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I do not understand this 'discourse'.
There's a LIDL almost exactly 15 minutes away from my place.
If I went there with a hiking backpack - one of those big 60 liter backpacks I could probably cram in enough food for 10 days. Maybe even 14 if I went for dense stuff.
As things are, I have my old backpack - maybe 20l, and maybe a 15l ancient black shoulder bag for the lighter stuff. I can, without much trouble, get enough food for 5-6 days.
Sure, it's fairly heavy - if I'm buying for 5 days, it's 25 lbs. Half of that is milk, but in any case 25 lbs is no big deal to a guy unless he has muscular dystrophy or something like that.
If you were buying bottled water for a week in summer, you could make a case of walking being impractical, but I say bottled water is a scam and if your water is that bad, get a filter.
While I get the utility of cars, if I lived in the same spot I live in now and had a family, I could still do a weekly grocery run by simply getting a bigger backpack.
My record in load carrying was 120 lbs. Well, wasn't pleasant but hey, probably not hazardous to one's health seeing as soldiers do that all the time and they spend way, way more than 40 minutes a week on that.
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