This article hit close to home for me. Literally. It was just over the holiday season that I mentioned to my mom that her coffee doesn’t taste as good as it used to. She insisted that she was buying the same blend as always and I insisted it didn’t taste as good. The conversation ended there.
Then I came across the following article and everything started to make sense. From the Daily Finance:
Reuters is reporting that many of America’s major brands have been quietly tweaking their coffee blends. While most coffee companies consider their blends trade secrets, and are loath to disclose exactly what goes into them, both circumstantial and direct evidence suggests they’re now substituting lower-grade Robusta beans for some of their pricier Arabica, and degrading the quality of our coffee.
Research out of agricultural bank Rabobank confirms that demand for Arabica beans among coffee buyers “has fallen 27% year-to-date, while Robusta [demand] is 25% higher.” This seems to confirm a widespread alteration of the bean mix.
Why the switcheroo? Prepare to not be shocked. The answer is: price.
Now here’s the kicker of the article.
When you get right down to it, if there’s more Robusta in our coffee but people still find it drinkable, and the coffee’s getting a bit cheaper in consequence, where’s the harm?
What’s the harm? I didn’t think whether coffee was “drinkable” or not was the point of drinking coffee. The harm is this is just another example of standards of living being eroded by inflation. Inflation that we are told doesn’t exist. Just another day in Oceania…
Full article here.
I wrote about this trend earlier in the year in the post Thought of the Day – The Incredible Shrinking Size of Sunscreen.
In Liberty,
Mike
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Answer : find either ethnic market that caters european eastern fromer Soviet Unipn public. I live in metropolis southern ca and the deli nearby has excellant columbian. I also buy meats vegetables and quite a few other things. No nonsense and good quality.
Don’t spread the word because the Russians will start to behave like Americans and where will we go then?
Don’t worry QE is ending this year. It’s all going back
To normal
QE is never ending until the system collapses.Is that what you mean by normal?Back to commodity money.
Nothing to do with inflation, its the coffee yields. Arabica is more sensitive to the weather, robusta is easier to grow. You can see whats happening if you look at the crop yields http://twitpic.com/bt4ady
Right on Mk for teasing this out. I would say that even more to the point is the cancerous thought pattern that ignores the hidden inflation. Americans don’t understand that the food they eat is complete garbage. Essentially the real food has been “inflated” away in exchange for fake food but the corporate balance sheet grows while the hospitals remain full. I am in Thailand right now and they actually have real food here because there government isn’t run by the foreign banks and Monsanto. So back to this cancerous thought pattern: oh a little GMO won’t hurt. Oh a little more GMO won’t hurt. Next thing you know you’re dialing up frankenfood every night while watching Kim kardashian get ass implants on the boob tube.
Very very bad news for MADE IN USA junk food. Pepsi Cola Coca Cola, Starbucks and many other US crap junk posionous food manufacturers profits margins about to be violently squeezed. Its good news. Cafeine should be found only in a good coffee cup and only once or twice a day. Two big pancreas destructors are mercury laced Monsanto GMOs glyphosate poisonous corn syrup and yes, also caffeine. Hopes it hammer Coca Cola shares since Coca Cola is not a friend of workers or democracy. Coca Cola and all the likes for the human body are as nocive as booze. Same effects on the liver as alcool.
Now this is a real “chained” inflation story.
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