I did not expect to laugh out loud multiple times while reading a story on the history of the American supermarket. Bianca Bosker in The Atlantic is a delight: she makes you realize how incredibly spoiled for choice we are even the most ordinary of grocery stores. Apparently a trip to a Texas supermarket turned Boris Yeltsin off communism!
“At the very least, you have to marvel: How did we take something built to satisfy the simplest human need and make it so utterly baroque? The supermarket does not “curate.” It is a defiantly encyclopedic catalog of our needs and desires, each and every one of which it attempts to satisfy. With nothing but a can opener, you can get a “turkey dinner in gravy,” “chicken shrimp and crab stew,” “saucy seafood bake,” “chicken and turkey casserole,” “prime filets with salmon and beef,” “bisque with tuna and chicken,” “ocean whitefish dinner with garden greens in sauce,” or a “natural flaked skipjack tuna entrée in a delicate broth.” And that’s just in the cat-food aisle.”
