Would YOU pay $40 for a bottle of water?

Bling H2O water cost $40 for a 750 ml bottle. Seriously.
Samuel Adams’ Utopias costs $120 for a 24oz bottle.
Lambda olive oil costs $182 for 1,000 ml.

While many people are being as frugal as they can, there is a completely opposite trend of outrageously overspending on luxury foods that, some say, are no more than beautifully packaged and cleverly marketed basic food staples.

As the American economy slows down, and people struggle to creatively cope with ever-rising costs, the sales of luxury foods are up 17% over the past two years, compared with 4% for overall food sales.

Joel Stein thinks that while some of these gourmet foods are good enough that it actually makes sense to buy them if you can afford it, paying $40 for a bottle of water never makes sense.

I haven’t tried any of those luxury foods. But I wonder: if a food item is priced at ten times the price of a generic item, is it really ten times better? Is a $700 pair of Dolce & Gabbana skinny jeans 10 times “better” than a $70 Calvin Klein pair?

And how should we define “better” anyway? Better-tasting food? Higher quality clothes? Don’t these prices in fact represent a hefty premium that is paid for the designer label and fancy packaging? How much are people willing to pay for the designer label? And, if you can afford it, should you even care about consumerism or should you just spend away to your little hearts’ content?

I wish I had the answers, but I don’t. If I can’t afford something, I don’t buy it. That’s easy enough, and thanks to this approach, I never got into credit card debt. But in other areas, my personal choices are probably somewhere in the middle. I am not nearly as frugal as I could be, but I am trying to simplify, buy less and avoid paying “designer premiums.”

Photo by bbaunach

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