Super Market shopping

Being the adventurous sort and always interested in food, a hastily arranged trip in Harrisburg to an upmarket supermarket was gave me plenty to ponder on. Our guide was a lovely working Mum who worked for the Pennsylvania Ag department. During a mad drive to the suburbs, she told us plenty about her life which was pretty much the same as a UK mum's including complicated childcare arrangements. The thing she found extraordinary was the thought that so many young UK Mums do their supermarket shopping online and have it delivered when the children are in bed. In fact she dismissed it as something that would never work in the US.
The supermarket we went to was not Wholefoods, but reasonably top end, probably the equivalent of a better Sainsburys. The scale was vast and the number of SKU's in each range was impressive. The lightening overall was not particularly pleasant and it certainly didn't maximise the ambiance! The fresh meat was a fairly mixed bunch and to mind the packaging was fairly basic, with mostly vac packing and only a few lines that were gas flushed in trays. The labelling was reasonable but a long way from the sophisticated graphics the UK consumer expects.So maybe the Americans are more savy when it comes to eco packaging and minimise waste. the cuts of meat were pretty much the same, but the large joints were very large with 5kg pieces of beef topside and other megga joints. On the Organic product there was quite a lot of choice, especially in milk and dry goods that could be seen as healthy. The most interesting thing with the poultry was the description of Broiler chicken, In the UK we seem to dress up the worst reared broiler as barn reared or select. the other chicken was organic free range and that was it. No freedom foods, farmer reared, free range, woodland or any other marketing nonsense, just Organic and broiler. How much more straight forward things would be if we had that approach and how much easier would it have been for me in the last year when the organic chicken market has been in free fall as people have downgraded to all these other welfare standards.
Always the consumer i came back laden not with chicken but Old Bay seasoning (great sprinkled on spatchcock chicken)Egg decorating kits, coloured popcorn and yet more cupcake cases.
My next trip to the US i am hoping to get some proper shopping in and try some Farmers markets, CSA's (that's community supported agriculture which is similar to a box scheme) and track down a successful Wholefoods market ( i still haven't got the point of the one in London!)