Testing

Compare the experience of shopping in a supermarket with shopping in a local farmers market.

In a super market you enter a particular zone separate from the outside world with fluorescent lighting and buzzing fridges. The object of the exercise is to get the shopping over with as soon as possible. You move swiftly along the aisles and being daunted by choice, go for the familiar products, picking up the two for one offers and buying more than you had intended to. The cashiers are exhausted and feel exploited because they work long hours at an uninspiring job for which they get paid relatively little. They are detached from activity and don’t really want to chat but just go home. Or you go through the automatic checkout where a voice keeps telling you to “to place the item in the bag” when you already have done so. And then there’s all the packaging to deal with that covers the food that you can’t smell or touch. You return home, feeling exhausted. What is the cost to your body, emotions and energy levels?