Welcome back to my autism-aware shopping trip through the grocery store. Week by week, I'm showing you what the store sells, prune down the selection to what's safe for me (because autistic people can have very sensitive systems) and point out various gotchas the store tries to make you buy stuff you didn't come for.
As a reminder, I shop with the following conditions in mind:
- dairy-free
- low sugar
- avoid ultraprocessed junk
- avoid artificial food coloring
- conditional vegetarianism
- avoid high histamine foods
- awareness of gluten-free options and sugar-free options
Last time we explored the meat and deli section, where basically nothing is humane and snacks are abundant. I also mentioned a pair of humane and sustainable alternative delivery services: ButcherBox and VitalChoice. Ideally, you'd buy your meat and eggs locally, from a family farm with standards you can rely on. In practice, it can be hard to find those places, make time to drive to them, or even afford them. So Butcherbox and VitalChoice can give you an alternative.
This week we'll tackle the most important part of the grocery store: the fresh produce section.
Like the meat and deli sections, the produce section is divided into long islands of products, rather than proper aisles. The back half is more or less vegetables and root vegetables, and the front half is fruit. And there's one long aisle that's the other side of the refrigerated section from a few weeks ago. Also off to the side is a peanuts and tree nuts/snacks section, kind of between the produce and the bakery. It really fits nowhere in particular, so I tossed it in here.
While many parts of the grocery store stay more or less the same over time, the produce section does not. About the only constant is what I mentioned above: it goes fruit, then vegetables, then root vegetables. The specifics of what's in season and available varies.
This flexibility is especially true with these square islands, which host the weekly deals. "Let the buyer beware" is always relevant advice when buying produce. Even with modern shipping and refrigeration, it's hard to keep perishables from perishing. Past the islands, you can see the array of self-select apples. There's about 9 kinds of apples. Which sounds like a lot, and it kind of is for what time of year it is. (It is, at this moment, late February, which is late winter.)
There are actually hundreds, even thousands, of apple varieties. Some of them don't look like what the consumer expects. Some of them are tiny (but taste amazing). Some of them simply don't ship well.
The other side of the apple aisle: bagged bulk apples. They're almost entirely 3 pound bags. These bagged apples tend to be on the smaller size compared to their "choose your own" counterparts, and because they're pre-bagged, imperfections may escape your notice. Imperfect fruit is hardly the end of the world, but as an incredibly privileged USian used to nearly perfect fruit all the time, it's something I'd notice.
Grapes and berries. This aisle was long enough that I had to stand pretty far back to get it all in frame. There's strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and more strawberries. Followed by dessert shells and dessert breads to serve those berries in, because there is no escape from the temptation to buy desserts or snacks. And then several varieties of grapes: green, red, and black.
In other seasons there would be at least two kinds of red grapes, and I've also run across a white grape called Carnival in the organic section. It's worth noting that the majority of the grapes for sale here are seedless.
Citrus and melons. Mostly citrus. The bagged tiny citruses near the front are a particularly popular brand of clementine that's almost entirely seedless as well as being extremely sweet. The US has a sweet tooth (by which I mean a sugar addiction) and even the fruit has to accommodate it.
There's also bagged lemons, limes, oranges, and grapefruits. After which there's the "choose your own" for if you really only need one lime for your recipe. Which is me, often. And then the melons, which include watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew. Or it might be honeyrock. There's been some interesting experiments in crossing melons and I haven't kept up with what's most popular.
We now move onto the pears and assorted other fruit. You can count four kinds of pears (Bartlett, D'Anjou, Bosc, and Red), as well as mangoes, pineapples, dragonfruit, kiwis, peaches, plums, coconuts, and nectarines.
Something I should point out, and which you'll notice next photo if you know anything about bananas... This great and mighty variety of fruit is available for purchase, but don't think for a moment it's at its very best or tastes anything like a fresh-picked version. To survive being transported long distances, most fruit is picked long before it's ripe, shipped specially to keep it from ripening, and then ripened once it's arrived.
This results in a significantly stunted flavor and texture. I've had fresh mango in a place that grows it. The mangos you can buy here are definitely mangos, but the flavor is deeply disappointing by comparison.
As promised, the bananas. I'm not sure why, but the US really loves these. Note that most of them are green, rather than bright yellow the way the organic ones at the end are. That's not just because people mainly opt to buy the ripe ones. It's because the bananas are brought it very very underripe, and ripen as they sit.
Another interesting fact about these is that they're Cavendish bananas. They taste significantly different than the variety that was exported prior to the 1950s, the Gros Michel. The Gros Michel variety fell prey to a fungal disease and was nearly wiped out. If you've ever wondered why artificial banana flavor tastes nothing like bananas, it's because it's based on the flavor of the Gros Michel, not the Cavendish. Also, at some point, the Cavendish will likely fall prey to a similar disease, and we'll all start consuming some other variety of banana instead. Perhaps Manzanos?
In some cases this is a very important section to be aware of. Pesticides and herbicides can get stuck in the crevices of the fruit, and then be consumed with the fruit. As a result, autistic and other sensitive folks' systems can get slowly poisoned. Strawberries are a prime example of this. All those little nubbly seeds make it impossible to get the chemical residue off without damaging or destroying the fruit. As such, it's better to buy strawberries organic. For more information about the Dirty Dozen (buy these organic) and the Clean 15 (no need), follow this link.
Oh, and for a huge markup, you can buy pre-cut fruit. Let's look at a less extreme example. Kind of near the end of the middle, there's pineapple cores. They're basically cylinders of pineapple, with the very center bored out, likely put through a machine designed to generate that shape, and heedless of the exact size of the pineapple. They cost $5. Looking back over the photo with the whole pineapples, you could buy one for $2.70. So for a bit less than twice the price, you don't have to deal with the pineapple skin and greens and center.
We'll get a bit more absurd now. There are also chopped strawberries for sale. $6 for a half pound. We could buy those. Ooor we could buy 2 pounds of strawberries with the greens attached, for $4.70.
Convenience is stunningly expensive. It also comes with non-recyclable plastic.
It's time for the long aisle! Starting at the back, we have the mushrooms (bella, shitake, enoki, portobella and several dried varieties. We also have the salad dressings, which is a category I flat out ignore. Salad dressings can hide sugar bombs and can contain so many calories that they singlehanded make your salad into junk food. I typically don't season my leaves, but if I do, it's with olive oil, salt, and pepper. It's cheap and easy and tastes good. What more could you ask?
Premade salads. Some versions come with greens, some are "mix this with the greens and it's a more complete meal!" boxes. Either way it's a lot of extraneous plastic.
Pre-processed greens. There's actually bagged varieties just to the left, but there was a stocker working there and I didn't want to ask her to move just so I could take my picture. Anyway, you mainly have spinach and lettuce varieties, but you also have your choice of kale and arugula.
A brief pause for herbs and flavorful roots, like ginger. In less interesting times there would be more fresh/live herb options, but in lieu of those you could make do with those tubes of herb paste. I've never bought one, but it probably works fine as long as you're not using the herbs for appearances.
Part of why I rarely use this section is that it's routinely sprayed with water. This is ostensibly to keep the produce fresher, but it also makes it wet to touch and accelerates the rot process once you get it home. I'm really not a fan.
The other endcap on this island-aisle. I'm honestly not sure why, precisely, this is here, but it is. These are non-meat, non-dairy options. Seitan, tofu, pseudocheese, and veganaise. Please note that even here, there is no escape from the barrage of snacks. See the dumplings?
Onward to the main vegetable section. The tomatoes, peppers, and for some reason, asparagus. There's a few options for tomatoes, though mainly of the medium and large varieties. Cherry and grape tomatoes are available, they're just behind the human I was trying to cut out of the picture. Bell peppers in four colors: yellow, red, orange, and green. There's actually even a stripey orange and yellow variety that shows up from time to time. Green peppers are almost always the cheapest.
I took this to give you a better idea of the variety available here. Again, there is literally snow on the ground and temperatures are at or below freezing, so these have been shipped from a significant distance away. It's honestly a very small sample of all the types of peppers that exist, but the fact that it's just flatly available 100% out of local growing season speaks to how absurdly well people in the US live. Kings and emperors in centuries past didn't have this kind of selection.
This is a weighing and labeling machine. Produce doesn't always come in convenient plastic packages. Sometimes you choose and bag your own using the bags there on the left. This machine will weigh your produce. It will also print you a custom bar code so that the bag can be scanned quickly at checkout. I'm old enough to remember when non-electronic scales were a common thing in grocery stores, but those days seem very long ago when I look at this machine...
Avocados. Yep. This is an endcap that's just entirely avocados. Apparently my generation popularized consumption of them, in part due to their healthiness. In my memory of decades past, this would have been a small segment of the broader vegetable section, not an entire endcap (plus the weekly sale island at the start).
Plastic-wrapped broccoli, bulk bags of lettuce heads, bagged baby carrots, and bagged celery. With salad fixings perched on top of the displays, because God forbid you simply eat salad without extra carbs.
Organic options of the previous aisle, in an endcap. Organic does not always mean "better for the environment" unfortunately, but as mentioned in the organic fruit section, it can be your best bet health-wise.
The other side of the previous long island. Plastic wrapped cabbage heads, large carrots, broccoli crowns (smaller than the other broccoli option, and with less stem), and cauliflower. Absolutely everything you see here is sealed in plastic. It helps preserve the freshness, but the plastic just ends up in a landfill.
This is a standalone island on the back edge of the area. It's basically salad fixings. This side has even more tomatoes, in the smaller varieties.
And the other side, even more peppers and cucumbers great and small for all your salad needs. I've found the tiny cucumbers nice for personal salads.
This longer island is the last one in the line. It's mainly onions and potatoes, though there's yams and some squash for good measure as well. The endcap has bags of teensy tiny potatoes in up to three colors for a really staggering markup. Then there are three colors of onions (red, white, and yellow), in both bulk bags and "select your own."
The other side of the onions/potatoes island-aisle. Organic varieties of both on the end cap, and bulk bags of russet, yellow, and redskin potatoes. Potatoes are a very solid food choice when they're not heavily processed or soaked in as much grease as they'll hold. The problem, of course, is that most potato products fall into at least one of those categories...
Moving on to the last part of the produce section, which is oddly not fresh at all...
I couldn't get a decent shot of this due to the stocking cart on the right hand side there, but this is basically just a bunch of plastic bags of dried fruit. The variety here includes cherries, apricots, mango, and prunes. Dried fruit is great in theory, but in practicality it's typically just more like candy with fiber. It's usually laced with sugar to make the fruit extra appealing. Read your nutrition facts and ingredients carefully.
This is the other side of that display, and it includes seeds and vegetable snacks as well as raisins and dates. I don't really know what one does to a pea pod to make it into a crispy salted snack, but I'm a little afraid to find out.
Moving on, we arrive at the bagged dried nuts. This, like everything else in the store, is a demonstration in absurd variety. We don't simply have peanuts. We have blanched peanuts, red skin peanuts, Spanish peanuts, kettle cooked peanuts, raw Spanish peanuts (roast it yourself, I guess?), and mixed nuts with peanuts. There's also pecans, and a bit further in, there'll be even more types of tree nuts. As a reminder, this is the second section of snack nuts, the first being around the candy aisle.
One end of the previous display. These aren't cooking ingredients, they're snacks. They're specifically packaged to go in a bowl or be eaten right out of the bag. Mixed nuts and trail mix (with dried fruit) varieties.
The other broad side of the display, where we can mainly find almonds and cashews. You can have them roasted or raw, pre-sliced, salted or not, and blanched.
Last but not least, the other end of the display, which is entirely pistachios. All from a single company, but you can get sweet chili, salt and pepper, honey-roasted, and basic pre-shelled varieties.
And that finishes the produce section! It's been a surprisingly long trip through the grocery store. I started this series in early September and never expected it to take a half year to finish, even with doing posts every two weeks. It's been very educational for me, and I hope, for you as well. It turned up some interesting (and horrifying) information about grocery store practices.
In the course of this project, I went from shopping almost entirely at this grocery store (Meijer) to starting at Target (where the employees seem happier and more like people, anyway) and then only buying what I couldn't find there. The sheer amount of manipulative marketing in terms of alcoholism and snacks in every corner of Meijer is more than I can morally tolerate. I hope to transition to not shopping at this store at all in the coming year.
I'll do a bonus post in a couple weeks to show you the checkout aisles, because they've changed somewhat in the last few years and I think it's worth knowing why. Beyond that, thank you for joining me on this adventure!
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