The Foody Police

Today I was subjected to, not for the first time this month, supermarket queue shame mongers.

It’s been a long week, a stressful week at times and I self medicate this with chocolate. Not drink, drugs or sex but chocolate, which is cheaper and at least has the chance of being fairtrade. I have yet to hear of Fairtrade cocaine or male gigolos whose willies have been blessed for trade use by St Geldof.

I digress.

How come the day you want one or perhaps several treats in your trolley, you have to unload them onto the checkout belt under the eagle eyes of a supermarket snidy? The snidy in question always looks as if they have just smelt something bad and you know she has a rebounding membership of a slimming club in case, God forbid, she gains half a pound on holiday (“I just went mad and pigged out, look at me, my trousers are staying up without a belt, I’m hideous”)

The down the nose glance of disgust as I place another chocolate bar on the belt.

I have found always buying a nine pack of toilet rolls helps. This can be placed halfway down the belt and you can slip the ‘baddies’ in front of the Andrex Wall whilst broccoli and cauliflower can be put to the rear in sight of Miss Food Perfect to try and deflect some of her shame inducing eye rolls. Up hers, it will all get smoothed in a cheese sauce at home in defiance, even the toilet rolls.

The food police are now going to target children’s packed lunches. I felt for a mother on the news today whose daughter came home upset after having her jaffa cake confiscated from her otherwise textbook packed lunch. The fallout from this I believe will be:

(1) I bet the teacher’s eat all confiscated biscuits in their smoke filled staff room. (2) The street value of the Jaffa Cake will rocket above crack. Gang members will be shot in biscuit wars as the Penguin pushers move in on the Wagon Wheel suppliers turf.

chcolate, biscuits, supermarkets, supermarket+queues, food+police, jaffa+cakes

Comments

[Keris]

Much as I love Jamie, it is getting rather out of hand. This made me laugh: http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguide/columnists/story/0,,1877752,00.html

[Thursday]

Does this mean that Green & Black's Organic dark chocolate is the new heroin?

[Diddums]

I got funny looks when I bought a couple of reduced-price videos in a supermarket - can't remember what they were. I think one was 'The Mummy Returns'! But I looked up and two people were looking at me and then rolling their eyes at each other. I smiled in a friendly way and they looked as though I had stuck a pin in - all the air went out of them and they stared at their hands. We are judged on everything we buy, I guess - food being one of the things in the limelight right now.

[Beki]

Keris - that link is brilliant I recommend everyone reads it!

Thursday - if Green & Black is the new drug, I shot up this morning.

Diddums - now all I can think of is how gorgeous Oded Fehr is in The Mummy films...mmmmm

[Kate]

OMG the food fascists. I have always fed my children pretty healthy food, but when I hear these people harping on I get this urge to stuff them full of burgers. And as far as I'm concerned, if you fancy some chocolate at the end of a crappy week you should jolly well have some! Maybe the health nazis should try it, it might cheer the miserable buggers up LOL

Oh and yes, Oded Fehr is very mmmmm :-)

[Sharon J]

All I can think of to say to them is a word that starts with B and ends with locks. Live and let live! Or maybe that's what they're worried about? That choccie fans won't live? Perhaps they're looking down their noses because they've deeply concerned about our health? Well they needn't worry with me - I can eat absolutely anything I like and it doesn't affect me. How's that for luck?

[Marjory]

The best of all rants! Of course, true supermarket snideys would also disapprove of your purchase of Andrex - why do you need so much, don't you know that the dye in that type is damaging to the environment, why don't you use recycled, organic spaghnum onna stick.

Here in Germany it is considered okay to gawp in people's supermarket baskets, even in people's front windows if they have anything interesting in them (I haven't been deprogrammed to quite that extent myself!). Supermarkets here are cheap enough that you often see restaurateutrs stocking up on 25 pots of whipping cream or 50 packs of butter instead of going to the cash'n'carry, so you get used to seeing folks' shopping without thinking, "OMG, that man is clearly going to go home and give himself a cholestorol-induced heart-attack!"

I did once very nearly ask a fellow shopper what they were up to when I saw the following haul:

1) 1 garden thermometer.
2) 6 x 1l cartons of UHT milk
3) 10x 200g bars of milk chocolate (assorted)
4) 1 large mango

Discuss.

[Claire]

The jail-keepers guarding the Jaffa Cakes obviously haven't heard that a BALANCED diet is the key and that BALANCED diets CAN include the odd chocolated-orangey-biscuity-wossit.

The concept of moderation has clearly gone to the dogs, why is people go from one extreme to the bleeding other?

Keris: that link is gold, absolute gold...

[Stegbeetle]

Beki - if you like Oded Fehr you should try and catch "Sleeper Cell" which he's in, looking, I am assured "positively edible"!

[china blue]

Hahaha, great rant!

Mmm, Green&Black's - for me, it's the white choc vanilla.
I get funny looks when buying fake tan - well, it's not something a lot of black people buy - and was actually questioned by some cheeky bint in Asda. Grrr.

[Marjory]

May I take this moment to make the statutory observation that the orangey bits in Jaffa Cakes, while not constituting one of the 5 daily portions of fruit/veg as recommended by the WHO, contain vitamin C...

[Beki]

Marj - I think that 'shopping list' would probably be the result of a black market translation of 'Cooking With Delia'

Steg - Sleeper Cell is hugely disappointing from a drool point of view, I like my Oded Fehr with flowing locks...

[Attila the Mom]

"Snideys"..

I love that word! LOL