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The rise and rise of the supermarket

With Tesco straddling the Atlantic and Asda, the UK face of US mega-conglomerate Wal-Mart reporting record profits, supermarkets are on the up. And up. They sell school uniforms, pharmaceutical products, life insurance; how far does their influence extend?The selling point behind the supermarket is convenience. It is more fun to spend a morning choosing fruit and veg from the grocers and paying extortionate prices from the butcher for delicious hunks of meat than trudging round Safeway; and more fun too is feeling good about ourselves and our diets in doing so: helping the community to help our selves. But time, now, is essential. I can put off and campaign against ‘popping down to Tesco’ as much as I want, but unavoidably there comes a moment of desperation when with crumbling morals I head out at 2am for a sugar kick on chocolate or bottles of vodka. It is also true that having picked my way through the bread aisle or ‘bakery’ – brown, white, brown and white together, sliced, without crusts, half-baked –  I am gagging for a bit of jam and butter to go with it and can rejoice that both, miraculously, are in the next aisle, and not the next street: I can even buy a knife and plate in store.How far the supermarket is affecting our health, of course, is a key question today. Obesity just doesn’t cut it anymore and has brought ready-meals –contributing to the convenience ethos- and value food –once helping our student (and general) loans but now requiring new loans for liposuction- into the realms of consideration and concern. Arguably in fact, there is a system of supermarket hierarchy, where the higher the price the higher the food content – that is food from the ground or raised on a farm- so that only those consuming ‘finest’ or ‘taste the difference’ can really claim to be eating nutritiously. But supermarkets have eliminated to some large degree, their competition. If you visit one supermarket chain as opposed to another then there is little in variety or price difference and probably they planned it that way. The OFT (Office for Fair Trading) noted that point for example, in December 2007, when five chains were investigated for fixing the price of tea and coffee’s creamy companion. And, stepping outside of these stores, the alternatives are bleak. Finding a free-range chicken or buying vegetables that haven’t been dyed, felt-tipped or grown in a lab is a hard search: an allotment, in fact, with chicken coop, may be your only real option.Delicious low prices are inevitably a large and enticing feature of the supermarket, and a greatly contributing factor to the supermarket’s success. Super stores can get things really cheap and sell them for slightly less cheap so that we still feel like we’ve got a good deal: an irresistible bargain. The power of the bargain indeed, the one off, the ‘miss it, miss out’ is immeasurable and is exploited to the full. I can go to Tesco for two pints of milk and come back with a lifetime’s supply of fortune cookies and dental-floss, because £39.99 seemed unmisable and I knew I could swipe my clubcard. I’d go so far as to suggest that supermarkets have got inside our individual psychologies. They have the power to dictate, quite influentially, what goes into our trolleys. M&S, showing the authority of explicit marketing for example, combine sex and food into (seemingly) orgasmic TV adverts that make all their produce seem absolutely divine, whilst Sainsbury’s, on a different tact, have Jamie Oliver for sort of boosting the credibility of an otherwise dull store and encouraging us to think that their produce is well made and well sourced and well intended.Supermarkets are empowered because they have extended beyond food. Not only can you pick up your groceries within a half hour slot but you can also buy your clothes (or at least your staples – tights, knickers, t-shirts) fuel your car, get pens and reporter’s notebooks or refill pads, and, indeed, pick up your emergency prescription. And there’s more. Tesco shoppers could, in theory, live a glittering Tesco life: with Tesco internet, Tesco mobile network, Tesco personal finance and loans, even Tesco photography and garden centres: and all putting points on your loyalty card. In fact how many people know too, that OneStop is Tesco in disguise? We might as well wear clubcards round our necks and swap our rucksacks and satchels to bags for life. Recently being green and eco-friendly has gathered momentum but this is only a fad where supermarkets are concerned. Lets be honest, they don’t actually give a shit about the environment but are forced to modify their products and approach so as to create an ethical stance that can rectify the qualms of their customers. You can get ‘woodland eggs’, extra bonus green club-card points, and straw bags to replace the plastic ones as well as fair-trade and recycled materials but all in the name of the customers who want this, not the planet.Everyone, inadvertently, supports the supermarket because people like things easy: on that note, shopping online is the most hideous form of ‘easy’ I’ve ever heard of and probably only put in place so supermarkets can fob off the mouldy apples. But because everyone loves the easy life supermarkets –with baskets full of cash- grow and keep growing ridiculously.  At home I can’t get away from supermarkets: there are three on one stretch of the high street, and two that are less than five minutes drive away. The power giants – Tesco, Asda and the combined Morissons and Safeway – are too economically powerful to deny and too greedy, themselves, for moral behaviour. Is it not a bit alarming too, that as supermarkets get bigger and bigger, they have started to acquire turrets and spires? Though brightly lit and full of happy staff (and of course complete with a thousand unhappy shoppers) our local supermarket looks quite similar to a church or maybe Big Ben and the houses of parliament, which surely says something about the importance of the supermarket, if not the problems that should be addressed as well.Whilst our lives should be tasting better, we’re actually just being suffocated. The supermarket, in theory, is kind of a good idea: everything in one place, with lots of choice and lots of staff to guide you to a great value, well considered buy. Everybody smile.But they’re making our lives into toy town. Admittedly there was no greater variety, no proportionally better prices or deals for the prehistoric section of society that existed before the supermarket boom, but there was equally no brainwashing, less waste and a better sense of community eating food that was home grown and home made. We can’t get away from the supermarket, nor can we can get away from the ease of them being there. But I do think thought is important: ‘every little’ does not ‘help’, M&S is not ‘yours’, if we ‘try something new today’ we’ll just end up going hungry.b
by Louise Collins

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