“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

An interview with Michael Pollan on the New York Times and his earlier article titled “Unhappy Meals“.  As Bertrand Russell said, “The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”

At the supermarket, fully-loaded carts wheel out past the cashier one after another.  I was once behind these same carts.  Today with my handful of purchase, I stare with curiosity into at the cashier counter as the full carts in front slowly empties through the bar code scanner.  We now employ what we call an Ikea strategy in the supermarket.  Designed to make you think you need everything, shopping at Ikea is rather deceitful so while in line to pay, we reinspect the trolley and reconsider again if we accidentally took anything we didn’t intend to buy in the first place.

Likewise in the supermarket, a quick run through to see if we were really going to eat or cook that.  But our strategy is polished now.  Often we don’t even require a basket – it’s fresh milk, cream, butter and pasta that we balance in our hands.  And of course, the occasional bag of chips!

Fresh seafood, juicy rib eye steak, vegetables and fruits (almost local, of course) are now bought at the market, the neighborhood grocery or the night market.  A face behind the food may not be necessary but a face adds more value and appreciation than the supermarket aisle.  And when you know them well enough, they will tell you the string beans are two days old while the ladyfingers just came in today.  So we have now a stakeholder who also helps us decide what will be on the menu and we really appreciate it.