Bigger isn't always better
I've noticed a strange phenomenon at the grocery store in the past couple of years. Packaged goods are being sold in containers that appear to be getting larger all the time. Everything seems to come in mega-boxes, jumbo bags, or huge cans.
I've had a hard time figuring out this situation. Families are much smaller than they used to be. The Baby Boomer generation, the largest group of consumers, is well into the "empty-nest" stage of life. No kids to feed. So why are grocery store shelves suddenly sagging under the weight of huge containers of carbs and calories (or no carbs and no calories)? Why is everything so BIG?
Bottles of salad dressing are so large it takes months to use them. As a result we never try anything new because we would be stuck with it well into the next decade if we didn't like it. Wouldn't you think the makers of salad dressings would want people to try their new products? Wouldn't you think they would put them in small enough containers that if you thought it tasted like pond scum you could just throw the darned thing out without feeling wasteful?
A loaf of French bread is nearly two feet long. We like French bread with spaghetti, but we can only manage to eat three or four slices. That leaves a foot and half of French bread sitting around for quite some time. Shoot, a loaf of regular bread is so big it usually gets moldy before the two of us finish it.
And have you noticed the size of cereal boxes? It's nearly impossible to find a small box of plain old Cheerios or Rice Krispies. Those are my favorite kinds of cereal, but I don't want to eat either one daily for weeks on end. I just want some every once in awhile. And I don't want it to go stale before I finish it.
Yes, I know I can freeze bread and I can put the cereal into a Zip-lock bag to keep it fresh. But you see I don't want to do that. I shouldn't have to do that. I should be able to find all kinds of products in smaller packages.
I don't need the large economy size. That size does me no good when I have to throw half of it away because it is spoiled or stale. I want what I want when I want it. And I don't mind paying a little more to get it. I don't want to go to the freezer for the next five inches of French bread. I want the French bread to be fresh when I fix the spaghetti.
Hey, I'm a Baby Boomer — the marketing world always has given my generation what it wants. So I think they should realize that I don't have children at home anymore and I don't want my chips in a package the size of a pillow. I don't need my cereal to come in a box so large a child could make it into a playhouse! A soup can that can be turned into a minnow bucket holds way too much soup for two people. A jumbo container of salsa is fine for the Christmas Day grazing table, but it turns a nasty green in my refrigerator any other time of the year.
I would like for someone to do something about this situation. And after it is fixed I would like to have a conference with the packaging gurus about how tough it is to even open the blasted boxes, bags, and bottles. "Convenient zip-lock seal," my foot!
— SUSAN MARSHALL
