Op-Ed: Market Shelves Go on Diet. Thinning Out Number of Food Choices

Along with those of us who are on perpetual diets, supermarket shelves are going on a crash diet and thinning out the number and variety of products from which we can pick and choose.

Food producers are on track for a 'removable feast' of delicacies from supermarket shelves to cut costs by eliminating items that aren’t as popular as others, and to operate more efficiently. So if you’re a fan of Kraft Foods’ Handi-snacks pudding and certain varieties of South Beach’s frozen entrees, as just a couple of examples, you’d better stock up fast. My first thought was “it’s about time” long before I even got to this paragraph: In fact, the nation's grocery shelves could stand some trimming, said Mark Gottfredson, head of the global Performance Improvement practice at consulting firm Bain & Co. They're straining with about 50 percent more products than 10 years ago, including new formulas, flavors and sizes of existing lines. I like a variety to choose from, but so many at varying sizes and prices makes me feel like I need a Univac computer to figure out what the best deal is. I don’t begrudge anyone from trying to sell any product, but most of these new products are produced by a few major manufacturers, cutting out the little guy who doesn’t have a snowflake’s chance in hell of getting a spot on a chain market’s shelf. I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I walk down supermarket aisles and am searching for a particular item, my eyes cross and my mind goes blank at being assaulted by a blur of labels, most of which look alike or the printing is so small I have to send out a search party to find my reading glasses that are always at the bottom of my purse. I just saw a Yoplait commercial boasting of 28 different flavors. It doesn’t take much to figure out that that’s about 23 too many. I’m guessing that the best sellers are strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, lemon and chocolate, leaving the rest to languish in the dairy case until well after their expiration dates or they’re tossed…which ever comes first. And if you go by my market, no one tracks expiration dates so the shopper really has to be eagle-eyed to 1) find the date; 2) be able to read the date; and 3) hope it isn’t smeared into oblivion. I purchased quarts of milk on Feb. 2, with their miniscule printed expiration dates of Feb. 10, allowing plenty of time to purchase more a week later on Feb 8. On Feb. 8, I bought fresh? milk with the same Feb. 10 expiration date, but didn’t realize it until I got home. It’s really no wonder that grocers have a hard time rotating their stocks of perishables, and maybe just as happy to carry fewer items, especially perishables. There are a zillion different kinds of milks alone. There’s everything from homogenized to pasteurized; from raw to processed; from no fat to all the fat; from lactose tolerant to the intolerant. And within each of those categories are all the sub-categories of fat content. Green baloney that so far out of date it’s practically from the stone age is no problem, unless you are a green/red color blind man and it looks perfectly fine to you, until you bring it home, and the wife asks you how on Earth you could buy green meat? Then there’s faulty labeling which relates to too much of a variety, like when you’re buying a can of peaches, and you want real peaches with the thickish, surgary syrup, and not “lite” which is written in light yellow lettering that’s nearly impossible to distinguish. Frequent shoppers may have already noticed a lack of variety in brands, as many markets have already gone to single-brand conversions, such as only selling J.M. Smucker products, which now owns what used to be Procter & Gamble. Maybe the cut back in the number of products on the shelves is why I haven’t been able to find any Campbell’s chicken gumbo soup for weeks. I’ll have to ask the manager about that. Like I said, maybe a little less variety is a good thing for saving them money and us with confusion from trying to distinguish what’s what from so many labels. But a lot of us are going to be disappointed when we can’t find our favorite candy bar or frozen dinner. I wish they’d bring back Morton’s honey buns. Since they were discontinued there’s been nothing like them on store shelves. Oh well, it’s not like my diet can’t live without them.