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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

> One recent example of skimpflation that consumers did notice involved Conagra's Smart Balance spread, a dairy-free butter substitute. Conagra recently changed its formulation to reduce its share of vegetable oil from 64% to 39% — an almost 40% reduction in vegetable oil.

Ugh, nobody should be eating congealed vegetable oil in the first place. One more advantage of eating real food like butter is that they can’t replace the ingredients with something else when it’s just one ingredient.

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The question is what do you replace vegetable oil in dairy free """butter""" with. Sawdust? Spent motor grease?

Water. They literally watered it down.

Not all milk is of equal quality. Corners can be cut even with a single ingredient.

The minimum quality milk is still better than vegetable oil or whatever industrial byproduct they’re substituting for vegetable oil.

This is correct. The difference between US and Canadian milk is Canada's fine filtering and laws against steroid and antibiotics. The reason Canadians resented the forced import of US milk is because of course milk is cheaper when health-impacting shortcuts are taken.

Unfortunately, the higher price of Canadian milk means that dairy products like ice cream and yogurt are padded out with "milk ingredients", "skim milk powder", and "milk protein powder" from cheaper imported US milk, because the powdered products circumvent import limits.

(The higher prices in Canada probably have more to do with supply controls than quality controls, though).

Supply control is a huge factor in the pricing. People will always try to find those shortcuts, and unfortunately the purchasers are very rarely better off for it.

There was a (thankfully brief) period in the 70's when people were buying powdered milk to save money. But then again, it was around the same time they were pretending that margarine was healthier than butter. There was even an illegal margarine trade that we euphemistically referred to as "Quebec Butter."

If someone is vegan, telling them to eat butter instead is not much help.

(Source: dating a vegan and try to convince them to eat butter on a daily basis)

Olive oil would probably be a better vegan substitute for anywhere you would use butter. Although that can suffer from the same substitution problems.

or coconut oil, if the melt point is important

Olive oil is somewhat notorious for being counterfeited (with a really high portion, 60%-70%, being fake).

You can buy olive oil made in the US to avoid that problem though :)

Costco DOP is solid

I'd expect it to still be better for you than re-branded margarine.

Why would you do that? Don't you like who they are?

Well a vegan would probably take one look at the dairy industry and be utterly disgusted.

I'm not even vegan and I am appalled by it.

> Source: dating a vegan and try to convince them to eat butter on a daily basis)

This is a shitty thing to do. Let people live their lives.

The person you're responding to is almost certainly exaggerating, and moreover probably has a better handle on the vibe of their relationship than you can get from a one sentence joke.

Of course.

It's nonetheless a shitty thing to do, independent of whether this person actually does it. People absolutely do the thing they may have been joking about.

I stand by the opinion that the behavior you endorse is the behavior you walk by. So, I believe it's important to call out casual "jokes" at other's expense like this. Just like if someone was like, "women, and I right?"

Ribbing your significant other over minor things is part of the dynamic of many intimate relationships. Usually both parties know nothing is meant. You don't like it and that's fine, but it's not generically shitty.

Coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, cocoa butter, etc are all much better alternatives.

Some people have dietary restrictions.

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