These supermarket products are actually insanely expensive
I love wandering around the supermarket for a bit. I also love doing it abroad: discovering the supermarkets. But sometimes I’m still amazed by the fact that some products are actually ridiculously expensive. Weirdly expensive, I’d even say. Of course, the (rising) price has to do with all kinds of factors, but with some products it really gets out of hand.
For example, because comparable products aren’t expensive at all, or because they never used to be this expensive. I’m always amazed by the price of the items below.
1. Cheese
I’m happy to pay every euro for this, because I love cheese. I could eat it all day long. The stinkier, the better. But a simple white roll or slice of bread with cheese is delicious too. But it’s so expensive—if you go for the really tasty cheese, that is. Because not all cheese is expensive; take that chemical cheddar for 50 cents for quite a few slices, for example. And that’s while real cheddar is expensive again. How is this even allowed to be called cheddar?! So many questions. The same goes for those plastic balls they call ‘mozzarella’.
2. Pine nuts
Isn’t it getting ridiculous how expensive pine nuts are? It’s especially striking because, unlike the cheese above, pine nuts almost never play a starring role in the dish you want to use them in. At the moment, they’re €6.99 at Albert Heijn. For 150 grams. That’s bizarre, right?
3. Pesto
Maybe this has something to do with the pine nuts, but really good pesto is quite pricey. And then it may be tempting to go for those two cheap jars in one package from the AH own brand, but honestly… It really doesn’t come close to the real deal.
4. Olive oil
I understand why this is fairly expensive, but as a poor student I thought it was so annoying. You finally decide to start cooking for yourself (in my case, at least), and the olive oil has run out. Then you go to the supermarket, and those things simply cost at least five euros! And that’s for the own-brand version. My former student self was genuinely shocked by it back then.
5. Quinoa
The price isn’t too bad, but when quinoa was just becoming popular, it didn’t even cost half as much as it does now. Of course, supply and demand—I understand that too. But an increase of more than 100 percent is still pretty steep.
