Supermarket Syndrome

There have been times when we shopped at Costco. We bought memberships, and would go once to buy a year's supply of dental floss. Then we'd not go back for a year, our membership would lapse. Something else would call us back, and we would renew, maybe a year later, and buy another year's worth of something. We stand in the check out line with people who had pallet loads of merchandise, while we held our dental floss or a printer in our hands. We finally gave it up and never went back. When we shop at large box stores or malls, we always park far from the store entrances. It is our defensive action, not to protect our car, but so we can walk outside, collect our wits about us before we plunge into the neon-lit pandemonium and paean to the gods of consumerism. We dash in try to find what we came for in as short a time as possible, pay for it and run out quickly so we can see the sky again, and breathe the outside air. As I write this, I realize I use the same behavior in campground outhouses, only I am holding my breath the whole time (and I don't have to pay).
Why do we have an aversion to the mall or even the neighborhood supermarket? We have just been informed that we have Supermarket Syndrome. You might have it as well. Does it drive you crazy to go into a Safeway or Albertsons or Krogers? Does the food stuff there scream that you are eating more chemicals than nutrients? Read this fine editorial by Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle and see for yourself.
Here's a taste:
...And then, when you least expect it, you find yourself in some situation or in some town with no other grocery options and you innocently walk back into Safeway to try to buy some organic hormone-free eggs (ha-ha yeah right good luck) - and WHAM. Sensory overload. Low-vibration overload. You get what in meditation circles they would call whacked, slapped upside the spirit by dank, malicious energy. Supermarket Syndrome.

Pork-like sausage in a can. Cool Whip with enough high-fructose corn syrup to caulk your driveway. Creepy chicken-flavored sauce packets, ten to a box. Precut celery. Precut cookie dough. Precut everything because you're too lazy to handle a knife. Nabisco honey-flavored Teddy Grahams shaped like Dora the Explorer. Dawn Wash & Toss. Crustless white bread of sufficient consistency to plug Hoover Dam.

We are amazing beings, us bipeds. We adapt. We can endure the most unlivable crap and the most unhealthy exposure and think it's completely fine and normal...

To continue reading Mark Morford.