK, on “the challenge of feeding 9 [...]

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