At The Grocery Store

As a nutritional scientist, I consider it my duty to assess the contents of other shoppers's purchases when waiting in line at the grocery store checkout. The vast majority of the time, what people are buying is appallingly bad for you and I get to feel all smug and superior in a "what is this world coming to? why isn't anyone buying any whole grain products??" kind of way.

Today, I'm standing in the line up at Safeway and a cute boy walks into the line up behind me and starts emptying his basket onto the conveyor belt thingy. Oh my god, he's buying sprouted grain bread - not Wonder Bread! Look at that, he's getting whole grain crackers! And oatmeal! And the eggs with the omega-3 fatty acids! And then I look at my pathetic order... frozen french fries; pre-manufactured veggie burgers; the cheapest, omega-3-less eggs they sell; a huge vat of salsa. Oh my god, does he see I'm buying the cheap eggs with artery clogging saturated fats in them? Is he judging my frozen french fries? I want to yell, "but I'm on my way to the produce store to buy my fresh fruits and veggies next! I swear! And I'm getting multigrain bread at the bakery on the next block! Honest!" I can't even bring myself to look at him, lest his eyes tell me what he's surely too polite to say aloud: "Your grocery order is pathetic." Or perhaps not everyone is as critical as me about other people's groceries. Or perhaps he wasn't even looking at my order and he really was interested in the headline on that tabloid* he was looking at. Hard to say really.

It seems like there really should be some sort of grand conclusion to the posting, some moral to this story. But there isn't.

*FYI, did you know that Katy Holmes has been turned into a Stepford wife?