In January of 2010, I wrote my very first Lost in the Supermarket column, investigating the weird little items I’d always seen at the neighborhood grocery store and wondered, “What the hell is that?” The editor of the paper at the time was convinced I’d run out of things to write about by the end of that year, but it’s now been a four-year adventure that has been a lot of fun and even a bit educational. At least for me. Though I’m not a picky eater and am always eager to try new things, I’m whatever is the opposite of a “foodie.” A food rube, if you will.
I got a lot of the more disgusting food items out of the way in the first couple of years, doing torturous taste tests of things like Spotted Dick, Clamato juice, pickled pig’s feet and head cheese. While I’ll still do that on occasion, the column has evolved (mercifully) to include examinations of various food trends and the way corporations capitalize (or, often, instigate) them. In 2013, I tasted foods from around the world, but also made fun of the sometimes-strange marketing maneuvers employed by huge food companies.
Here are some of the things I learned while lost in the supermarket in 2013:
- The pumpkin spice/pumpkin pie flavor trend proved that it is very hard to make a bad product using those as your flavor base. (Cream cheese? Yogurt? Instant coffee? All shockingly delicious with the pumpkin embedded.) But M&M’s showed that it is possible with their “limited edition” Pumpkin Spice Chocolate M&M’s, which tasted like regular M&M’s with one grain of pepper added to each.
- The AriZona beverage company should stick to golfers like Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer when developing products with sports star connections. Despite previously speaking out against sugary soda drinks in an effort to fight diabetes and obesity, NBA great Shaquille O’Neal had no problem hooking up with AriZona for the “Soda Shaq” line of drinks. I didn’t get to taste it because it seemingly disappeared from store shelves overnight in this area. Though I didn’t check every dollar store in town.
- Though you still have to pay Time Warner Cable extra for Spanish language channels in this market, most grocery stores in Greater Cincinnati now have fairly substantial selections of food from Mexico and Latin America, thanks to the growth of the area’s Hispanic community over the past decade. This also means you can find cheap prayer candles in more local stores than ever.
- People really hate being tired these days. For those sick of drinking their caffeine to keep them awake, there were a slew of “edible speed” products made available. Cracker Jacks (yes, of “buy me some peanuts and …” fame) has a line of Cracker Jack’d snacks, while Wrigley’s launched its caffeine-laced Alert Energy gum.
- Frozen fast food items that you can find at the grocery store like White Castle burgers and Arby’s Seasoned Curly Fries take about 20 minutes longer to prepare than it would take you to simply drive to both restaurants and buy them already made. (They taste better that way, too.)
- Greek yogurt is not tzatziki sauce, but it is pretty delicious. And it’s slightly healthier than regular yogurt, though mostly only the gross, flavorless versions of Greek yogurt, which taste more like sour cream than yogurt.
- According to marketing people, young Millennial women are the only people who are in on this new “savory/sweet” flavor trend. But I gorged on chocolate-covered Lay’s potato chips and Ritz’s fudge crackers (in the name of journalism!) and did not grow a vagina overnight.
- Quinoa has gone mainstream and it’s now hard to walk down any aisle of a grocery store and not see an item made with it. It’s a seed with high nutritional value and such “agriculture versatility” even the U.N. got in the on the fad, declaring 2013 “The International Year of the Quinoa.”
- Quinoa has no flavor.
- The general public should not be trusted to vote on anything. Especially on which fan-created flavor of Lay’s potato chips the company should keep on the shelves long-term. Lay’s engaged its social media outlets to let people vote between three different flavors — Cheesy Garlic Bread (boring), Sriracha (delicious) and Chicken & Waffles (weird, but not as gross as you’d think) — and the public went with Garlic Bread.
- Hot Pockets embarked on one of the most contradictory rebranding campaigns ever. They hired Snoop Dogg to drop pot and Hot Pocket references into reworked versions of Rap songs (complete with surrealistic, stoner-friendly web commercials), but they also tried to appeal to Millennials’ alleged “foodie” tendencies by promoting their use of highfalutin ingredients like “Angus Beef” and whole grain crust.
- Hot Pockets are still as nasty as they ever were.
CONTACT mike breen: [email protected] or @CityBeatMusic
