Sunday, January 17, 2016

Supermarket cornucopia

A few days ago, a friend was talking about all the things in the supermarket that have some form of corn in them. Cereals, corn syrup and so forth.

I mentioned that corn is abundant, cheap and easy to work with. Then I said that it's abundance leads to the "cornucopia" which unfolds whenever one walks into a supermarket. My friend started laughing and pointed out how the word "corn" is in cornucopia. I hadn't thought of that. Quite the coincidence.

On other related thoughts, one sees how much of this country is planted in cornfields when one travels by bicycle. Also I remember being impressed walking into supermarkets when I was a child and that was when they stocked around 3 or 4 thousand items. I hear that today's big markets stock around 30 thousand items. Quite the cornucopia. I don't necessarily think it's bad. Just something to behold. People tend to take things for granted.

Like an non jaded child that hasn't always "been there, done that," my eyes were big with amazement when I walked into the Whole Foods of Redmond, WA. a couple of years ago.

We're soon to get a Whole Foods here in Bellingham. Maybe not as big as that one tho. Also corn might be less of a basis for their cornucopia.

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