Bad Day at the Supermart

A shopping cart filled beyond full, boxes of groceries arched above the blue plastic basket, waited in line at the checkout. Peeking through the chaos of pretty packages, microwave dinners named Lean-This and Slim-That stood out. A slightly heavy but beautiful woman pushed the cart. Judging from the Lean/Slim dinners, either she or her mate did not appreciate her beauty.

As the clerk began the herculean task of emptying the cart, more information emerged. The diet indicated by Slim-me-Here and Lean-me-There was doomed. Unnoticed at first, the lower shelf of the cart held , ubiquitous in this day and age, large boxes of soda. Further, as the cart contents were unloaded, a 16 ounce bag of frozen strawberries, which was as close as any of the lot got to fresh food, was followed by a pound of sugary, whipped non-cream. No less than four boxes of breakfast cereals, all sugar-coated, were scanned and bagged. Of the huge load of assumed nourishment, a week’s supply for a small family, every item but one, the strawberries, was factory prepared and packaged food; food that would not even need a stove-top but would be excited to warmth by microwave or eaten cold. Shock of shock, even the gelatin desert was pre-prepared, convenient if not fresh, and set into individual serving cups.

In a $200 mound of food not one item that might need a recipe and assembly could be found. Hard to believe, but putting whipped sugar and who-knows-what on frozen strawberries would be as close to cooking that her kitchen would see. Children could look forward to a steady diet of boxed factory food, reheated, or cold, sugar and preservative packed, ready to go.

Then the clerk unburied the previously unseen candy bars. Talk about going from bad to worse. Three boxes of soda and a matching candy bar for each can. Dang! The preservatives and sugar of the microwave food would have countered the Slim-and-Lean frozen dinners without help from the intense sugar of candy bars. The Sugar and Whip for the strawberries had already moved the lot to excessive artificial and sweet. Now, candy! The attempt at diet had less chance of success than the proverbial snowball. Maybe she bought the candy for her bounding babes, but at night, feeling sorry for herself, figuring she deserves a treat after a bad day at work, her corn syrup and cane sugar addiction will overcome. She will fall. Of course she will.

Is she conventional or an exception? Do most young parents feel they have no time to cook? Are most children raised on food kept potable with cold and chemicals? What does that do to young muscles, livers and brains? Does this explain the trend for prescription mood-elevators for school kids?

Boxed, canned and wrapped, her virtual fast-food, neatly bagged in brown paper and stacked into the back of an SUV, the woman got in and drove away, not so much into the sunset as into a future of unsustainable health insurance premiums and prescription drug cocktails. Gotta wonder about the connection.

Cooking is more than a hobby.

copyright 2006 Chromia Poetics