Modern Shopping

A Complicated Quart of Milk

My wife sent me to Safeway the other day to buy a quart of milk. I found quarts of half-and-half and quarts of coffee creamer but no quarts of milk. I guess milk doesn’t come in quarts any more.

I remember when I was a kid working in our local grocery store. We had quarts of milk in addition to half gallons. The waxed paper cartons were a real step up from the glass bottles that were delivered door to door in the city. The milk case in our market was about four feet wide and included both pasteurized and homogenized milk in various sizes. The rest of the dairy case was filled with cottage cheese, sour cream and quarts of chocolate milk. We didn’t buy milk from the market, however.

I grew up on my grandparents’ dairy farm. We carried our milk up from the barn in kayro syrup bottles. The cream would rise to the top and we would either pour it off to use to make butter, or more often, shake the bottle so the cream mixed in. That was real milk. Reduced fat became popular about 25 years ago and My wife, ever conscious of healthy eating, switched to two per cent. It just wasn’t the same. It looked kinda blue and tased watery. I quit drinking milk. Thus, I wasn’t looking for just any quart of milk, I was looking for a quart of two per cent. The milk case was about twelve feet long and five shelves high. I found soy milk, almon milk, coconut milk, organic goat’s milk and cashew milk. The only cow’s milk was lactose free and my wife had not specified lactose free, so I kept looking. I finally found one half gallon of regular two per cent beside a row of one per cent. They were down in a corner out of the way such that modern shoppers wouldn’t mistake them for something healthy.

In the same market where I worked as a teen, we had a display for potato chips. The store offered a choice between two brands but potato chips were potato chips. Ruffles came in about the time I left the store to go to college. The entire chip section occupied about six feet of shelf. Our local Safeway has an entire fifty-foot aisle dedicated to chips of all flavors. I’ve lost count of the number of different flavors. The fifty-foot display isn’t big enough to stock all the flavors, so you may or not find dill pickle flavor all the time. Modern shopping has even spread to the produce section. Now days most markets have two separate areas one for the traditional lettuce, cabbage etc., and another area for organic things. Despite all evidence to the contrary, modern shoppers believe organic means healthier.

We are in danger of being overrun by non-GMOs and range free chickens. I am not sure how my generation ever survived.

Frank Watson is a retired Air Force Colonel and long-time resident of Eastern Washington. He has been a free-lance columnist for over 20 years.