Buying Groceries
Dear Mr. Normus,
My wife insists that we do our grocery shopping right after we eat dinner. I’d rather go to the store on my way home from work. When is the best time to do our grocery shopping?
Leroy Patrick
Littleton, Colorado
Dear Leroy,
Your wife is way off base on this one. The absolute worst time to go to the grocery store is right after you eat. Experts from the Supermarket, Delicatessen, and Snacking Marketing Group agree that you should always do your grocery shopping when you are hungry — the hungrier, the better.
Think about it for a few minutes and you’ll see that they are correct. If you go to the grocery store on a full stomach, obviously you will not be hungry. Consequently, nothing in the store looks good to you because your body doesn’t need food. The result is that you get to the checkout counter with an almost empty cart and you don’t have enough food in your cart to last you until your next scheduled grocery run. You’ll waste additional time, money, and gasoline returning to the store.
An animal’s natural instinct is to search for food when it is hungry, and this has been ingrained into all species by millions of years of evolution. When you go to the supermarket hungry you will search for and find the food you require in order to survive. You will reach the checkout line with a cart full of the food that your body needs. And, you will be able to cache the food you’ve purchased so that it’s available when you need it.
Your wife is trying to fight millions of years of evolution by trying to shop for food when she is not hungry. It’s unnatural and potentially harmful. Don’t let her do it.
Stumble it!