The Grocery List

What to do while in the queue...

Supermarkets are not in the business of selling food; they're in the business of making money. The whole physical layout of a supermarket tells you their game plan. They know you're going to want some basic foods such as bread, milk, meat, and produce. None of that is front and center when you walk in the store. It's all on the edges. You are drawn through the stuff in the middle to get to your goal, much like people looking for the $2 casino buffet dinner stand in long, slow moving lines that wend through rows of slot machines. What you buy in the middle (of a supermarket or a casino) is where they make their real profits. Coincidentally, the stuff in the middle isn't all that good for you. Neither the Cocoa Puffs nor the Royal Flush poker slots are going to help you with your physical or mental health. But both will cost you a heap of money.

Saving money and finding foods that keep us healthy means that we lurk around the edges of the supermarket, staying clear of the center swamp that is trying to lure us in with it flashy packaged goods. Unless you just have to buy diapers or pet food, you can stay pretty much clear of the center. Of course you wouldn't even need diapers or pet food if you had just followed the most important of all financial adages:

"Never take financial responsibility for any thing that eats."

But we didn't know any better, so we made a pile of children and acquired 1.5 cats (Peepers is 16 years old and hardly qualifies as a whole cat any more). With the children being so cute and all, we might just as well go ahead and keep feeding them.

The bread section is littered with nutrition-free baked things that are best avoided even though cheap. A little more spent on whole grain bread is a good investment in health. Ditto for the meat section. We buy the better (read: less fat) meat and make up for the increased cost by buying less of it. At $4 a gallon, milk is a luxury that we could afford, but lactose intolerance lets us sidestep the issue. BTW, why is milk more expensive than gasoline?

Feeding the masses

Health and economy converge in the produce section. We make an effort to spend at least half our grocery dollars there. One ingredient foods aren't anywhere near as convenient as processed ready-to-eat foods, nor do they have the flashy taste. But produce is going to drive the whole success of our efforts. We'll mold and shape the raw materials in the produce section to create healthy meals that are far more affordable than anything the mega-factories can package.