We know about cutting corners and profits coming first, but a recent video of someone in a supermarket weighing food hits the nail on the head. They grab a bag of courgettes, which say 1kg. Put on the scales, nope. Potatoes, should be 1.5kg, nope. Carrots at 1kg, and three for three. Nope. Seems like just a few grams here and there, but it all adds up.

I thought about bags of pre-packaged food previously, not from a weight perspective I’ll admit, but from a wastage point of view. I don’t eat a huge amount of food, and like fresh food, so used to buy a small amount, weigh it yourself, buy what you need. Then it started changing to plastic boxes of grapes, bags of potatoes and others things bunched and pre weighed, for your ‘convenience’ and to save them money on bags, labels, wastage. All that happened for me though, is I ended up wasting more food as it wasn’t used in time. Paying more for using less, getting us into the swing of things early. Or some people may be compelled to eat more, because there is more, so as not to waste it.

Once you understand they are there to sell you as many and as much as they can, you understand why supermarkets are laid out the way they are, lit the way they are and food packaged the way it is. I am doing an article on Consumerism which touches on the techniques and means by which they have worked out how to get the ‘best out of marketing’. Unfortunately to do that, they had to change the way people think to make that happen. So, rather than tailoring the products to the needs of the people, they started changing the needs of the people to fit the product. Sad really. To change the mentality of millions of people, just because you want to make money and tell them what to do. But that technique did not stay confined to only marketing food, beauty products and homeware. It was quickly adopted by the pharmaceutical industry, education and business. So, to you it might just seem like the odd carrot, or a potato, but it isn’t, it’s continuing the lie that things are fair, prices are good and corporations care about your best interests, healthy eating and lifestyle. They don’t care, they just want you to consume as much as possible and be owned. It’s that simple.

(c) K Wicks