Nourishments—

Information Overload At The

Grocery Store Is An Emotional Drain

By Nancy K. Crevier

The joy of shopping has been snatched away from me.

I loved grocery shopping when I first inherited the task at the age of 16. We had two small grocery stores in town, one of which my mother insisted on using because she felt the quality of the meat was better and the other that we patronized because the produce prices were better. At least twice a week, my mother would make out a list and send me on my way.

Her list served as a guide, but for a lot of the groceries it was left to my discretion what would fill the cupboard for the week. I knew what everybody liked: Chicken Noodle soup for my oldest sister, Vegetarian Vegetable soup for my other sister and myself, and Hormel’s chili for my mom. One sister ate only the beans and hot dogs TV dinner, the other preferred the fried chicken, my mother liked the sirloin, and I opted for the fish dinner. Vanilla wafers made one sister happy, the other found Oreos more to her liking. We all loved pecan twirls.

For pies, we liked the Northern Spy apple. Delicious apples were our choice for eating out of hand, and only pink grapefruit would suffice. Certain foods appeared only for a few brief weeks each season — strawberries and rhubarb in the spring, green grapes and musk melon in the summer, fresh spinach and new potatoes in the fall — and that was when we loaded up on them.

I would make my way up and down the short aisles — both stores would have fit completely inside of  just the produce section of one of today’s mega stores — filling up the cart. My mother was a stickler about brands: bring home Elf soup instead of Campbell’s, and I’d be making a return trip. Only Land O’ Lakes ice cream ever graced our freezer, and if it wasn’t Green Giant, it wasn’t on our dinner plates.

The thing that made it fun was that beyond adhering to the peculiarities of our family, I didn’t worry about anything else. I didn’t read labels and I didn’t check the sugar or sodium content of each item. There were very few nutritional facts and no one cared about trans fats, saturated fats, or carbohydrates. Our food was rated on a “Yum!” factor.

There was no concern about where the product came from, how it had been grown or raised, whether or not it was fairly traded. We ate a variety of foods, found great pleasure in an exotic discovery like avocadoes, and never gave a thought as to the who, what, when, where and why behind its shipment to our store. It truly was a case of ignorance is bliss.

Shopping today is a guilt laden chore. I give consideration to every product I pick up. Do I choose the squash that is grown in California organically (better for our health but with a big carbon footprint for shipping) or the squash from Massachusetts that is grown conventionally (probably with fertilizers and pesticides that wreak havoc on the environment)? Lettuce is out of season now in New England if I try to support local farmers, but my family is growing tired of spinach and cabbage salads.

Do I buy wild caught fish from Norway (big carbon footprint again but a healthy choice) but skip anything from China (possibly tainted) or the inhumanely raised farmed fish? I can buy chickens that led a short but supposedly happy life on an organic farm for three times the cost of a chicken that lived in the poultry equivalent of a concentration camp. Beef from the big Confined Animal Feed Operations is from hormone stimulated cattle wallowing in manure, injected with antibiotics, and possibly tainted with e. coli or any number of other infectious diseases; natural, grass fed meat from small producers  is a costly proposition. Where do I cut corners to make up for that in the budget?

I wonder if I will be able to enjoy my morning cup of java if it isn’t fair trade and organic, and spend ten minutes trying to decide if I should buy the tastier, but higher in mercury, solid white tuna, the low-mercury chunk light tuna that reminds me of cat food, or skip it all together in case it is harming dolphins.

Low fat, no fat, or full fat yogurt, cheeses and milk pull me back and forth, and I find myself traumatized when buying ice cream. Why isn’t it all just cream, sugar, eggs and vanilla? I can’t even pronounce the chemicals that make up the two inch long list of ingredients and I’m sorry I looked.

Natural doesn’t always mean healthy and organic is a random designation in many cases.

Even dry goods create a quandary. Right next to the bathroom cleaner I have always used is a new product that plays on my guilt. This cleaner is made from only organic, environmentally sensitive ingredients that are safe for the user, kind to kitchen and bath fixtures, and do not build up in the water supply. I can save not only my family, but the world if I choose this cleaner. But past experience has taught me that well-meaning natural cleaners do not do such a great job cleaning. Now I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, and all I wanted to do was buy a bottle of cleaner and get out of the store.

Instead of enjoying the bounty that has in so many ways contributed to health and well-being, I am nagged by a feeling that I am stuck with quantity, not quality, and that I am a victim of marketing and media.

I dream of a day when there is no need to worry about the safety of food, the source of a product, and the ethical considerations of buying the necessities of life. I dream of a day when consciously raised food is purchased by conscientious consumers, because that is all that there is. I dream of a time when there is no need to label a food “natural,” “organic” or “grass-fed” because what else would it be? I dream of a time when local farmers are subsidized to raise enough food, not “crops” on monoculture swaths of land, to support the communities around them.

There is no doubt that having access to information that contributes to better health has been a boon for many Americans, but information overload can backfire, I fear, making consumers doubt what is or is not listed on a label.

I dream of a day when I can walk into a store and blithely toss items into my cart without making a science of the process.