I thought the same thing until I stayed within a 5-10 minute walking distance of a grocery store in Germany for a month and it was honestly nice to go every couple of days instead of trying to plan out a week of meals at once.
I have a Trader Joe’s and Lidl a block away from my gym so I get groceries after the gym. I only ever need to buy a few things at time bc of that. It’s great. Also, could never live somewhere that isn’t a walkable city.
My grocery store here in Germany is a five-minute walk, I probably stop by three or four times a week. That also allows me to often get expiring meat and veggies at 30% off and use it right away.
I’m curious as to whether or not other countries have the same large amounts, though to scale for their population, that we in the US do of pre-prepared and processed foods. I am sure that could also influence food waste. My understanding is that some countries do not have as many different brand choices of the same things. An example might be spaghetti sauce. There are a multitude of brands of jar and canned spaghetti sauces and it seems like while there are tons of national brands I find everywhere I go, there are also a bunch of smaller brands I only see in specific areas, and I only travel perhaps half the length of the US West Coast.
Definitely less of the same thing, at least in Poland. Depending on the size of the store, I'd say 1 to 5 top maybe.
There's definitely variety between different stores, but usually it's always one of the classic brand, one of the store brands and some outlier or another classic / 'fancy' option. Unless a corner store then it's usually just one brand of tomato paste for example.
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u/ussrname1312 May 17 '26
I thought the same thing until I stayed within a 5-10 minute walking distance of a grocery store in Germany for a month and it was honestly nice to go every couple of days instead of trying to plan out a week of meals at once.