Grocery Guilt
Grocery Shopping. It's that thing with carts. If I ever end up living on the street, you can bet I'll have a grocery cart or two.
I am a privileged white lady who lives in America. It is so obvious by how I gather my food. It kind of makes me feel guilty. I've managed to escape mom pinterest guilt, woman working/not-working guilt, Mormon guilt. Lots of guilts have passed me by. Not grocery guilt. Food and money brings it out. Grocery stores have it all.
Grocery shopping brings out the raw and emotional state. "Who am I?" is answered many times over with the food selections I make. You are what you put in your cart. The universe is taunting me with its transaturated, artificially flavored prepackaged deliciousness. "Put me in your cart. I'm on sale." Every time I do it, they win. By they, I mean the transfat overly processed universe.
Get thee hence, universe!
I don't consider myself an extreme eater. I'm not into eating organic, or low-fat, or no sugar, or nothing artificial. My eating is about how I feel. I feel better when I eat foods high in nutritional content and low in artificial content. I feel good when I don't eat a lot of sugar. A lot is super relative, I know. I do feel science is on my side on this one, and Type II diabetes is on the other side. I try to stay on the obvious side of the line. I also feel good when I bake bagels with my girls and we eat them for dinner. So, I have education, opinions, and what I ACTUALLY do all fighting brain battles with their light sabers.
Some of my opinions are educated opinions. Like, beans are inexpensive and healthy proteins. I am backed up by Bob on The Biggest Loser. (Oh, Bob, how I love you). Some of my opinions are based on experience. I know from experience that my family will only eat beans happily three times a week. Some of them are based on nothing but preference. I like Golden Oreos. I know they are not nutritious or inexpensive. I just like them. At night. With milk.
I have discipline shopping, and less discipline once the food is in my house, so it all starts with that shopping cart, and the shiny floors of the grocery store leading down stacks of food. And the guilt that finds me in unexpected places.
A silent prayer. "Please let me choose a cart that has all working wheels. If the wheels do not squeak I will be ever so grateful."
I have a route. I start in the produce section of whatever store I am in, so that I will fill my cart up with fresh vegetables and fruits. If my cart is full, I am full. The downside of this is that I will then be getting cans and boxes and it causes me to constantly rearrange the items in my cart.
Produce. The careful balance of price, nutrition, and practicality.
Produce has a short shelf life. Even though it is the food of nutritional preference, I can't overbuy or it will be thrown in the garbage. I hate throwing money in the garbage. It is why I prefer cloth diapers. I contemplate my life- I wish I had chickens---or pigs! They would eat all the garbage and thank me for it. I should be a farmer. But farmers can't walk to the grocery store. But farmers wouldn't need to? They would walk to their garden? But then I couldn't go on vacation in the summer. Well, I guess I will have to be content with occasionally throwing out rotten produce. I move on.
Every time I walk by the butcher counter, I think,"I really should eat more vegetarian meals."Look at how expensive meat is? Think of all the animals that died so I can eat them? I start to count the animals I've eaten, and that takes me to a dark place. I have tried a couple of times to go vegetarian, but I am a chronic anemic and I just don't feel well without eating meat. Today I bought a roast. It was about 7 dollars worth of roast. I will cook it in the crockpot and we will eat it for a few meals. One of them will certainly be tacos. I will pour lime on them and eat them with avocados and fresh cilantro. I will not wish I was vegetarian in that moment. Guilt finds me here.
Dairy. I love butter so much. So much. I make sure to get a couple of boxes of butter. I use it in cooking and baking. Running out of butter is the worst. Whole milk, in the cart. Its the way we roll. Little baby doesn't do well with milk, so he gets unsweetened almond milk. Yogurt: plain without the flavors and sweeteners? We don't eat the plain one as well. Melissa (my sister-in-law) makes her own yogurt. I should do that. I need one of those thermometers and some big gallon glass jars. I don't have those. I could get plain if I make smoothies, or popsicles? More dishes. I'll just get the flavored peach one. Everyone likes that one. What about Go-gurt? My kids love it. With all that sugar, is it better for them than a popsicle? I don't know. They can't pack a popsicle in their lunch. Guilt with the sugar, but not with the dairy.
Then life gets more complicated. I have to rate nutrition with convenience with prices with preference. We are out of Olive Oil. Shoot. I wish we had a Costco. There is no place like Costco for olive oil. Oh, look, canned milk is on sale. I will grab a couple of cans. Price guilt.
My cart gets pretty full. That's when I go to the checkout.
Up I go to the register. This is the dilemma of my life, and I still haven't figured it out.
1. Do I go in before my cart and then it is stuck behind me and they need to put my groceries in it?
2. Do I push my cart in first, and am therefore unable to reach the groceries in all places of the cart?
It is awkward. No matter where I am in relation to the cart, it is awkward. What do you do?
So, who am I this week?
An apple eating, whole milk chugging, Golden Oreo dipping, delicious taco serving, butter baking, awkward cart placement lady.
The good thing is, the guilt doesn't follow me home.
 |
| This is my shopping buddy, and photographer. |
Grocery shopping brings out the raw and emotional state. "Who am I?" is answered many times over with the food selections I make. You are what you put in your cart. The universe is taunting me with its transaturated, artificially flavored prepackaged deliciousness. "Put me in your cart. I'm on sale." Every time I do it, they win. By they, I mean the transfat overly processed universe.
Get thee hence, universe!
 |
| Does this look familiar? |
Some of my opinions are educated opinions. Like, beans are inexpensive and healthy proteins. I am backed up by Bob on The Biggest Loser. (Oh, Bob, how I love you). Some of my opinions are based on experience. I know from experience that my family will only eat beans happily three times a week. Some of them are based on nothing but preference. I like Golden Oreos. I know they are not nutritious or inexpensive. I just like them. At night. With milk.
I have discipline shopping, and less discipline once the food is in my house, so it all starts with that shopping cart, and the shiny floors of the grocery store leading down stacks of food. And the guilt that finds me in unexpected places.
A silent prayer. "Please let me choose a cart that has all working wheels. If the wheels do not squeak I will be ever so grateful."
I have a route. I start in the produce section of whatever store I am in, so that I will fill my cart up with fresh vegetables and fruits. If my cart is full, I am full. The downside of this is that I will then be getting cans and boxes and it causes me to constantly rearrange the items in my cart.
Produce. The careful balance of price, nutrition, and practicality.
 |
| Produce baby! |
Produce has a short shelf life. Even though it is the food of nutritional preference, I can't overbuy or it will be thrown in the garbage. I hate throwing money in the garbage. It is why I prefer cloth diapers. I contemplate my life- I wish I had chickens---or pigs! They would eat all the garbage and thank me for it. I should be a farmer. But farmers can't walk to the grocery store. But farmers wouldn't need to? They would walk to their garden? But then I couldn't go on vacation in the summer. Well, I guess I will have to be content with occasionally throwing out rotten produce. I move on.
 |
| Meat. I love it and wish I didn't. |
Every time I walk by the butcher counter, I think,"I really should eat more vegetarian meals."Look at how expensive meat is? Think of all the animals that died so I can eat them? I start to count the animals I've eaten, and that takes me to a dark place. I have tried a couple of times to go vegetarian, but I am a chronic anemic and I just don't feel well without eating meat. Today I bought a roast. It was about 7 dollars worth of roast. I will cook it in the crockpot and we will eat it for a few meals. One of them will certainly be tacos. I will pour lime on them and eat them with avocados and fresh cilantro. I will not wish I was vegetarian in that moment. Guilt finds me here.
Dairy. I love butter so much. So much. I make sure to get a couple of boxes of butter. I use it in cooking and baking. Running out of butter is the worst. Whole milk, in the cart. Its the way we roll. Little baby doesn't do well with milk, so he gets unsweetened almond milk. Yogurt: plain without the flavors and sweeteners? We don't eat the plain one as well. Melissa (my sister-in-law) makes her own yogurt. I should do that. I need one of those thermometers and some big gallon glass jars. I don't have those. I could get plain if I make smoothies, or popsicles? More dishes. I'll just get the flavored peach one. Everyone likes that one. What about Go-gurt? My kids love it. With all that sugar, is it better for them than a popsicle? I don't know. They can't pack a popsicle in their lunch. Guilt with the sugar, but not with the dairy.
Then life gets more complicated. I have to rate nutrition with convenience with prices with preference. We are out of Olive Oil. Shoot. I wish we had a Costco. There is no place like Costco for olive oil. Oh, look, canned milk is on sale. I will grab a couple of cans. Price guilt.
My cart gets pretty full. That's when I go to the checkout.
Up I go to the register. This is the dilemma of my life, and I still haven't figured it out.
 |
| Me first option. Cart first option. Both bad options |
2. Do I push my cart in first, and am therefore unable to reach the groceries in all places of the cart?
It is awkward. No matter where I am in relation to the cart, it is awkward. What do you do?
So, who am I this week?
An apple eating, whole milk chugging, Golden Oreo dipping, delicious taco serving, butter baking, awkward cart placement lady.
The good thing is, the guilt doesn't follow me home.
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When I am not pregnant, I can squeeze the cart past me. So I pull the cart in from the front, then squeeze it past so the bagger can load it up while I pay. Both pregnancies it caught me by surprise, though, when I was too large. I'm not thin (size 12), but it is extremely plausible that checkout aisles are wider here in Mississippi.
ReplyDeleteIn some grocery stores, I can squeeze past. Some stores, I just can't though. In the little store I like here in Nebraska, there is no room between the cart and the registers. So, I have to scoot the cart out and walk back in to my spot. Maybe we should be very grateful for the wider checkout aisles in Mississippi.
DeleteI get so happy when I see you have a new blog post. Brilliant, again.
ReplyDeleteI always enjoy reading your blog posts. I too have always struggled with the checkout problem, but the store I like here in LC has different types of checkout lanes, so I only have that problem when I go somewhere else. It truly is bad design though...
ReplyDeleteIt's so awkward. I go in front of the cart to load the groceries onto the belt. Then I push the cart back out (hopefully not into the people waiting behind me in line) and then push the cart back in past the registers. And I mostly bag my own groceries here. Weird. New Jerseyians don't pump their own gas. But they bag their own groceries. And i totally feel you on the guilt. But it mostly manifests when i'm around people who make their own yogurt and never feed their kids Kraft macaroni and cheese and talk about how the human body wasn't mean to digest cow milk. And then i go eat a hot dog and feel better. I'm glad your guilt doesn't follow you home. This was an EXCELLENT blog post.
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it. A visit to the grocery store is always an identity crisis.
ReplyDeleteStep to the left behind the conveyor belt and pull the cart backwards so it is directly to your right with everything in easy reach. At least this works at my Smith's, every store is different.
ReplyDelete