With temps of up to 106 degrees farenheit, it was heaven. Target was reliably awesome (and cheap), and the goods on sale were amazing – until you got to the food section at the back where you were forced to wonder about what the definition of food might be.

There were rows and rows of wastefully packaged goods – all labelled organic and having micro, mega and meaningless health-giving additives that, in my mind, don’t stand up to much logic. It’s like a trip into a future that is already starting here, which offers pre-prepared everything, where food is not selected for its appearance or smell but for its lack of additives. Or for the sake of free choice, its additions. For example, there’s the milk section that today features coconut milk in light, low fat, full fat, four flavours, thick and thin, cooking and dessert and at least 10 different brands.

I wanted to buy a kilo of white arborio rice to make risotto. I walked along a long aisle devoted to rice. Well, prepared rice dishes. Incredible microwave options, dessert rices, Mexican, Chinese and Indian. Each were packaged in glamorous ways that boasted health-giving properties, diversity of uses and convenience. I could not find one packet of ordinary rice. “Of course we have ordinary rice” said a nice assistant as we chatted on our way back to the rice aisle and, lo and behold, he found one remaining pack of unadorned rice hiding in the back of a bottom shelf. How lucky was I? “What do you use it for?” the very nice man asked. I flicked my head at the packaged stuff and said I could make any one of those. He said “really?” as if I was a fossil from an earlier time. Which of course I am.

My family in LA have six rubbish bins that are at least twice as large as our largest bins. These huge plastic “mouths” get packed full of supermarket packaging, take-away containers, cardboard from online shopping and the occasional banana peel. 

What is this world when we, as well as them, stand confused and baffled reading food labels to see which numbers register as dangerous? Trying to decide which commercially prepared products we don’t need, while other people in the world starve to death in vast numbers. The only thing worse from my point of view are some other shoppers whose baskets of Coke and chips, frozen pies and processed cake with fake cream are being fed to children. They don’t know enough about nutrition, so I doubt they focus on the plight of others. And I am not saying they should.

I am though, saying I wish they were. I wish we all were. I grew up in the 1940s and the ’50s, which I used to say was the era boredom was invented. Our mothers fed us meat and three veg, (yellow, green and white) followed by an apple sponge with two teaspoons of custard. We drank real milk at each meal and had fruit for snacks. None of us were overweight and most of us avoided illness. Mothers loved the new plastic bags when they came in and, after each use, they were washed inside out and pegged on the line. On weekends, we went for a drive if there was money left over for petrol and, if there wasn’t, we stayed home. People saved money and they saved power, they mended clothing and remade things and we even darned our socks on wooden mushroom things. We didn’t feel poor and left out because we weren’t. And as most kids went to Sunday school so the parents got a break, we all knew about missionaries working with so called natives who had no money for clothes and very little to eat. I assumed, for about 10 minutes, that once they accepted God their fortunes would change because a kind God would rearrange things more equally.

When I look back now, I see a lot to admire in terms of careful use of resources. I see my generation as critical, impatient, and very loud in their desire for “progress”, which seems to have turned out to be about greed and loud opinions that have not led to a better world. What now?