Supermarket Quotes

“THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTH

A few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case.

In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic."

Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight.

So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic.


Suzy Kassem,
Truth Is Crying”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Laser light flickered all over him as if he was a packet of biscuits at a super-market check-out.”
― Douglas Adams, Mostly Harmless

“[Patricia Highsmith] was overwhelmed by sensory stimulation - there were too many people and too much noise and she just could not handle the supermarket. She continually jumped, afraid that someone might recognise or touch her. She could not make the simplest of decisions - which type of bread did she want, or what kind of salami? I tried to do the shopping as quickly as possible, but at the check-out she started to panic. She took out her wallet, knocked off her glasses, dropped the money on the floor, stuff was going all over the place.”
― Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι

“Before the Apocalypse, the closest I'd gotten to death was buying steaks at the supermarket.”
― Manel Loureiro, Apocalipsis Z: La ira de los justos

“For food, we initially relied on nature; then ourselves; and now other people.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“People always say things like Well I would, but... and that's where they fuck up. As soon as they give a reason for why they can't do something, they're already defeated.”
― Bobby Hall, Supermarket

“People that have a police car behind them pulling them over should put on their hazard lights and continue slowly driving to the nearest densely populated public place, such as a supermarket or shopping center. Pull over outside the busy entrance and start your video camera. Inform the police officer that you are video recording and very slowly give the requested documentation. Exercise your legal right to silence while the many independent witnesses video record the unexpected stop that rudely interrupts your day. If you are given a ticket, choose to go to court. It will give you time to obtain independent legal advice about the allegation.”
― Steven Magee

“I don't know how long I spent wandering about the supermarket creating meals in my mind. Hot roast chicken and mayonnaise sandwiches. Pizzas on crispy bases. Big, heaving bowls of spaghetti Bolognese. Crunchy, cheesy nachos with sour cream. I did a full circle and ended back in the fruit and veg section. Next to the peaches were boxes filled with tomatoes still clinging to their vines. The ripe tomato smell was almost sexual. It filled my nostrils as I lifted the box. There were some slightly rotten ones near the bottom of the box, but the rest were just perfect, thick with the perfume of their green vines, fat and red.”
― Hannah Tunnicliffe, The Color of Tea

“A surprising percentage of your own society, with all your heritage of murder, would like to believe that Life survives by going to the supermarket. So the ideal would be to train cattle to make butcher knives and take turns cutting each other up at a convenient location.”
― Spider Robinson, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

“True, there's an aisle devoted to foreign foods, and then there are familiar foods that have been through the Japanese filter and emerged a little bit mutated. Take breakfast cereal. You'll find familiar American brands such as Kellogg's, but often without English words anywhere on the box. One of the most popular Kellogg's cereals in Japan is Brown Rice Flakes. They're quite good, and the back-of-the-box recipes include cold tofu salad and the savory pancake okonomiyaki, each topped with a flurry of crispy rice flakes. Iris and I got mildly addicted to a Japanese brand of dark chocolate cornflakes, the only chocolate cereal I've ever eaten that actually tastes like chocolate. (Believe me, I've tried them all.)
Stocking my pantry at Life Supermarket was fantastically simple and inexpensive. I bought soy sauce, mirin, rice vinegar, rice, salt, and sugar. (I was standing right in front of the salt when I asked where to find it This happens to me every time I ask for help finding any item in any store.) Total outlay: about $15, and most of that was for the rice. Japan is an unabashed rice protectionist, levying prohibitive tariffs on imported rice. As a result, supermarket rice is domestic, high quality, and very expensive. There were many brands of white rice to choose from, the sacks advertising different growing regions and rice varieties. (I did the restaurant wine list thing and chose the second least expensive.) Japanese consumers love to hear about the regional origins of their foods. I almost never saw ingredients advertised as coming from a particular farm, like you'd see in a farm-to-table restaurant in the U.S., but if the milk is from Hokkaido, the rice from Niigata, and the tea from Uji, all is well. I suppose this is not so different from Idaho potatoes and Florida orange juice.
When I got home, I opened the salt and sugar and spooned some into small bowls near the stove. The next day I learned that Japanese salt and sugar are hygroscopic: their crystalline structure draws in water from the air (and Tokyo, in summer, has enough water in the air to supply the world's car washes). I figured this was harmless and went on licking slightly moist salt and sugar off my fingers every time I cooked.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“The meat section is mostly devoted to presliced meats for hot pots and quick-cooked dishes, with a thin steak or chop here and there. In addition to commodity meat, you'll find Wagyu beef and kurobuta pork. The quality of the meat in an average Tokyo supermarket is higher than at most specialty butchers in the U.S.
Time to fess up. Life Supermarket is not the best supermarket in the world; every supermarket in Tokyo is the best supermarket in the world. I haven't even gotten to the prepared food (two different yakitori sections, reheatable fried foods that stay crunchy, and lots of appealing salads and cooked vegetables).”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“Seelans Superstore is the one-stop-shop for all your grocery needs. We are the trusted Online Asian grocery in UK with wide range of products with best quality. With rich variety of hand-picked Indian & Sri-lankan groceries, we have brought you the best flavours of Asia. To save your time and make shopping easier, we have our products available online and deliver to you at your doorstep. Start shopping with us.”
― Seelans Superstore

“H Mart is a supermarket chain that specializes in Asian food. The H stands for han ah reum, a Korean phrase that roughly translates to "one arm full of groceries." H Mart is where parachute kids flock to find the brand of instant noodles that reminds them of home. It's where Korean families buy rice cakes to make tteokguk, the beef and rice cake soup that brings in the New Year. It's the only place where you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because it's the only place that truly understands how much garlic you'll need for the kind of food your people eat. H Mart is freedom from the single-aisle "ethnic" section in regular grocery stores.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge your existence.”
― Geoff Tibballs, The Grumpy Old Git's Guide to Life