CULTURE SHOCK!

The other day I had to go to the east side of Harlem for a doctor visit and decided it would be a great idea to visit the Pathmark grocery store that sits on 125th and Lexington. It's a pretty sizable grocery store that takes up a good 1/2 portion of the block.

I was a bit hungry and knew it could wait, but I wanted to see how much organic food I could find in the store since I was already there. I wasn't going to let the crack heads hanging out front deter me.

Walking through the isles alone was enough to give me a coronary!! In all of my life I have never seen thousands of square footage (in the form of an oral death trap) posing as a grocery store. In this photo half of the isle alone is ORANGE!!!! Cheese curls, cheese puffs, party mix with orange snack mix......unbelievable! That wasn't even the snack isle!!!

Then there was the enormous kiosk from Nabisco that held Oreos on one side and canned cheese spread on the other side. The section of chicken nuggets.....HOW MANY TYPES OF CHICKEN NUGGETS ARE THERE? The section was the equivalent size of a normal dairy section at some of the bodegas in the city!

Every which way I turned it just kept getting better. There were huge meat sections just dedicated to sausage. Then in the snack section/isle featured endless corn syrup-based sodas while opposing every brand of chip imaginable.

The produce department was pathetic. Organic or not it didn't even appeal to me. It made me imagine flies swarming over the produce like the way that an illustrator would draw for the sunday comics feature. Earthbound organic spinach seemed to be the only organic item in the entire store.

I found myself having to pick my jaw up off of the floor after my visit. What are we doing America?! No wonder we're so sick! Does Pathmark provide this type of food because that is what is affordable? Is this food a lifestyle? Do people want to see more real food available? How did it ever come to this?!?!?