It had its own special aisle.
Big cans with white labels that merely said “BEANS” or “CORN” in fat black letters.
Of course, it was embarrassing to have a cart full of that stuff as everyone would know you were poor.
I don't mean this to pick on you personally, but this sentence sums up so many problems with consumerism, advertising and it's ability to make us overpay. You don't look poor because you get the white label, you look financially responsible, unwilling to pay a branding premium for essentially the same product. Especially with things like corn where no one could differentiate between the white label and name brands.
These days the off brand labels have there own special stores like ALDI, which is even better because you don't have to fight the distraction of a dozen brands of the same thing.
Namely, when I was a kid, my sister and I were terrified to go into that aisle because our mother told us that food was for albinos... that’s why the labels lacked color. It truly scared the crap out of me. Haha! Anyway, I will now sit back and wait for HN’s albino members to downvote me for offending people of [non]color.
- Mentioning downvotes is a sure way to get them, and there's even a mention in the guidelines[1] saying to avoid to do that : "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "
- Other than this, I don't know about the last time, but here your comment feels like a fun anecdote more than an actual discussion point. While this kind of comment goes well in a lot of communities (typically very well with Reddit), it tends to get less traction on HN, as HN is very much directed towards discussion and argumentation
For true commodities thats entirely reasonable. And these days when the same contract manufacturers develops and packages the product for Aldi, trader joes, kroger, and Annies its even more true. But dont let rose colored glasses obscure the differences that dis exist between the generics and name brands of previous times. Its ok to admit that Toasted Nut Os just werent as good on texture and flavor.
https://www.treehugger.com/which-food-companies-dont-use-bpa...
In many cases, it's not just that nobody can differentiate between them. They are literally the same product from the same factory, sometimes coming right off the same line. As in: Some of the cans of product go left for the "name brand" label and go right for the "store brand" label.
It's excellent price discrimination. Get consumers to spend as much as they can afford for the same product.
Less important point is that you dont need to soak them 24 hours in advance, that is excessively long. A day before is primary convenient time when to do it for people who soak them for that long.
But yeah canned beans are easier. There are also some vacuum packed ones
"Canned doesn't taste as good" you still have to season them
This lines up well with cooking the beans in a slow cooker, which in turn lines up well with working from home. Some evenings, i think "oh, i'll cook beans tomorrow", and put a pan on to soak (one minute's work). The next morning, i boil them for ten minutes to kill the PHA (if necessary for that variety), then load them in the slow cooker with whatever other ingredients seem good, and set it to run for eight hours.
It only involves a little bit of planning ahead, and very little actual work. In fact, it's nice to be able to front-load the work, so i do it in the morning when i'm still coming up to speed, rather than in the evening when i'm tired.
But I was certainly trained to buy peanut butter instead of putting peanuts in a blender.
When the only source of food are giant super markets 95% filled with aisles of packaged processed products (be they generic or otherwise) then yes people are trained from birth to buy them.
It's always a little adventure, to discover new things there. I guess I have a need to substitute for the lack of real hunting :-)