Natural Selection
Simple ingredients are lovely. The twelve-dollar receipt is harder to digest.
Ingredient Whiplash
American grocery stores once had a talent for making food sound vaguely hostile. Ingredient lists came with names such as tertiary butylhydroquinone and sodium acid pyrophosphate. You would read the back of a cracker box and briefly consider calling someone.
People wanted shorter labels. Fair. Then “natural” became a branding strategy, followed by a price increase.
Now pumpkin seeds, honey, and sea salt can sit in a matte beige bag beside a paragraph about ancestral wisdom and cost twelve dollars. The ingredients remain pumpkin seeds, honey, and sea salt. The price is for the packaging plus the feeling that you have made a better choice.
The expensive part of healthy food often seems to be the story attached to it. A short ingredient list, perhaps a small mountain in the background. A snack made from ordinary groceries gets presented as a personal achievement.
Food science can have a middle ground. I dont mind xanthan gum in dressing because I would like the dressing to stay together. I am ok with lecithin in chocolate because smooth chocolate is one of civilization’s better achievements. Their absence has become a premium feature.
I am happy to eat simple food. But I would simply like simple food to come with a simple price.
The pendulum swung away from industrial mystery. It landed in the wellness aisle, where two ingredients in a nice package now cost more than dinner.