The Politics of Grocery Shopping - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 648

not only infused with political meaning but also reflects the individual's relationship to
materialism and consumerism. Take, for example, two respondents from our studies,
Trina and Phillippe—both of whom could be categorized as political food consumers.
Trina is a 33-year-old public servant who does most of her shopping at a major grocery
chain. She described the store in vivid terms, favorably mentioning the size of the cheese
display and the range of food products available. She considers her grocery-shopping
day a special treat that allows her to spend quality time with her husband. When the
interviewer asked Trina what priorities influence her food shopping, she expressed spe-
cific political concerns about the food system, but despaired at the thought of reforming
her shopping habits in ways that would limit choice and eliminate “interesting” foods. In
the interview, she spoke about her discomfort about being implicated in a larger indus-
trial food system that she finds deeply problematic:
In the last twenty years we have so much genetic modification of our foods. If you go
to India, the tomato is fresh and is going to get bad in a day and a half. Here, the tomato
stays good for five days. Even the shape of our food, it's so perfect. . . . Being exposed in
Canada to that perfection skews our perspective of what is real and what is not. We're
totally capitalistic, consumeristic. . . .When I think about that, I'm indulging in that too.
I'm contributing to that because I'm buying this food, I'm eating it, I'm preparing it . . .
Contrast her response to Phillippe, a 33-year-old professional in the financial sector who
has chosen not to own a car, is strictly vegan, and runs his food shopping errands on his
bike. Phillippe noted that his main priority with food shopping is the desire to lessen
his environmental footprint. He ensures that none of the food products he buys for his
family have plastic packaging, a difficult task that requires shopping at several differ-
ent stores and a local farmers' market. He dislikes major grocery stores because they
are “mechanistic and institutional” and prefers his neighborhood farmers' market and
local health food store. His interview transcript demonstrates a strong desire to inte-
grate environmental principles with everyday shopping practices:
By far the most important issue [for me] is sustainability, and I shop for certain
things at different stores depending on what they carry. I like the farmers' market
because the food is local and usually is unpackaged. I guess I'm thinking about the
environmental footprint of the product, but also the packaging. The next important
thing is whether there's organic certification or a label, and the third is that it have
only natural ingredients. . . . Cost and convenience are not really a consideration and
we've decided to allocate a sizeable chunk of the household budget to food, . . . and I'll
go out of my way if I need something and I don't want the plastic packaging.
To call Trina's and Phillippe's perspectives on food consumption “politicized” is accurate
in a very basic way, but this obscures critical differences in how they articulate their
approaches. Both interviews indicate that food choices are politicized, but Trina's inter-
view displays an emphasis on replacing certain types of consumer products with alter-
natives, whereas Phillippe focused much less on substituting commodities, and more
on his efforts to develop nonconventional patterns of eating and shopping that reduce
consumption altogether. Whereas Trina emphasized how she enjoys shopping for food