Sometimes it seems like the big corporate giants that have control over our food, and pretty much everything in our daily lives, have puppet strings attached to consumers. Most people are oblivious to the manipulation of the marketing gurus, who have mesmerized them through television commercials and endless direct marketing ads.
Most are familiar with the junk mail advertisements that show up in our mailboxes every week, depicting bigger than life photos of products they hope we will buy. One food chain in particular, fills their weekly flier with pictures of things that are not even on sale. They are shown at the regular price, presumably just to fill up add space. The things that are “on sale” that week are generally offered as 2 for $4 or 3 for $5. They rely on public ignorance to buy two or three quantities of an item, even if they need only one, and even if the person is single and cannot possibly use up the product before it spoils.
More recently, this store has gotten into the habit of offering things at a considerably better price, but when you look closely you discover that you have to buy 5 of the items, or mix and match items (of something you may not particularly want) in order to get the sale price. Many of the special deals are offered only through their digital app, betting the odds that you will download it and give them a means by which to track your spending.
Why do we tolerate this? Another store that carries a certain amount of natural products (although you must read the labels because they also carry non-organic) has great sales each week. This is just to get you in the door because if you purchase items that are not on sale, you will find that their prices are higher than at other stores. What you saved on their sale items is compensated for from their regular priced items, so you don’t actually save anything if you do all of your shopping there.
Of course, if you are a savvy shopper, you can go to all of the stores, taking advantage of the sales at each store. This is a time consuming and wasteful way to shop in terms of the gas spent driving to the different stores, and the carbon footprint that you may be adding to. What if we simply did away with all advertising, and only shopped at stores that had integrity and that were more interested in providing the freshest and purest food, than they were in making a huge profit?
Personally, I am tired of all the trickery and deception. I am tired of the shrinking containers and the ever increasing prices. Unless we have managed to become self-sufficient, we are consumers by the very fact that we must eat in order to survive. Since we are consumers, we must learn to be observant of the devious methods employed by the corporations that provide our food. We have to be smarter than they are and refuse to play the games that they have so slyly forced us to play, knowing we cannot win. It is a game that has been rigged for their benefit only. Let’s remember that we are not puppets and let’s sever the strings of advertising. Let’s become conscious consumers.
