Supermarket Dietitians Fan Out to Aid Shoppers—Will Shoppers Listen?

I was pleased to read that the leading local grocery store chain has hired dietitians to assist customers in making smart purchase choices. The dilemma for the dietitian is not only to alter the deeply engrained bad habits of the customer, but to steer him and her to healthful food, given that most of what the store offers for sale is junk.

Regular and artificially-sweetened soda, baked goods, candy, snacks, meats injected with female hormones and antibiotics, processed foods, and
other products containing high fructose corn syrup, fats, sugars, salt, and monosodium glutamate (MSG) are just some of the health hazards that are prevalent in what one can find at the supermarket. Some assortment of these products come home with most shoppers at one time or another. I also wonder what the dietitian would have to say about the purchase of nicotine poison from which the store shamefully profits.

We spend much more time contemplating who is our "American Idol" or who shall be left on "Survivor" than determining what we will consume, concluding that if it is sold in a supermarket, it must be alright.

I hope that dietitians will find the means to use their good influence to help customers boost their health, but I fear that in today's society of the obese, in which so many could not care less about nutrition and fitness, the response to the offer by most, is likely to be, "Sorry, not interested. Where are the Doritos and Pepsi, please?" It is particularly galling that the food stamp program (SNAP), which consumes at least $71 billion in tax dollars and borrowed money each year, still permits recipients to use their allotment to purchase various types of nutritional slop, thereby increasing the health care cost burden as the recipient hastens the onset of obesity and illness. Apparently this huge expense is not subject to the planks of First Lady Michelle Obama's laudable healthful eating initiative.

To anyone who would ask what business it is of mine to call for healthier eating, I would respond that it is everyone's business. Our nation will literally crumble under its own weight if we move toward becoming a society of the disabled and government is not able to contribute hundreds of billions more dollars to pay Medicare and Medicaid bills for those who have made choices that have facilitated incapacity and illness.