The pros & cons of supermarkets
Nov. 15th, 2002 12:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
novapsycheThis is a strange topic/debate, I realize; please bear with me.
Since I've come into a serious philosophical state of mind, it has occurred to me that modern life and all that comes with it simply serves to remove us more and more from the skills that made human evolution a success up until now. We have lost the ability to work crafts and perform tasks that truly involve skill. Who makes their own clothes anymore? Hell, who even works on their own vehicles anymore? We've bought into a system that provides all of these "services" for us now.
Along this line of thought, I'd often propounded that supermarkets deprive us of a natural link and affinity for the soil. Few people (at least in this country) know how to farm. This is an amazing fact, since 150 years ago this country was 91% agrarian. We have become dependent on convenience shopping. We have no true connection with food; our relationship with it has become highly artificial.
Then I recently read a study that showed that certain segments of the population actually eat better and have higher nutrition due to the fact that they get their food from supermarkets. Specifically, poorer people have higher access to fresh fruit, which supplements their diets and consequently betters their health.
Learning this has forced me into the position of having to modify my position, but I'm at the point where I'm not sure where I stand. I still feel that the supermarket system (along with many other facets of Western culture) has served to tacitly imprison us in a capitalistic market, for without them many Americans would have nowhere to get their food and no skills by which to produce their own.
Since I've come into a serious philosophical state of mind, it has occurred to me that modern life and all that comes with it simply serves to remove us more and more from the skills that made human evolution a success up until now. We have lost the ability to work crafts and perform tasks that truly involve skill. Who makes their own clothes anymore? Hell, who even works on their own vehicles anymore? We've bought into a system that provides all of these "services" for us now.
Along this line of thought, I'd often propounded that supermarkets deprive us of a natural link and affinity for the soil. Few people (at least in this country) know how to farm. This is an amazing fact, since 150 years ago this country was 91% agrarian. We have become dependent on convenience shopping. We have no true connection with food; our relationship with it has become highly artificial.
Then I recently read a study that showed that certain segments of the population actually eat better and have higher nutrition due to the fact that they get their food from supermarkets. Specifically, poorer people have higher access to fresh fruit, which supplements their diets and consequently betters their health.
Learning this has forced me into the position of having to modify my position, but I'm at the point where I'm not sure where I stand. I still feel that the supermarket system (along with many other facets of Western culture) has served to tacitly imprison us in a capitalistic market, for without them many Americans would have nowhere to get their food and no skills by which to produce their own.