Supermarket Excercises

Reflection Exercise #1

            Until I had read the chapters in Marion Nestle’s What to Eat? and done the supermarket exercise, I had never thought about nor looked at the nutritional facts of foods. I just never would have known what to make of them in the past. They were just numbers and words without an important significance to me.

            I did not really put any junk foods on my shopping list except for the orange juice. I picked up an artificial juice that stuck out and I was blown away by the difference in sugars and sodium between this and the other foods I had picked out. It was ridiculous to me that this liquid had more sugar than everything else I had looked at. To top it off, it had artificial flavoring, preservatives, coloring chemicals, and a bunch of other chemicals in it that I did not recognize. There really does seem to be a huge gap between processed and unprocessed foods.

            Something that really surprised me was the difference in price between the whole wheat and the white bread. This is surprising to me considering that the difference between white and whole wheat bread is not that different in terms of obtaining the flour to make them. Not only is it surprising, though, it is also concerning given the fact that white bread is far less healthy.

Reflection Exercise #2

The most noticeable difference between products and their cheaper counterparts is the presentation. Cheaper products are much more plain looking in their packaging. They have less color; they don’t have the same exciting look and ‘health’ claims. It is somehow subtly conveyed that the cheaper items are not as good for you when that is not necessarily true at all. In fact, as I discovered first had, sometimes more expensive are loaded with artificial ingredients that are supposed to add to the taste while their cheaper counterparts may be more natural. Of course, the opposite of this is true more often than not. Whichever the trend, depending on the food, reading the nutritional facts is important.

Symbolically and psychologically, I suppose the more expensive foods represent more desirable foods. This has to do with what I mentioned earlier about the presentation but it also has to do in a way with the price itself. The subtle message is: “if something is more expensive, it’s probably better.”