Mouthing Off | Supersized and cheap, eclectic and exciting: why I love food shopping abroad and bringing home random tasty treats
- You can learn a lot about a nation’s culture, and how its people live and eat, just by visiting its supermarkets and convenience stores
- Not only that, you can always find something that is cheaper or better than at home, and pick up a food-related souvenir
Usually when people travel, they want to see historic landmarks and cultural attractions. I do that too, but afterwards I find myself drawn to more mundane destinations.
I usually end up spending time in very pedestrian supermarkets. I can’t seem to help myself. One minute I’m admiring the sights and colours of a new country; the next, I’m making a detour into a fluorescent-lit convenience store checking out their range of toothpaste and how much potato chips cost in their currency.
To me, it’s very interesting to see what others eat and how others live. You learn a lot from grocery stores about people’s diets and snacks.
How are the meats displayed and packaged? What kind of seafood and fish are readily available? What are those vegetables that I’ve never seen before?
I also find it paradoxically comforting and depressing to see the same goods show up on the shelf of a suburban Sydney supermarket and a corner shop in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The same preference the world over for the same cheap chocolate bars is maybe a subtle sign that we are all the same and we should get along better. However, when I see a wall of plastic 1.5-litre bottles of Coke in the middle of Morocco and in northernmost Sweden, it’s an annoying reminder of how ubiquitous retail imperialism is.