no more cheese nips! no more blue ketchup!

Only because I referred to the ear wax that Safeway sells in my April 11th post am I linking to this article by Mark Morford, who accurately explains the feeling I get every time I step foot in that shithole. When I find myself inside the Safeway in the middle of the city looking at morbidly obese customers overfilling their carts with buckets of Ranch and Lunchables, pre-packaged pink and brown deli meats and cases of Capri Suns, I often feel like I'm actually in the middle of Montanna. It's an out-of-state, out-of-body (mind?), out of control feeling. And now I feel relieved and justified really, because it is confirmed that I am not alone:

I deem it Supermarket Syndrome. It is what happens when you spend increasing amounts of your grocery-shopping time in local natural markets, farmer's markets, Whole Foods or (here in S.F.) Rainbow Grocery, or in any of a thousand smaller health marts around town - and don't give me the you're-an-elitist, I-can't-afford-that-stuff argument, because there are plenty of cheap farmer's markets and healthy grocery stores right now, places full of quiet lighting and healthy grains and organic produce and friendly service and foods that don't have, as their first ingredient, imminent death, or refined sugar, or high-fructose corn syrup, or Bright Flaming Red No. 3, or Known Cancerous Substance No. 4, or Raging Obesity-Related Heart Disease No. 11.

They are places, in other words, where you walk in and spend an hour of your life and it immediately feels, you know, different. Better. Healthier. Lighter. More natural. And you walk out and you go, hey, wow, check it out: no searing headache.

I've actually felt like I was in a weird daze or on another planet when shopping there. It's like I want to grab the lady standing in line in front of me, grab her by the collar and scream at her, "Stop watching daytime TV! Stop buying those chemical filled frozen dinners!" In the 90s, they would call this an Ally McBeal moment.

We stopped shopping at Safeway mostly after we took a cooking class that taught us healthy recipes that included ingredients you couldn't even get at that place. It was also an economic boycott, because much like all other big-box chains, they were cutting health benefits and lowering pay for new hires, which they said was needed to help them compete with Wal-Mart stores. (Another reason Wal-Mart is killing America.)

Then we started reading lables and decided (a little too late?) that all these chemicals and sugar are really not good for the body. Sure, I've made it through the past 30 years without keeling over from eating that junk, but as I watch my family grow older and the diabetes kicks in (my brother is underweight and legally blind at age 38), I'm starting to think that it's never too late to start caring. The last time I was home, my diabetic overweight dad came back from the store with Wheat Thins and Triscuits and actually tried to defend them as diet food because the box said "low fat." I stared at the two bright yellow boxes and thought about how all those Sunday paper glossy coupon/advertisements are really working.