Easy tips for the hard times

You know times are getting harder when your favorite morning pan de sal continues to shrink before your unbelieving eyes. We dread the day when we would have to use a microscope (or hire a detective?) to look for our disappearing pan de sal. Fact is, everything seems to be getting smaller every day. According to Crickette Tantoco of Shopwise, the country’s first one-stop supercenter, budget canned goods – from standard size of 155 to 175 grams – are today’s big thing in grocery shopping. Consumers are now buying the 100-gram canned goods.

Sachets continue to fly off supermarket shelves. Like shampoo sachets, which are disappearing from the shelves faster than you can say Pantene Pro-V Shampoo. Tip: A shampoo sachet can be stretched for three uses.

"According to my household helper, she buys sachet because she feels that she is saving by not paying for expensive packaging," adds Crickette.

Ever abreast of the latest in consumer trends, this consummate retailer observes, "There’s a lot of downtrading occurring in terms of brands. The lower-priced brands are experiencing brisk sales, such as Surf, Joy, Mr. Clean, EQ diapers, Likas Papaya soap."

Making a clean sweep (of the supermarket shelves) during the elections, Crickette notes, was a low-priced brand of juice called OK Juice. Its sales were certainly OK – politicians were buying tons and tons of it to serve to thousands upon thousands of constituents.

In supermarkets, in-house brands/private labels are growing since more people are using these as substitutes to the higher-priced national brands. Toilet paper continues to be the top seller in terms of private label.

To the hygiene-conscious Pinoys, toilet paper is certainly one item you simply can’t flush out of the grocery list. Often, when there’s a wave of panic buying, you can bet your bottom peso that toilet paper is on top of the list.

Sales of condiments are also up because these are being used as meal substitutes, to spice up a Pinoy table’s staple – rice. For instance, there’s soy sauce, salt or lechon sauce (just imagine you’re eating lechon). Indeed, if stretching the already overstretched peso doesn’t work, the enterprising Pinoy simply resorts to stretching his fertile imagination.

Alas, cigarette sales (despite tighter regulations on public smoking) are also up. According to a smoker, "pangtawid-gutom." But then, that’s hard-earned money literally going up in smoke.

What are people cutting down on to survive the rise and rise of prices?

According to trendspotter Frances Yu, some have cut down on snacks and ice cream. Good not only for the budget-conscious but the diet-conscious, too. People are cutting down on meat (for sure, except those on the Atkins diet), especially beef, due to its high price.

Even watching movies has become an infrequent luxury. This is primarily due not only to the proliferation of pirated DVDs (are you a friend of the pirates?) but also to the prohibitive cost of watching a movie. Watching a pirated DVD will cost you only P80 regardless of the number of people who watch it while watching a movie costs P100 for one person only.

More people are going to wet markets to buy fresh goods, particularly fish, due to the slightly lower price and perception of "freshness."

But what could probably buy a basketful of goods before can now fill up only half a basket. Here’s a peek into a sample market basket of a mother with three children and a budget of P500 per week: 1 kilo galunggong (P100), 1 kilo tilapia (P80), 1 kilo pork (P140), 5 kilos rice (P100) and assorted vegetables (P80).

It’s still very much a mall world as malling continues to be the national pastime, but with minimal expenditure. "According to my secretary, ikot-ikot lang," Crickette relates. "They also eat in fast-food restaurants like Jollibee, Shakey’s or Greenwich."

Yeah, pizza be with you!

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How To Buy Virgin Coconut Oil

Let’s hear it from the expert who uses his coconut.

Dear Consumerline,

While virgin coconut oil has been on the market for a long time, it is only now that it’s becoming popular.

Suddenly, so many producers are jumping on the bandwagon. But as most of them are of the cottage industry or small size, they are ill equipped and don’t know what quality control is. Unfortunately, most of those selling equipment for VCO production cannot produce good VCO themselves. Good virgin coconut oil is supposed to have a crystal clear color with mild coconut aroma and no sour taste. But these unscrupulous suppliers will tell you, "The more sour it is, the more effective; the yellower it is, the more concentrated."

It is easy to produce virgin coconut oil but hard to produce real good virgin coconut oil.

Most small-scale producers use graters and hand press. They split the coconut and start grating without removing the coconut skin or paring. They try to grate as close as possible to get most of the white coconut meat out. In the process, the color of the coconut meat becomes not as white as it should be. After pressing, the coconut cream/milk is left to stand to ferment overnight. But it doesn’t end there – they put the fermented coconut cream into the oven to speed up the separation of oil and denatured protein and also to increase the yield. As a result, oil becomes overcooked, brown or yellowish.

Most people take VCO because of the MCT (medium chain triglyceride) in it – according to Dr. Bruce Fife, MCT does many miracles for the body. If you want to know if the VCO you’re buying is good or has MCT in it, check the viscosity by tilting the bottle. If it is light and not very viscous, then it has more MCT in it. The reason is that MCT has a lighter molecule.

Meanwhile, Dr. Bruce Fife’s new book Coconut Cures is coming out soon in the Philippines. Check out Dr. Fife’s website at www.coconutresearchcenter.org.

Yours truly,

Sing

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