A glance at supermarket shelves during winter’s chill brings the unexpected—a heavy plastic bag, packed to its brim with doughnuts, not meant for snacking but for fueling a fire. On the surface, this act almost seems inventive, an odd answer to biting energy bills. Yet, inside this ordinary gesture lies a more tangled puzzle where the price of warmth and the price of food collide, quietly reshaping what counts as thrift and what counts as waste.
An Unlikely Fuel for the Fireplace
It starts in the fluorescent-lit aisles, where rows of doughnuts are swept into a cart, destined for the stove and not the breakfast table. At first grip, each doughnut feels faintly sticky and dense—evidence of sugar and oil. When supermarket promotions are aggressive, the cost drops so low that heating with pastry feels, at least in the short term, like a clever alternative to wood.
For 2.85 euros, 133 doughnuts weighing 10 kilograms promise hours of heat. On paper, the math appears to work: the calorific value of doughnuts—thanks to their fat and sugar—reaches nearly 18.5 megajoules per kilogram. That rivals the energy stored in standard wood briquettes, and sometimes even edges past them.
The Cost Equation, Upside Down
In a region where fuel prices leap each autumn, supermarkets’ frantic discounting flips the logic of the heating season. For a moment, a basket of doughnuts may be a cheaper energy source than wood pellets or briquettes. During special promotions, each pastry might set you back only 0.01 euro—far below the price per unit of traditional fuel.
Observing them burn, a new set of details emerge—oil bubbles violently, flames hold steady, and the cast iron stove stays hot for over five hours. The quiet sizzle inside the stove is a physical reminder of the energy crisis beyond the kitchen window.
From Surplus to Survival
Supermarkets often mark down items approaching the end of their shelf life, pushing food into a role it was never meant for. In these circumstances, edible goods like doughnuts, oats, or corn transform from sustenance to last-resort heating fuel. The visual of food, once destined to satisfy hunger, now feeding fire, lingers in the air—thick, sweet, almost uncomfortable.
Such practices underline a social paradox. Food, typically valued for taste and nutrition, is suddenly more affordable as fuel than as food. For some, burning discounted pastries is not an act of protest, but of survival—one that echoes the larger anxieties of a winter stretched thin by rising costs.
Ethics and the Unfinished Calculation
There’s a certain unease in watching bread or pastry vanish into flame. While the arithmetic of calories and euros may favor the fire, a deeper consideration tugs in the background—should food ever become a substitute for heating materials? The answer isn’t simply about numbers. It touches on fairness, resource use, and unintended consequences.
Heavy discounting distorts purpose: food set aside for human consumption gets reclassified as a commodity, its fate determined by price alone. Even if such acts represent a fringe response to tough times, they stir debate over how societies prioritize basic needs during moments of scarcity.
Heat and Hunger in a Shifting Landscape
As winter deepens, the boundaries separating sustenance and survival blur in fluorescent-lit aisles and in the glow behind glass stove doors. Turning food into fuel, though remarkable in its ingenuity, signals more than just an error in economic calculation. It reveals tensions simmering beneath the surface of daily life, where warmth and nourishment can—at least for a while—be traded, one doughnut at a time.
