WE ARE WHAT WE CONSUME: THE WORLD AS A SUPERMARKET

We consume constantly: We spend every minute of the everyday consuming fuel and fauna and destinations. We also consume ideas, and time, and people. We consume the beautiful, the complex and the simple. Enter the supermarket – the cultural symbol of our vast appetite for all that is natural and unnatural. This is our orderly paradise, an Eden of plenty with the gifts of nature – in orderly, manageable stacks, packed odorless-ly away on foam trays and inside tins, and nestled in paper and clad in glass and cling film and caught in multiple plastic bags. Nature in all its variety and then some – season-less, region-less, hybrid, we want it all! This is how we consume science – cold-pressed, vacuum-packed, vitamin-enriched, flour-less, zero fat, zero calorie, flavoured, coloured, preserved, non-stick, instant. This is where we go to consume the comforting and the familiar, carbs and creams and food from the mega-brands of childhood. It is also where we find the exotic and the delightful – stuff our parents never heard of and never dreamed of consuming. And here, finally, in the supermarket, is where we go to find ourselves, and define our next selves. Better, healthier, thinner, more sophisticated – what we are, or hope to be, is what we consume after all.