Grocery Stores and the Overwhelming Feeling of Choice
Grocery shopping has become my least favorite thing to do. I haven’t always felt this way though. When I was younger, it used to be something I looked forward to doing with my mother. She would say “Bri, grab what you want for lunch for this week” and it was like she gave me the key to the city. I would skip down the aisles pointing to various foods just happy that I could make a decision like what I could eat for the rest of the week. However, as I got older, it was harder for me to choose what I wanted to eat. This very well could have been because I’m a picky eater, but I thought the main reason was that I was (and still am) so indecisive. The huge amount of choices yet the small circle of things I ate overwhelmed me and still does to this day. I catch myself just choosing to walk out of the aisle because I just can’t make the decision that was once so easy to make. However, after researching why I felt the way I do in grocery stores, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t me, but grocery stores and the corporations behind them.
Have you ever stopped and truly looked at all the chip flavors your grocery store offers? There are the original flavors like Sour Cream and Onion, and Barbecue, but then there are the more adventurous options like Philly Cheesesteak or Fried Pickles with Ranch. I never noticed how big the aisle was before my last grocery trip and I just could not grasp how many choices there were. I began to count how many flavors were on the shelf and I ended up with twenty-four different flavors of Lay’s alone. Why? Why are there so many chip flavors? And why have I not heard of anyone being as shocked as I am about this?
So when I went home that night, I looked up what I thought was going to be a simple question with a simple answer but, alas, I was wrong. I was met with how chips get their flavors and how they come in so many flavors. So, I fell down that rabbit hole for a short while. I read How to Make a Potato Chip That Tastes Like a Sandwich by Nadia Berenstein and while it was informative, it was quite lengthy so I turned toward my favorite website, Youtube.
I came across a video created by Seeker that really helped broaden (and dumb it down for someone who is horrible with anything related to science) my understanding of food science, an area that I definitely never thought about before this question. Along with giving a brief background on how flavors came to be, the hosts discuss how some flavors are natural while others are artificial and what exactly that means. They also reveal that every flavor has chemicals and compounds (natural or artificial) in our food whether we like to admit it or not. Now, I had the answer to how chips come in so many flavors yet I was still stuck with why? I tried to find any article that could just give me a hint that I wasn’t alone in this question. It was not until I stumbled across a website for Lay’s #DoUsAFlavor contest that I realized that people actually enjoy and encourage companies like Lay’s to keep creating new flavors.
This #DoUsAFlavor contest allows people to submit chip ideas to Lay’s and if you win, you get a one million dollar grand prize. Yes, one million dollars to give Lay’s a new idea because they already have over two hundred flavors of chips according to an article on Insider.com. All these flavors have actually caused people to create online reviews of the chips themselves and post them on social media, basically creating free advertisements for chip companies. While I searched on social media, I could not help but look at the comments some people left on some posts under videos, tweets, and Instagram posts. Some people threatened the company to bring back their favorite flavor and bring it back to their specific town while others were just giving more free ideas of flavors that the company can produce and expressing excitement to try the new flavor. So to say the least, the majority of people generally think that variety and choice are great to have and actually encourage the number of choices provided in consumer situations.
Now like I previously stated, I did not pay much attention when it came to learning science. I was probably too busy passing notes to my friends or doodling in the margins of my notebook that I missed information that would have been helpful for this essay. Because of that, I needed a refresher on why people like snacks as much as they do. One outcome is that the ingredients in chips are 1.) not healthy and 2.) highly addictive. Ian Lecklitner of Mel Magazine wrote an article on what exactly is in a bag of Lay’s Barbeque chips and seeing it all written out was quite a shock. Three of the main ingredients for chips are salt, fat, and vegetable oil which creates an addictive food that you cannot have enough of. Several experiments have been conducted on animals and people and showed that the same pleasure centers in the brain that are triggered by drugs like cocaine and heroin are also activated by foods with high amounts of salt and fat (WebMD). An article called This Is Why You Can’t Ever Just Eat One Potato Chip, According to Science by Marissa Laliberte reveals that studies have “shown that eating salt triggers the release of dopamine, a chemical messenger that controls your brain’s pleasure center. Once your brain gets that first reward hit, it starts craving more.” As your body starts to crave more food (or crave the feeling of fulfillment), you start to eat more and as time goes on, you may not even be hungry anymore. You are just eating because you are chasing the feeling of pleasure. This chase has been recognized as food addiction.
Now, it is important to note that addiction is like a scale. Some people experience symptoms mildly while others experience symptoms heavily. It truly depends on the person and their tolerance as a whole. And I realize that it could be a little out there to compare hard drugs like cocaine to highly processed foods, but addiction is addiction. To me (and many other people), addiction is defined as repetitive behavior that is difficult to quit and can eventually cause harm.
Michael Moss, the author of Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions, talks in-depth about how major food corporations play on our lack of self-control and our addictions to processed foods to make a profit. He points the fingers at corporations that go to “great lengths to maintain the belief that our disordered eating is on us, through our lack of self-control,” Moss states.
This statement relates to the argument of corporate responsibility versus personal responsibility. Who is to blame for food addiction? If you ask me, it all starts with big corporations. In 1999, there was a meeting between food companies to discuss growing health concerns and obesity. The CEO of General Mills at the time, Stephen Sanger, said “…We need to ensure that our products taste good because our accountability is also to our shareholders. And there’s no way we could start down-formulating the usage of salt, sugar, fat if the end result is going to be something that people do not want to eat” (Godelnik). So basically if this product sells, we’re going to keep selling it whether it is healthy or not. Times have changed though and General Mills has bought other healthy food companies, but have yet to change their highly processed cereal. Meanwhile, other companies have tried to make healthier foods entirely. After Michelle Obama, former First Lady launched a campaign against child obesity, she started to call out food companies in the United States. She said, “We need you not just to tweak around the edges, but to entirely rethink the products that you’re offering, the information that you provide about these products, and how you market those products to our children” (Curley). Soon after, Campbell’s reduced twenty-five percent by fifty percent of their sodium in ninety different soups. So it may start with big corporations giving us highly processed foods, but there is definitely personal responsibility whether it is consciously or subconsciously. I know for me that if there is a bowl of chips or an apple on a table, I would go for the bowl of chips. I just can’t help myself.
All of this information explains the popularity of potato chips and their addictive nature, but it doesn’t explain the range and variety of the different kinds of chips we see in our grocery stores. Why do people like so many choices when it comes to food? Is it a good thing that people like to have options or is it a bad thing?
Reflecting on this question reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons that I watched with my parents a few weeks ago. There was one specific moment with Mr. Burns that caught my attention and made me think of this essay (convenient I know). In this specific clip, Mr. Burns is overwhelmed by two almost identical ketchup brands. He is feeling disoriented and keeps repeating “Ketchup? Catsup?” until he is escorted out of the store by a sales associate. That’s exactly how I feel in a grocery store! So many choices, but the choices offered are almost identical so why am I even stressing about what brand to get? What is this called? After some research, I found that there is an actual name for this feeling and it is called over-choice.
Overchoice (or choice overload) is a cognitive impairment in which people have a difficult time making a decision when faced with many options. Every single day we make dozens of choices, some are relatively easy to make while others are harder. When they are harder to make and when we have a shorter amount of time to make a decision, this can create a choice overload which would make sense as to why over-choice is quite common in grocery stores. According to a 2007 study in the Journal of Environment and Behavior, “people typically make more than two hundred and twenty choices (about what, when, where, how much and with whom to eat) in a day” (Health.USNews). This is just about food-related choices! Imagine how many other daily choices we make like what to wear, which errands to run, how to get to work, etc.! No wonder people like myself get so overwhelmed when we head to the grocery store. Over the years more studies have been conducted to truly show the effects of over-choice and how most of the results are negative rather than positive. In 1974, Jacoby, Speller, and Kohn, researchers at Purdue University, conducted an experiment with laundry detergent and in the end, when they were given more choices and information about the detergent, they were left disoriented and chose the worse products (Oxford University). Then in 2000, Researchers Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper provided subjects with a variety of exotic jams. On one table there were six different jams and on the other table, there were twenty-four jams. The final results of the study were that while more choices were more appealing to the customers, they were less likely to buy the jams after tasting them and if they did buy the jams, they were disappointed with their choice (Columbia University). So why are people feeling negative emotions? Well, the simple answer is that making decisions is anxiety-provoking. We as humans cannot help but think about what is the better alternative because we want the best of the best. This can create us to regret and feel disappointed in the choices we make. According to Consumer Reports Youtube video, “consumers tell us they like choice, but twenty-eight percent were overwhelmed dealing with that much information”. Todd Marks, the consumer shopping expert and host of the video, also states that the company with more options on the shelf will get more sales. Why do you think that this?
Well, grocery stores are engineered spaces that are strategically designed to make you buy more products and produce certain behaviors. For example, think of your local grocery store. Usually, the first department you see when you enter the store is the produce section (could also be the bakery or floral department). This allows customers to feel more healthy with their choices and causes them to later pick more unhealthy choices throughout the store. As you continue through the aisles, you will notice how big brands are eye-level with more options because they want to be easier to grab. The shelves below are usually unhealthy brands that can be pulled by children to convince their parents to get them the product. These shelves are filled with so many choices, making you spend more time in the store and making more purchases than you originally planned. Then as you are in the checkout lane, there are displays of candy on either side of you that makes you want to impulsively buy (Washington Post). Of course, these purchases are great for the store, but for you, not so great. When you get home, you’ll probably say something along the lines of “Where did all of this come from?” or “Why did I buy this?” This all leads back to the negative emotions of choice overload and how we become disappointed in our choices when there are too many choices.
Before this essay, I never realized the number of choices I make daily, and honestly thinking about it is kind of mind-blowing. Making decisions is just ingrained into our everyday lives and most of the time people do not even realize the impact each decision has on our lives. One decision can change the course of everything. We hear stories about that all the time. I remember one specific story of how a man who worked in one of the Twin Towers decided to not go to work on 9/11 and it saved his life. That one decision kept him alive. Crazy to think about right? But those are the big decisions. Picking what flavor of chips at the grocery store is not a huge decision for me (definitely could be for other people though #nojudgement). It is the number of choices within the grocery store that is huge for me. People like choice but how much is too much? And should small choices like picking chips to be so stressful for some people like myself? All of these choices in stores are basically the same thing, just different brands and we see that through The Simpsons clip. This all comes full circle though. Corporations want a profit so they give us addicting foods and enticing branding that “makes it difficult for us to say no when we’re presented with food that’s even just slightly different from what we just ate” (Moss). And being that we as humans like the option of choice, corporations just keep making more and more disregarding how unhealthy and addictive some of their products actually are (because who cares unless they are getting paid). This all leads to some people being overwhelmed because picking what flavor of chips you want for the week can be the icing on the cake to create frustration after a hard day. It’s important to remember that these choices given to us within grocery stores are far from natural. Corporations strategically design their stores to get their customers to buy more which sometimes causes people to feel the negative effects of choice overload. Overchoice is everywhere and I know now that this is all I am going to be thinking about whenever I walk into a grocery store.
Works Cited
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