A startling awareness....

[BeanBubby]

Have you noticed that eating this simple way makes you acutely aware of what others are putting in their grocery carts? My grocery shopping day was yesterday, and in a rather crowded grocery store I noticed just one other woman with an abundance of veggies in her cart. She was an older woman with muck boots on (obviously had horses), and she was very, very lean with long gray hair in a pony tail and gorgeous skin.
Literally every other person that I casually noticed was seriously overweight, and had a cart chocked full of ground meat, cereal, lunchmeats and dairy. One person had a very obvious and severe skin condition, and had the checkout conveyor belt filled with Moutain Dew (on sale!) and Cheeze-its (on sale as well!!)

As I was checking out the bagging woman asked me what Brocolli Rappini was. She said she's never seen it before, and she didn't think they had it very often. I told her I'd been shopping there for two years and they had never NOT had it in the produce section, she probably just never noticed it. I told her how I steam it and season it, and advised her to just try it, it's really good. She said she would.

I suppose we are all creatures of habit, unless WE change the habit.


BB

[eri]

Yes, I sometimes cart snoop. Saturday I stopped in Walmart & the cashier didn't know what fresh ginger or zucchini were. Ginger ok, but zucchini?

[Gweithgar]

I love the "stump the cashier with produce" game!

During the week, I work in an academic setting, with a lot of health conscious people and a lot of young college students. It's a setting in which it is easy to forget about the obesity epidemic. My weekend job is at a tourist attraction, where I interact with about 1000 people a day and most (I'd estimate at least 75%) of them are seriously overweight. Most of the time, if you see a healthy-looking, slender child, the parents are from Europe somewhere. It really presses home the idea of eating right and avoiding that trap.

[Katydid]

I find that jicama gets the cashier every time. Kate

[bunsofaluminum]

I got a cashier with eggplant one time. He didn't know what you could do with it. I told him about baba ganoush. He said "cool"

where I buy so much of my groceries, especially greens like kale and collard and chard, is a discount store nearby. Once I bought a huge bagful of prepared kale. It was called "Fresh Kale Salad" or something and consisted of finely chopped kale, slivered carrot, and red cabbage chunks. The kid at the checkout said "Kale is awesome. you can put it in soups, you can add it to any hot dish. Saute it with garlic and put lemon juice on it. It's really good for you, too"

tall, gawky skinny 19 year old, and he knew not only what kale was, but what to do with it, and its benefits! hahahaha!

[lmggallagher]

Kind of a tangent to the comments here, but I volunteer in a food closet Monday's. We get a bunch of produce donated to us from Whole Foods, where I personally can not afford to shop! Anyway, I am pretty aware of the various veggies, even the Asian veggies as we have a lot of Asian folk here in the SF Bay Area, but this food is stumping me a lot of times. I even got a phone ap with a huge veggie encyclopedia including pictures and still I can't find some of this food. One funny one was us trying to figure out this hard, dark brown, ugly, round small thing; turns out it was a truffle - how ironic, do you think anyone at a food closet- including the volunteers would know how to prepare this exotic, really expensive fungus - not a chance!

[eri]

I used to live in a rural part of AL & other shoppers would ask what I was buying & what to do with whatever it was...kale, eggplant, parsley, bike choy, Napa cabbage. Then when I got to checkout, I was the hot topic among all who could see in my cart. It was odd & sad & I will never forget it.

[txveggie]

Here there are so many morbidly obese people ridding on the store scooters, they usually have fried chicken, ice cream and cokes in their baskets. I try not to judge but it is hard. They remind me of a drug addict, they are too huge to walk but can't stop eating the very stuff that is killing them. Sad.

[HealthyMe2010]

Here there are so many morbidly obese people ridding on the store scooters, they usually have fried chicken, ice cream and cokes in their baskets. I try not to judge but it is hard. They remind me of a drug addict, they are too huge to walk but can't stop eating the very stuff that is killing them. Sad.

Yes, being witness to suicide is a terrible thing. I can't help but wonder how many of those morbidly obese people are never told by their doctor to change their diet to something more healthful.

I was quite ticked off after seeing three doctors for Crohn's disease and not receiving a single lifestyle suggestion from either of them. Even when I bring up certain points about diet or exercise possibly helping my condition, they just skip over it and start talking drugs - the language of doctors!

[Norm]

Here there are so many morbidly obese people ridding on the store scooters, they usually have fried chicken, ice cream and cokes in their baskets. I try not to judge but it is hard. They remind me of a drug addict, they are too huge to walk but can't stop eating the very stuff that is killing them. Sad.

Yes, being witness to suicide is a terrible thing. I can't help but wonder how many of those morbidly obese people are never told by their doctor to change their diet to something more healthful.

I have always refused to ride those carts. I'm just too stubborn. I would take a tall milk crate and sit down on it if I needed a rest, but I never once rode those carts, because I know what >I< think when I see someone morbidly obese riding them and I know that others think the same, or worse.
In my entire life I've only had one doctor suggest dietary changes, and that was the standard AMA S.A.D. food chart lecture about eating less of the same things. I've had quite a few doctors... more than I can think of right now... suggest gastric bypass to me though.

-Norm

[LosingIt]

I work as a cashier in a grocery store, so I see it almost daily! It's particularly sad when kids are involved.

And some tips for the stump-the-cashier game: Don't count it as a stump if they just have to look up the PLU. I'm obese, but I can identify every veggie we have (not all cashiers where I work can, but they all appear healthier than I do!) and I also know the most PLUs (ask anyone I work with ) but, there are a few I don't know and I have to look in the book. If I'm looking in the book it's not because I don't know what it is, it's because people don't buy it often enough for me to know the code!

[Gweithgar]

I only count it if the cashier says "What IS this?";)

[LosingIt]

I only count it if the cashier says "What IS this?";)

Good, that definitely counts!