Shopping Spree

At the begining of spring break I went back to my parents house. They have more condiments than food, so we went to the grocery store to get food for me to eat through out the week. We went up and down the isles and I got to choose whatever i wanted, because this time I wasn't paying for it. I noticed that when I didn't have to pony up the funds for the grocery bill I chose foods according to things other than price.

I am unemployed and live in a dorm, so most of the time I don't get to choose what brand my food is, because I eat from the cafeteria. When I go over to my best friends house (3-4 nights a week) we have to make food for ourselves. Our most common choices are dollar menu foods, noodles with some kind of sauce, or if we splurge we will split a Hamburger Helper between him, his girl friend, and I. We eat these foods not because we especially like them, but they are cheap and you get the most bang for your buck. We also don't really like where our food comes from; the slave-driving corporations, the deep fat fryers, and the preservatives that let them be transported from across the nation.

When I went shopping over spring break I chose foods that I deemed healthy, not to processed, and of general higher quality. Part of my health evaluation of a food is, does it look like the food its made of. I saw this mentioned by Pollan, "When I asked Isaac if the new nuggets tasted more like chicken than the old ones, he seemed baffled by the question. 'No, they taste like what they are, which is nuggets.' In this consumer's mind at least, the link between a nugget and the chicken in it was never more than notional, and probably irrelevant." I also got snack foods which is a rarity back at school. Besides the food being "healthier" the food also came from sources that I thought of as less tyrannic; foods that came from sources that are not house hold names.

The part of this trip to the grocery store that was different than any other was that I saw what effect price has on my habits. Given the opportunity to get the food I wanted I fought "the man", lowered the number of "processes" before it reaches my plate, tried to help the hard working farmers that I will never meet in third world countries, and did as little damage to the earth as I could. It seems almost comical that when I have to pay the bill, these causes are instantly seconded to the value of a couple more bucks left in my pocket.

Are there eco-friendly co-ops in the ghetto? How many Aldi's are in Edina? Do the people with food stamps consider the shack dwelling farmers of who know where?