Hamster states, like in the first lockdown?
Supermarkets at the limit: "No, we're out of oil!"
Created: 03/31/2022, 16:10
By: Anna Lorenz
Sunflower oil and Co. are now difficult to obtain in many places.
Will the hamster product soon share the fate of the lockdown hit toilet paper?
Mainz - Sunflower oil is definitely something for the neck muscles.
While some are currently turning their heads afterwards, many just shake them at the hamster madness that prevails in this country with regard to some foods.
Read here whether the question "Sold out?" will soon be followed by a nod to said muscle training.
Sunflower oil and the question of "why" - "I don't understand people"
Rightly so, at German checkouts, the question is often asked: Why?
Why so much sunflower oil?
As is well known, at the height of the Covid pandemic, Germans hoarded one thing in particular: toilet paper.
While other nations stocked up on wine, codomes or marijuana during the lockdown, the citizens of this country were primarily concerned with maintaining their hygiene standards in terms of simple creatureliness.
Jan Häusser, Professor of Social Psychology at the Justus Liebig University in Gießen, suspects that "cultural differences in the basis for one's own well-being" are the cause of the hamster purchases, which vary greatly in comparison.
Forward-looking or ruthless - how do you feel about buying hamsters?
But while it was not delivery bottlenecks during the lockdown period, but rather the rampant corona virus and the many closed shops that prompted people to arm themselves to the teeth with Hakle, Zewa and the like, the case with sunflower oil is somewhat different.
Because of the Ukraine war, production and exports are largely flat here.
Or, to put it in the words of grocer Beate Schwarz from Mainz-Gonsenheim: "No, there is no more oil!"
Sunflower oil: "It's almost as bad as in the first lockdown"
“How crazy” is how the Schwarz customers would buy the shop empty in terms of cooking oil and flour, the retailer explains to
taugesschau.de
.
In fact, it is not a rare phenomenon that the business owner from Rhineland-Palatinate experiences every day: grotesque scenes in supermarkets and exuberant outbursts of anger on social media are currently shaping everyday life.
She "don't understand people," says Schwarz, who states that the conditions are not far removed from the hamster escapades in the first corona lockdown.
Sunflower oil - According to the food trade, this is the situation
Not only Beate Schwarz and her grocery store, but also supermarkets and discounters are not necessarily being drowned in cooking oil deliveries by the wholesale trade at the moment - on the contrary: the available quantity of sunflower oil in particular is currently "less than usual", according to the press spokesman for the Federal Association of the German Food Trade eV, Christian Böttcher.
The "situation along the supply chain" and the "individual business relationships between producers, processors and retailers" would decide on the availability of a product in individual cases.
A general undersupply is not to be feared.
However, according to the federal association, “the lower availability of goods for some staple foods is also driven by excessive stocking behavior by some customers.”
Hamster purchases and delivery bottlenecks only result in a combination of empty shelves.
In this respect, the association also calls for people to only stock up on sunflower oil and co. in quantities that are normal for households.
It's not clear what the Germans are hoarding liters of cooking oil for - but if the quantities currently bought actually correspond to normal consumption, the evidently high demand for toilet paper by the citizens is not surprising.
(askl)