Prices keep climbing, so I’m trying to pick my battles in the supermarket. Which items do you refuse to cheap out on, and why? Taste, health, longevity, peace of mind… I’d love to hear what’s worth the few extra dollars for you.
For me, it’s honey from local beekeepers—supermarket brands locally are known to sell fake or adulterated sugar syrup as honey.
Olive oil, although it’s not really 1-5 extra where I am. There’s a lot of advice to buy cheap oil for cooking, but that’s not really true. The truth is that a lot of ‘extra virgin’ oil is sold in an old, rancid state, and you have to upgrade into the mid tiers to get away from that.
Buy the best olive oil you’re willing to spend money on, even for cooking.
i was hoping someone would say this as well! heaps of evidence out there about tonnes of adulterated olive oils. usually with cheap hyper-processed seed oils
I like buying local California olive oils, then I know it’s real.
Yep. Read “Extra Virginity” and you’ll likely never buy imported EVO again.
I feel like that title calls for a joke but I’m too tired
Yes, very much this (and the big price differences, and how cheap oils are also sold as expressive ones). Smol producers of extra virgin (= cold pressed with low yields) olive oils usually offer good price/performance, at least until they become a brand & sell out.
Other oils also have a ton of specifics (“oil” is a very broad term), like how fast flax oil degrades in quality & the ‘use by’ date are useless.
(Tho it’s still important to understand how heat affects divergent & differently prepared oils - and especially for what you absolutely do need refined oil, regardless of plant.)