Popular Culture Review Vol. 8, No. 2, August 1997 | Page 81

Supermarket Ethnidty

77

Ethnic foods also provide an escape from the ordinary. A trip
to Albertson's or Waremart or Smith's food stores is not just a trip
across town, but a journey to the Mediterranean or the Orient or
Arabia. What makes this fantasy even more appealing is that
consumers do not have to give up the security of familiar tastes -ethnic food is often tailored to match mainstream eating
preferences.®
Supermarket ethnic foods sometimes appear to soften the
most vulgar and uniform qualities of mass culture. Food manufacturers
are aware of consumers' concern with time and efficiency, their
nagging, guilt-ridden interest in healthy eating, and even their
possible disdain for vacuous consumer culture. The chain supermarket
can be a cold and anonymous place; ethnic foods promise to restore
integrity and distinctiveness to one's diet. Why make another batch
of mundane Betty Crocker brownies, for example, when one can
instead purchase Manischewitz's Chocolate Brownie Mix: "Uncle
Max's Favorite Nosh." This product, which features a picture of a
kindly, gray-haired man about to bite into a brownie, is Kosher for
Passover but available year round in Pocatello, a city with a
negligible Jewish population.
Supermarkets associate ethnicity with wholesomeness and
the Integrity of family-counterpoints to the assembly line quality of
egg cartons, frozen corn and Wonder bread.^ In addition, some ethnic
food, even in its prepackaged forms, offers a more highbrow contrast
to ordinary eating and it often does so quickly and efficiently. A Taste
of Thai's Chili Pepper Soup Mix, for instance, only requires a few
minutes of boiling.
Supermarket ethnic foods can also lend legitimacy to what
might otherwise be considered a faddish and narcissistic obsession
with dieting. Recently, ethnic foods have found their place in the
ongoing concern with weight reduction and more particularly the
preoccupation with low-fat eating. To the delight of food
manufacturers some "Old World" foods have revealed themselves to
be low in fat. Bagels, matzah, pasta, and refried beans are low fat—
or can be made to be. Here we have the best of both worlds and the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts. To eat a low-fat food is to
be health conscious in the best way; according to current wisdom
eating low fat is sensible, easy and often "the answer" to the problem
of a few (or more) extra pounds. When this new world health