After honey, oil and flour: Hamster purchases of more and more groceries

Created: 04/14/2022Updated: 04/14/2022 11:01 am

By: Malin Annika Miechowski

The search for items such as oil and flour could expand.

Another product is now popular when shopping in discount stores or supermarkets. 

Germany – Purchasing should have become torture for many customers by now.

Due to the Ukraine war, many groceries at discounters and supermarkets* have become scarce or very expensive.

Hamster purchases of oil, flour or honey further exacerbate the situation.

Consumers often have to get creative and use alternatives to oil and Co.*.

But now the next food shortage is already on the horizon, as RUHR24 * reports.

Food in discounters scarce and expensive: is rice affected next?

Rice could soon become scarce on supermarket shelves.

If you ask experts which foods you should have at home in times of crisis such as the corona pandemic and the Ukraine war, the packs of Asian grains are usually also mentioned.

According to the federal government, you should have a total of 3.5 kilograms of grain, grain products, bread, potatoes, pasta and rice ready as an emergency supply for times of crisis*.

That's enough per person for ten days.

Due to panic buying, some products are already in short supply in discounters and supermarkets (symbol image).

© Jens Büttner/DPA

There are always warnings against eating rice and product recalls*.

This is often due to the (too high) content of arsenic in the product.

But properly prepared the food is also healthy.

In addition to vitamin E and other vitamins, the popular grains also contain magnesium, iron and zinc.

In addition, they contain a lot of potassium, fiber and minerals despite little fat.

In addition, you can also reuse the water in which the rice is cooked afterwards* (more life hacks at RUHR24*).

Shopping at Aldi, Lidl, Edeka: After oil, flour and honey, shortages of rice are now also possible

So it's no wonder that the product has ended up in shopping carts more and more frequently in recent weeks and months.

For example, in the week from March 7th to March 14th, the purchase of rice is said to have increased by 74 percent compared to the previous year, reports

, citing data collected by the market research institute IRI.

In addition to the popularity due to the predominantly healthy ingredients and the months of shelf life, the scarcity of rice could also be due to climate change.

According to the

, the cultivation of rice is "particularly water-intensive" and despite artificial irrigation, a lot of water would already evaporate on the way to the fields.

Oil, flour and pasta are scarce and expensive: That's why it could now also hit rice

In addition, there are the increased crude oil prices, which have an impact on the supply chain with the transport of the rice to the supermarkets in Germany.

In addition to scarcity, this also causes a price increase for the grains.

The Corona requirements in the Asian and African growing countries also play a major role in how much rice discounters like Aldi can offer as a product for customers.

After oil and flour, rice is also becoming increasingly popular when shopping in Germany.

© NorGal/Imago Images

If the demand for rice continues to increase as strongly as it does for flour and oil, it cannot be ruled out that discounters such as Aldi, Netto and Lidl as well as supermarkets will also introduce a maximum limit on the number of packs that customers can buy when purchasing rice .

Whether it really comes to that remains to be seen.

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