We live in a consumer world. Overconsumption - we buy too much

When was the last time you did something with your hands? These days, this need rarely arises, because everything can be bought in the store. On the one hand, it is convenient: you do not waste your time on household chores and you can get anything you want by paying money for it. On the other hand, there are a lot of shortcomings here: we become dependent, incapable of elementary manual labor, we destroy the creative rudiments in ourselves and sink deeper and deeper into consumerism, buying, buying and buying again.

Yes, we are all consumers. From early childhood. At first, we do not need to do anything at all - only consume. The small type lives with his parents and only gets: the dude lives in his parents' house, eats his parents' food, uses his parents' stuff. The free time of all children is entertainment. They consume parental resources and allow themselves to be taken care of. They leave a very small footprint in this world, they are dependent.

The problem is that we grow up and do not give up this passive role. Instead of creating, we consume. We no longer depend on mom and dad (although someone else does, shame on those dudes!), but depend on the things we need to be happy. We consume clothes, movies, video games, cars, food and travel - all to become happy. We live only for our own pleasure and entertainment.

This is where the difference between a boy and a man lies: the boy lives for himself, and the man, although he enjoys life, has higher goals. Boys find themselves in what they buy, and men in what they do. Boys build their identity on consumption, while men build their identity on what they create.

Consumption weakens initiative

We have repeatedly written that men want to be the creators and captains of their own destiny, they want to control their lives. We want to be free to turn our ship any way we want.

Consumerism is the direct opposite of these logical aspirations, although it often seems to be the very thing that drives us to take sharp turns. Consumption based on a choice of many options, a myriad of different products and services is not the way to freedom and control. In fact, this control is an illusion. Consumption involves a wide choice, but it's like a closed question in a test, where you can choose as many answers as you like. You choose only from what is in front of you. An interesting paradox of our society: we feel amazingly free because of the wide range of products and not free because of the constant consumption.

Suppression of creative impulses

Men are eager to be creators, to change the world around them, to turn wood into furniture, and canvas into a work of art. They want to leave something behind. Denying this feature of the male mindset is very harmful modern society. Young men are learning to think of life after 30 as a kind of death, as an era when time stops, when they have to leave the usual life full of pleasure and live for others. Paradoxically, no one ever says that consumption is the very condition under which time stops and you cannot achieve what you want, no matter how hard you try. Your mind is trapped: you are trying to acquire something new in a fruitless attempt to get a new pleasure, but the result is the same. You consume and cannot get new pleasure from it, rejoice in new things just as before. This circle does not end.

We are not talking about the urgent need to stop consuming any products: it is simply impossible. We want to emphasize that consumption does not bring results and does not make you happy.

For example, when you create something instead of buying it, you enjoy the fact that you can make something if you need it. Being a creator is a much longer pleasure, it is a feeling of satisfaction. It is easier to consume, but not as pleasant as making something yourself.

Weakening of discipline and sense of duty

Another problem with consumption is that it doesn't go beyond choice. This is the whole idea of ​​consumerism - to have a choice and make a choice. You choose, you choose, you choose. And then what? Of course, this is not your concern, then you choose something else - and so on endlessly. We do not need to go beyond choice, take responsibility and fulfill obligations.

Yes, such a view of things will work with toothpaste, but not with more global things. Relationships, no. Raising children, no. And how can we learn to do all this, if most of the time we just choose and do not know what to do next? In life, we need discipline to build something strong, special, and worthwhile. Unfortunately, everyday life does not teach us this.

We get distracted from what really matters

Consumers are driven by the desire to find products and services that allow them to experience the reality they dreamed of. Certainly, New Product or new experience never turns out as cool as we expected. A person loses illusions, and then acquires a new desire and looks for ways to realize it, sincerely believing that this time everything will be fine. However, we all know very well how very different expectation and reality are. It doesn't matter how cool the product we bought - fantasy has always drawn it to us much more perfect. It is such a vicious cycle of desire and dissatisfaction.

This gap cannot be closed by anything, but the consumer cannot be stopped. He derives more pleasure from desire itself than from its satisfaction; from waiting, not from using a new product. Pleasure is the gap between imagination and reality.

Such moral uplift while waiting is not harmful. It is he who helps us move towards the goal, from worthless to worthwhile. Discomfort appears only when you realize the gap between the desired life and what it really is. Research has proven that we are more satisfied when we are moving towards a goal than when we finally reach it.

The problem with consumerism is also that it distracts us from what really should interest us. This constant discomfort is not caused by the fact that he lacks a new gizmo, but by the fact that we need constant self-improvement, strength, development.

Create more, consume less

At one time I played a lot of video games. There is nothing wrong with this - from time to time to cut into the computer. What's wrong?

Formerly men were soldiers, and now they play for them. Previously, men played basketball and football, but now they just put up an avatar and press buttons, controlling the players on the screen. Men used to play musical instruments- now they press the buttons on the toys. We used to create, but now we consume.

Why do we spend hours playing Guitar Hero instead of learning how to play the guitar? Playing a real instrument is more difficult. To do this, you need to make an effort, and everything that does not have a reset button is already a definite obligation. Are we really that afraid of it?

But the reality is much more interesting. You change the environment and it changes you. The act of creation makes a man out of you, develops your feelings and skills, increases your strength, sharpens your character. Passive consumption leaves you unaffected, unchanged. Consumption provokes indifference, creation requires involvement.

Creation can take different forms. Traditional forms are even better than new ones: building at work, creating strong and healthy relationships in the family, raising children. But there are other forms of creation. For example, hobbies like gardening and horticulture, art, music. Design, write, photograph, start a blog. Yes, just improve your character every day.

Being a man doesn't mean wearing a three-piece suit. It means playing an active role in this world, and not passively watching what will be done to you in the next moment. Leave your mark. Create your own world, don't use it.

The main message that a person is trying to convey to others is that he has access to much more prestigious consumption than he might think.

At the same time, he tries to explain to others that their type of consumption is much less prestigious than they were naive to think.

All social maneuvers are subordinated to this.

I would really like you to watch this video:

We all are well aware of such topics as “nowhere to hang and nothing to wear”, getting into a loan for the sake of a spontaneous purchase, life “on the verge” of having enough money or not, buying newfangled things that then lie around and are not used, food spoiling in the refrigerator.

Quickly receding euphoria after shopping and anxiety that comes in its place.

Feelings of guilt before the family that they left without money for life because of some kind of purchase. Feeling of self-flagellation that there is no normal financial management, and money is flowing somewhere, no matter how much there is at the beginning. .

Rubbish in closets, on the balcony, fear of moving.

Emotional attachment to things, fear of losing or spoiling. 20 pairs of shoes, a dozen bags to match the color of everything. Several tens of times more dishes than you need.

Fear of looking worse than others, dissatisfaction with the fact that there is no way to consume on average with all the volume - to consume vacations, cars, clothes, high-quality fitness centers and everything else, "like everyone else."

We are a consumer society, and this, of course, cannot be changed, I will never fall into such an extreme. I love high-quality and beautiful things, I also love expensive ones, but not much, and rather basic ones, so that I can wear them with pleasure every day and like myself. She is indifferent to expensive jewelry and "holiday" things.

But at the same time, fatigue from excessive consumption has accumulated so much that there is already desire do something with it. Life is also exhausting for show, as is now happening with our society.

Probably, today the majority, from the age of 30-35, begins to lean towards minimalism and realize all these processes that are behind excessive boasting and constant reports on their consumption in social networks. Processes that harm the very people who do this, leaving them without energy and with incomprehensible feelings inside. The joy from the act of showing off quickly disappears, and the swing usually comes to replace it - why didn’t they like it enough, didn’t I go too far, was it too good for me, wasn’t I stupid or ridiculous, shouldn’t I now complain to whine to compensate for my overjoyed mood. About all these mechanisms in a post about boasting.

I am very pleased that there are people today who are engaged in the restoration of forests or volunteer work to help the planet, people, animals, plants. They are real heroes.

Our planet is suffocating from an excessive amount of things and the resources that are spent on their production, while polluting very much environment. Stocks of unsold items are overflowing, food not eaten in restaurants and not bought in stores is being thrown away, and the climate on the planet is changing more and more, forests are being cut down.

Our own vitality every day they spend on a lot of meaningless things - on viewing ads, choosing, buying. Just to process the presence of extra items around us. For discussion, boasting, experience and comparison. On thoughts and plans where to throw away and give away unnecessary. To condemn those who have it worse.

Instead of having more physical and mental strength to be warmer and more attentive with children and loved ones, to do what the soul lies in, to relax, to be useful, to feel happier.

We consume a lot of unnecessary and unhealthy food.

And save on healthy food, quality recovery or treatment. We destroy ourselves, we reduce the only important thing that we have - life, in order to be able to buy more status things.

We consume too much junk and superfluous information.

Every day we are exhausted, hundreds of times a day, solving all these problems.

Reducing excess consumption in different areas is a great way to feel lighter, better.

When I left Barnaul, I had to give away a huge pile of things. Even then, I was amazed at the number of bags of clothes that I hardly wore.

Then, in Asia, when there was no child yet, in order to pack up and move to another country, my husband and I needed 30-60 minutes to collect all the things. We each had the usual small backpack with a laptop and personal belongings, and one medium suitcase for two. And I really liked it.

Now, of course, there are more things. But even when I flew to Russia alone, it was still 1 suitcase and 1 backpack for the two of us with a child. All. Now, when a child grows up and various items and toys that are needed in everyday life appear, then, of course, it is easier to live longer in one place so as not to buy books, bicycles, and so on again. But the habit of not acquiring things has been preserved, and it pleases. Asia is also pleasing, where you do not need to buy seasonal clothes and are quite simple. I am glad that you do not have to go to the office and work for the sake of expensive clothes in which you will look good in the office.

But still there is excessive consumption, and especially in other areas - in particular, trainings, books. Still have financial problems frequent feeling surplus purchased.

I started working on this topic about six months ago, at the same time a post appeared about exiting the matrix.

This topic is very healthy, liberating. Awareness of manipulating us, the uselessness of many things, reducing consumption. Awareness of addiction to shopping and its reduction.

Here some "rules for beginners" from the book "Warrior of the Matrix" Jake Horsley:

« Rule 2: You are what you have

Connected-collectors. The more items you acquire, the higher your status in the eyes of others, especially if these things are useless.

Ownership expands the boundaries of individuality: the more you collect trinkets, the wider and more complex your personality.

Black shiny objects, such as glossy ones, will give you a special coolness. Sunglasses or elegant cellular telephone. It is important to remember that the purpose of all these things is not to deprive you of your individuality, but to replace it with a spectacular empty mask-facade. If your BMW is full of accessories, who cares if it runs poorly and consumes a lot of fuel?

Rule 3: what they say or think about you is incredibly important

The main motive for all those united by the matrix is ​​to like.

The more people like you and the more they like you, the more important you become to them and therefore to yourself.

Rule 5: Connected people always compare themselves to others

Any person is individual and unusual, and as such is more important than any other.

The means of such self-aggrandizement is comparing oneself with others, and whenever possible, in one's own favor.

The more you manage to humiliate others and make them feel worthless, the higher such a person grows in the eyes of others and, as a result, in his own.

Social life in the matrix is ​​determined by the confrontation of multiple "I", each of which claims to rule over all the others.

For those united by the matrix, self-esteem is based on external achievements, acquisitions and the praise of fellows.

Life is inherently competitive, which means that all power depends on control and domination not over oneself, but over others. The more power you can take away from others, the more power you will have. Conversely, the more opportunities others have, the less power you have over them.

All this happens because the "I" compares itself to others by external factors rather than based on internal values ​​and virtues. “I” competes with other “I” and at the same time understands that the best will win and the winner will get everything. In such a situation of the struggle for the survival of one's "I", all connected are initially set against each other.

Innate but carefully concealed hostility is a common atmosphere within the social matrix.»

During these six months, I began to feel better, realizing and reducing a number of areas of consumption.

But there is more to work on.

Below I will give a report of one interesting experiment - "200 days without purchases."

In general, the theme of minimalism is very interesting in everything.

Zero inbox in the mail, an empty "desktop" on the computer, cleaning in folders, consistency and clarity in files, in archiving, a clear planning system in the personal information manager.

The less chaos and the more order - the more energy, strength, more time and accomplishment, more satisfied every day.

And the environment in the house affects, probably, in the same way as the environment of people, music, books, films.

If everything is clear, clean, solid, preferably new, and at the same time easily replaced, everything is dynamic and without excessive attachment, does not become covered with dust and does not stack on top of each other, there is a lot of space and light, live air, then this is a completely different feeling from your life , Push.

What to do?

For example, there are such options.

It is useful to study and think, to pee:

– what is the situation with consumption, what do I buy too much, what can I do without, where can I save,

- Do a big house cleaning. You can use Marie Kondo's "Magic Cleaning" system

- make a list of everything that needs to be given and sold and do it - use social networks, Avito, take things to social centers who accept

- start keeping track of income expenses in order to understand where you can save, what is superfluous, what to stop buying, in general to understand your income and expenses structure. I am in the program "Home Accounting",

- reflect on what purchases you regret

- to think, if there is shopaholism, then what are you trying to satisfy the need for - in entertainment, consolation, to raise self-esteem? Think about how this can be done differently, through other measures.

- regularly do something for charity, help relatives, give 10% to those who really need it

- read books and articles on minimalism, clearing chaos, about the system and the matrix, to realize that there is a lot of everything superfluous, introduced into our consciousness through advertising, the media, the very structure and organization of stores, and shopping centers, messages carried by show business stars and so on. Realize that behind getting hooked on "legal drugs" - alcohol, tobacco, synthetic drugs, sugar, non-living food enhanced with flavoring additives, very specific people and organizations are also behind getting hooked on medicines and vaccinations, and they only need it for the sake of money and population reduction. We are too oppressed by public programs that broadcast to us like robots what to do and how to live, what things we urgently need to buy this season in order to feel happy. Understand how it all works.

- often think that life is too short. As the Toltecs said, "Death is the best adviser."

- join Stodnevka. The right environment helps a lot to change.

200 days without purchases

And finally, I want to give such an experiment (not mine) - quite extreme, but very interesting:

“I have not bought any new things for 200 days. And that's what I understood?

A few months ago I went through the worst experience of my life: my father passed away. He had cancer. But in our society it is not customary to mourn the loss too long. loved one: need to work. And you also need to collect a pile of papers and notify a thousand different authorities about what happened. When I finished with all this, I decided to remove things from my father’s apartment that were no longer needed by anyone. This is a very thankless job. As I dismantled the rubble, I felt like I was literally suffocating. Almost every piece or jacket was associated with certain memories.

I had a lot of work to do.

It took weeks to get rid of all the rubbish that had accumulated in the lair of my single father. Something had to be sold, something was given as a gift, and something had to be thrown away. Boxes and drawers with crockery, clothes, furniture, office supplies and a ton of everything…

In fact, I threw away all his savings over these decades.

To buy these things, my father once spent a lot of time, money and effort. And now I had to give them away for recycling with even greater difficulty. We are destroying the planet, ready to leave nothing for future generations - and all in order to buy things, most of which we will rarely use, sometimes, or even never at all. We will forget about some of them almost on the same day that we bought them.

This story sobered me up.

I started an experiment, I wanted to try not to buy a single new thing for 200 days in a row.

Like many of those who have stable income I have never been a very disciplined consumer. Like everyone, I bought things that I can't afford. And often thought: "Why not?". Therefore, I was very interested in whether I could do without shopping centers all this time.

It was an amazing experience. And here are 7 lessons I learned from this experiment.

1. There are already too many things in the world.

While I was selling my father's property, I visited a lot of thrift stores and sites with ads. Even on Facebook, a bunch of people are selling each other millions of things.

To be honest, I'm shocked by the amount of things we produce. Mountains of clothes, tons of furniture, dishes, pots, canes - an ocean of things that is impossible to even imagine. A huge part of it all ends up in a landfill. It is unlikely that we need even more things.

2. We are addicted to shopping. It needs to be treated.

When I tried to fill all my shopping needs with used things, when I started going to thrift stores, I was just blown away by how many things we don’t need around us.

These stores are full of things in packages that no one has ever opened. I even met scented candles new in packages!

In general, the act of buying itself is rather the result manipulation of us rather than conscious choice.

3. People have been taught to think booze is unhygienic.

When I described my experience on the blog, many wrote to me in the comments that buying used is unhygienic. They say that buying clothes, furniture and other goods is low, and these things are "contaminated with foreign microbes." This is weird!

People who donate their belongings for humanitarian aid do so with a smile on their faces! Why then should we think that it is only for the poor and not for us?

4. Large hypermarkets are needed not by you, but by corporations.

During these 200 days, I realized that I do not need hypermarkets at all. All desired products can be bought near the house, within one or two blocks. Shopping in such stores is even more pleasant: they are always cleaner, they treat products and customers with more care.

When you go to the hypermarket, you invariably end up buying a bunch of unnecessary items that weren't on your shopping list. Everything has been done for this. You want to go to a big store to stock up and save money, but as a result, you still spend much more than you would if you stayed at home.

5. Nothing is new and nothing is expensive.

My bank account, of course, exhaled during these six months. I do not use credit cards, there is no financial pressure on me. I live easily (in a moral sense, I didn’t quit working) and finally I realize: it’s much better to live without constant shopping than with it, and in addition with the eternal fear of being left without money.

Things just aren't worth it.

6. It's amazing: pay a specific person, not a corporation.

When you buy something through an ad, you find that most of the sellers are honest and decent people who want to sell to you. useful thing. They are normal, ready to give you something brand new at the purchase price, with a slight discount. They bought too much, they don't need it, and they're excited about the chance to get their money back. Your deal will make them much more happy than a cashier in a hypermarket household appliances. And even more so than a sales manager who wanted to sell you a TV that you couldn't afford.

And it's just nice to know that your money goes into the pocket of this normal person, and not into the mouth of a faceless corporation.

7. I really don't need all that stuff anymore.

Yes, there are things you can't buy used. Many things. Usually all these items are related to hygiene. When I have to buy them, I literally force myself to do it.

But most of the time, everything is the same for me. I just live, I go to work, I drink with friends, I take taxis. And the salary exceeds my expenses, but does not equal them. My stress is almost gone, serenity and inner harmony are returning. Now I understand that the value of the absolute majority of things is overestimated.

I believe minimalism is the best way to live. To do this, to realize this, I had to lose my father. But I hope you don't have to go through hell to realize this truth.

I hope this post will make you at least think about how you usually behave in large stores. Is it worth counting all these discounts and paying attention to all promotions? Maybe it's just a scam?

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Even without being experts in the field of macroeconomics, each of us knows what consumption of goods is. This is a category that is actively used by economists, but at the same time it is well known to people who are far from financial sciences.

In this article, we will tell you a little more about consumption than the average citizen knows. The materials on the basis of which this article is written were taken from educational and analytical resources and simplified for the simplest and fastest assimilation.

general characteristics

To begin, we will give scientific definition, which characterizes the category "consumption". So, this is the expenditure of a certain product (goods or services) in the process of satisfying one's own needs. From the point of view of economics, consumption is interesting to us for the reason that with it there is always an exchange of some goods (mainly material, that is, money) for a product or service that a person wants to consume. Thus, at the expense of our desires, there is consumption. This is a normal process - humanity has been living according to this model for many millennia.

What do we consume?

Since, as noted above, the main goal pursued by consumption is the satisfaction of needs, we can conclude that we use goods that can provide us with the benefit in the form of satisfied needs. These are, in particular, food, water, clothing, comfortable and safe housing, vehicle for movement. It is these things that make up, according to financiers, the main economic volume. Consumption (this applies to all the groups of goods mentioned above) allows you to replace them, improve, develop production and expand the range of things that interest people.

Thanks to this, on the one hand, there is production growing due to the demand for products, and on the other hand, people consuming goods that are present on the market. To date, the model has been perfectly debugged: in order to purchase food, housing, transport, a person must work, fulfilling social useful features. In the process of labor, he creates goods and services that are consumed by other people, and so on. The currency of exchange in these relationships is money, which can be spent to consume any commodity. What it will be, a person chooses on his own, listening to his needs and requirements.

propensity to consume

The model of life of each person, as noted above, is adjusted in such a way that we must work in order to receive money that will be exchanged for a product or good. If someone does not want to work, he will not be able to ensure the exchange of money for goods, and as a result will not receive wealth able to satisfy natural needs. As a result, a person will try to reduce their consumption costs as much as possible. This phenomenon also has an opposite side, the name of which is “the propensity to consume”.

It works as follows: if income increases, the amount of funds that go to the consumption of goods also grows accordingly. This can be traced even in the key of modern national economies: the greater the income of the inhabitants of a country, the more goods they consume. Human nature is such that we tend to consume whenever possible. This social law, which proves the constant growth of our requests.

Consumption markets

From general ideas about economic theory each of us understands that the market is a place for selling products. Accordingly, the consumer market is, relatively speaking, the ways and directions of the sale of goods and services. In economic theory this category deserves special attention, since, by studying the markets for a particular product, one can trace the general situation. Let's take a concrete example.

There are two categories of markets - scarce and surplus. The first are those that feel the lack of products, the second, on the contrary, feel the excess of goods, due to which manufacturers are in fairly strong competition.

If we study the market and know that there is a shortage of category A goods on it, we can say about the low quality and high price of such products. Conversely, in the consumer market, where there is a large number of proposals, products will be of higher quality and cheaper, because there is a struggle for the buyer.

Consumption level

Another category that should be mentioned is the level of consumption. This is another component that allows you to learn more about a particular market. With its help, you can determine how high the demand for a particular product exists in a particular consumer market. In turn, this allows producers to predict the volume of consumed goods that need to be manufactured.

An objective assessment of consumption volumes is possible only by a statistical method, collecting data on the number of sales made. Also, to identify this data, you can connect the method sociological research, surveys, and so on, but all these methods will not be able to give such accurate information as just sales statistics. Another thing is that it is a trade secret and only the manufacturer has access to it.

Ratios

Another important point One thing to pay attention to when talking about consumption is the change in its dynamics. Researchers have long paid attention not just to its level, but to how the ratio between the categories of "income", "consumption" changes. This allows you to define the nature of people - what we talked about above - about the increase in human demands as incomes rise. The more we have, the more we consume. There is even a special measure called the marginal propensity to consume. This is a measure of how much consumption will change when income increases by one unit (or percentage, depending on the measurement scale). This allows you to plot how people's appetites change.

If, however, we sharply reduce the amount of exchange currency (money), for which we can receive benefits that satisfy our needs, in a similar way a person optimizes his needs, making them more modest.

However, this is not the only way to find out the ratio of consumption. This is just one of the questions posed to researchers. No less important is the topic of the relationship between consumption and consumption level when buying high-quality and expensive and low-quality, but cheap goods. The results confirmed expectations.

Good and bad quality goods

Buying more expensive products, a person naturally spends more funds. At the same time, of course, he gets more pleasure from the process, and, thus, his further consumption increases. As a result, the indicator responsible for the result of how much we liked this or that product grows in proportion to our desire to repeat the experiment and get the same product again. Again, the marginal propensity to consume is triggered. These are normal processes that are activated somewhere deep in human psychology.

Researchers observed another situation when buying low-quality products. The costs for it were somewhat less than in the previous experiment, but at the same time, due to the lower quality, a person received less pleasure from the consumed resources. As a result, his level of satisfaction fell, and with it his desire to continue consuming the same product.

These remarks are useful in that they reflect the model of our behavior in Everyday life. When you choose at what price to buy cookies, you can see a pattern for yourself: buying an expensive product, you get more pleasure, while the desire to buy still grows. And vice versa, having tasted cheap products, you understand that you were wrong, trying to save on quality.

Consumption is the engine of progress

Many researchers working in this field call the growth of our appetites (as we outlined a little earlier in the text) the engine of human progress. Perhaps they are right: through the desire to get more, we try to produce, respectively, large quantity goods (goods and services). Due to this, sales markets are expanding, assortment is being updated, production technologies are being improved, and so on.

Volume increase

The growth of income (and hence the ability to meet their needs) leads to an increase in consumption. This means that the more the population of the country starts to earn, the more it consumes. This turn of events sets off a cyclical response as manufacturers become even more interested in increasing the quantity and improvement of their products, followed by a further increase in revenues.

Production growth

In general, an increase in production is separate topic for a conversation. Since all the goods we consume are the fruit of our industry, and the latter, in turn, is the engine of the economic progress of many countries, it can be said that the more we consume, the further the economy of the state progresses. This statement is partly confirmed by the thesis stated above.

Consumption Research

Of course, if in itself the satisfaction of needs through the use of various goods is a purely practical component that we all face every day, then its study is a dry theory, not always tied to facts. Therefore, the task of scientists is, firstly, to identify some patterns of individual statistical data; secondly, to develop theories that would explain their operation and existence; thirdly, to confirm them in practice and to engage in further study of related issues. That is how they act on this moment analytics working with consumption category.

As for economic processes, they, of course, take place in our lives without our participation. All we need to do is to try to understand them as best we can in order to avoid mistakes in the future. Beyond that, understanding how the economy works can help shape our country's new course of prosperity and development.

Even the most experienced chef cannot fully appreciate the quality of the product by eye. In some cases, the smell and color perform only the function of a beautiful package, behind which a dubious set of ingredients is hidden. The researchers tested several products to find out where and under the guise of what a potential danger might be hiding.

Universal gas is suitable not only for lighters. food industry considers butane as an artificial antioxidant. Chemical element added to chicken nuggets to preserve fresh look. A dish that looks like it has just been cooked may well be refilled with butane.

It is most commonly found in prepared, processed foods with a long shelf life, such as frozen foods, crackers, chips, and fast food.

2. Estrogen

An elevated level of estrogen indicates a dubious origin of the product. Most often, the hormone is given to beef and dairy cows. Estrogen causes accelerated development and growth, which significantly increases milk yield and the amount meat products. And although experts answer the question “is it harmful” in the negative, doctors strongly do not recommend eating such products.

3. Powdered spinach

Composition of some flour products green, or at least with a hint of it, is only indirectly related to vegetable crops. Dehydrated and devoid of nutritional value spinach is used as a component that imitates greens. Eating such foods is as beneficial as eating dust.

4. Propylene glycol or antifreeze

The substance is traditionally used in the automotive and cosmetic industries. The reagent does not allow the glass to freeze, and also provides a moisture-retaining and softening effect. Because the side symptoms were not registered, the substance began to be used as food additive to create these same properties in food.

Potentially dangerous products: confectionery, non-alcoholic and low-alcohol carbonated drinks, energy drinks, frozen fruits and poultry.

5. Vanillin

Since natural vanillin is expensive, and the world demand is several thousand tons per year, a method was invented to synthesize the substance from more accessible components. Basically, vanillin is produced from lingin - by-product pulp and paper industry.

Used as a flavoring agent in yoghurts, baked goods, drinks and confectionery.

6. Substance from the glands of the beaver

The aromatic substance is extracted from the glands of the beaver. Initially, the mixture was intended for medical purposes. Over time, it began to be used in the perfume industry in the form of a natural fragrance and odor fixative. From point of view food industry raspberry flavoring can be reproduced from the substance. It is believed that today the jet is added only to expensive perfumes, in practice, the beaver gland was found in jelly, ice cream, sweets and flavored drinks.

What the product consists of is usually written on the packaging, but for the modern buyer this is nothing more than a formality. Going for groceries, you should not be limited to entertaining reading about the expiration date, especially if the product is wrapped in bright packaging or sold at a tempting low price.