Literally, a whole aisle is dedicated to cereals. First you may encounter the healthy organic cereal, all bran cereal, and low fat/calorie cereal which has appeared in recent years and takes up about one fifth of the cereal aisle. Next you will surely encounter overwhelmingly colorful boxes which tend to be all the child targeted cereals such as Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, Cheerios and of course Rice Krispies. The most amazing one I saw at Pathmart were the Honey Bunches of Oats which had 8 different kinds!
This is a small yet very pertinent example of what American society is like. Everywhere people consume, yet the market here has been so segmented to target different audiences that the audience doesn't know what to choose anymore. Do we really need 8 different kinds of the same cereal and 30 different types of cereal? After all, cereal is such a basic food...simple grains...why complicate it so much?
To prove my point, I wasn't even able to fit all of the pictures I took into a panorama, the picture below is only about a third of all the cereals.
WHERE IS MONKEYMAN?
Click on image to enlarge
in front of the pink special k, next to the mini-wheats!
ReplyDeletethe elevator music, the millions of brands of everything, people sedately pushing their carts with blank expressions on their faces... it really should depress me, but i kind of like it actually. untill i remember what you are saying, the supermarket is an all too clear reflection of what our consumption habits have become. maybe i like it because i have been conditioned to think that consuming makes me happy?
julie your blog is excellent.
ReplyDeletei'll never forget the first time we went to costco after moving back to the states. we all just stood in the door way our mouths hanging open , panic starting to well, while people pushed huuuge carts of stuff around the giant warehouse. it took us a few minutes to gather the courage to walk through the door and longer to learn how to shop!
xx
iva