opinion

Too much of a good thing

With so many products on the supermarket shelves are we spoilt for choice or just plain spoilt, asks Miriam Dunn

We are always being told how lucky we are that have so much choice in every aspect of our lives nowadays. But I sometimes wonder whether it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.

Choice is part of the whole free market concept – trade away, compete with your rivals, ensure that you attract the customer, the survival of the fittest, and all that sort of thing.

And these practices are generally approved of in a modern westernised culture, so my concern probably goes against the whole concept of everything civilised and 21st century.

Before somebody yells ‘communist’ at me, I am not by any means advocating a return to the times of monopolies and bulk buying; the days when there was one and only one brand of toothpaste, when it was tough if you didn’t like a certain type of pasta and when customer service literally meant serving a customer.

It’s just that choice on the supermarket shelves just seems to bring out the worst in us ditherers and hesitators.

Let me give you an example. I used to be able to do my monthly shop in a fairly straightforward way, in fact I had it off pat, without even needing a shopping list. I parked, I grabbed a trolley, I hared up each aisle in turn, arms outstretched to pick up everything I needed to eat, clean, wash and whatever else those TV adverts tell us are necessities for a civilised existence. And before I knew it, I was at the check-out, parting with my hard-earned cash until next month.

But over time, my system shows signs of faltering. I have noticed that as I move to pick up three tins of tuna (I couldn’t tell you the brand, but it’s got a red wrapper around it), my hand stops in mid-air, and my eyes are confronted with not four, but nearer 40 brands of the stuff. What on earth can be the difference between them all, I fathom. And if you thought that was confusing, then think again. That’s just the start.

For those 40 brands seem to divide into an even more undecipherable melange of sub-species of tuna, as could never be imagined.

You thought there was only tuna in oil? Think again…there’s tuna in omega oil, or pure olive oil, or sunflower oil. And if you don’t want tuna on its own, then you’ve certainly come to the right place…you can choose from, or falter between, if you’re like me, a Mexican mix of tuna with red peppers and chilli beans, a Mediterranean offering of tuna with olives and green peppers or a sort of American snack of tuna with mayonnaise and sweetcorn.

And that’s just one product turned into one million. I could go on forever. For example, never has watching your weight become so confusing. There’s light this, low-fact that, half-fat this and non-fat that! I even saw an advert for extra-low fat skimmed powdered milk. Now can anyone, even those women that run those slimming courses, really put their hand on their heart and tell me that they know what that means?

And did you ever think it was for such a wide variety of products to be put into your shampoo? I wonder who sits at those plush head offices of the manufacturers and thinks up all those exotic, tantalising combinations. Whoever thought that we would be frothing up and rinsing out mixtures of oriental jasmine and wild cherry blossom from our hair?

And have you also noticed that products seem to be able to do a million and one things nowadays? Your lemon washing up liquid now comes equipped with a bacterial cleansing agent, while your washing powder apparently possesses easy-iron or anti-ageing powers. What will they think of next?

But I will reiterate what I said earlier. I am not against choice, and it’s certainly refreshing to be able to select different items from the supermarket shelf.

What concerns me is the sheer volume of goods on offer. With so many variants up for purchase, the manufacturers and suppliers must surely be over-producing in relation to what any consumer can possibly buy.

Am I the only person that wonders what happens to all that food when it reaches its expiry date? A few sorry looking items find their way into the bargain bucket at the end of their shelf life, but there must be many, many more.

And I’m sure I’m not alone when saying that I find something distasteful in looking at rows and rows of different ways of eating tuna when, at the same time, I am watching US aeroplanes dropping food packages on Afghanistan that are nowhere near enough to feed the starving people there. I find it distasteful that they are dropping bombs as well, but that’s a different story altogether.

I once read a report in a British newspaper that a supermarket was unable to give its ‘end-of-the-day’ items that were due to expire to a children’s home up the road, for reasons connected with public health legislation. Probably some red tape that is good in principle, but a great shame in practice.

I have never witnessed firsthand the disposing of mounds and mounds of food that could have been devoured in some far off country by people that are more interested in keeping alive than choosing a brand, but I’m sure it happens.

There is no point in being idealistic - people will always die of hunger and others will always die of greed.

But perhaps we could do a little more to tip the scales towards some sort of fairness when we have the choice of what to eat coming out of our ears, while some don’t even have a choice of whether to eat at all.