Deception, weight gain and unnecessary hassle: I’ll tell you why I don’t buy bags of potatoes

“Do you need potatoes? Here people from the village come every morning and sell it for only 10 rubles more than in the supermarket, but it’s homemade, without chemicals! I’ve already taken 4 bags today!” — a neighbor, whom I accidentally met near the entrance, literally knocked me off my feet with this question. “No, it’s not necessary,” I answered briefly and intended to go about my business, but Lidia Pavlovna continued the dialogue. "And why? — she was sincerely surprised. — Are you really going to carry a kilogram or two from the store every day? This is inconvenient! And it’s not profitable!”

I didn’t try to convince her. Simply for the reason that my neighbor is an elderly woman and remembers well the times of shortages and empty shelves, which I simply did not find. Stocking up, buying a lot of everything, is already a habit for her. She, like my parents, feels uncomfortable knowing that in the kitchen cupboard there is only half a kilo of buckwheat, started pasta and a package of oatmeal, and two tomatoes, three potatoes and carrots are hidden alone in the refrigerator. She needs to feel that if something happens - war, Siberian frosts or prolonged self-isolation - she will be provided with provisions for several months.

I buy as much food as I can eat in the near future. In all the time I’ve been living separately from my parents, I’ve never once taken more than three kilos of potatoes from a store (by the way, this amount was enough for me for a month). And that's why.

Dubious benefit

Most often, potatoes are bought in bags because it is considered profitable. But if you think about it, this benefit becomes very dubious:

• If you take a lot of vegetables at once, it is impossible to understand what quality they are. No one will pour out and inspect the contents of the bags. Fruits that are too small, as well as rotten, wormy, and green - all this is likely to end up under the top layer of beautiful, selected tubers. Some particularly cunning sellers do not shun outright deception - instead of vegetables they put stones or other inedible things in the bag.
• Large quantities of potatoes are difficult to weigh. In large stores, scales, as a rule, are well calibrated, but they still buy vegetables in reserve from markets or from people who deliver goods directly to the entrance. It is difficult to check the accuracy of scales in such cases, and in addition, many sellers know how to cheat, even selling goods with scales that are correctly configured and verified. Thus, you risk getting 25, or even all 20, instead of 30 kg of potatoes.

It turns out that, wanting to save money, you can not only overpay, but also receive a product of poor quality.

No properly equipped storage areas

In order for potatoes to remain tasty throughout the winter, not to sprout, freeze or dry out, they must be stored at a certain temperature and humidity. It is difficult to ensure such conditions even if there is a cellar, because it is unlikely that sensors are installed there to measure all important parameters and there is a climate control system.

In centralized storage facilities, the state of the environment is constantly monitored, and an ordinary person can only sort through vegetables from time to time and throw away substandard vegetables or try to somehow “reanimate” them - break off sprouts, cut off rotten parts.

It turns out that stocks cause a lot of trouble. Time that could be spent socializing with family, playing sports, or reading your favorite books must be spent among bags of potatoes, looking for bad tubers in them.

Probably someone will say that I am lazy. They say that in order not to gain weight, you need to buy vegetables from friends. And sorting through potatoes is not useless work, but work for the benefit of your family. In addition, not many tubers spoil, and if this suddenly happens, then the slightly rotten ones can be cleaned of bad parts, and then cooked into potato pancakes. But I still believe that it is better to buy potatoes from the store or market as needed. And cook from beautiful fresh tubers, and not from second-rate ones, which, by the way, were purchased at the price of quality ones. I prefer to spend my free time on relaxation and entertainment instead of endlessly sorting tubers. For life is fleeting and we do not live in order to eat, but we eat in order to live.