Food Snobs

My daughter does ballet. In fact it would be fair to say she loves ballet, and would do it ALL the time if at all possible. Her best friend is also in her class, which helps a lot. So suffice to say that I spend a lot of time waiting around while she is in her lesson, with all the other mums in the same boat.
We were chatting away one day last week when the conversation turned to food and cooking and then to shopping. One of the mums mentioned that she shopped at Sainsburys, which I do, but where as I had gone up in the quality of supermarkets, (from Tesco) she pointed out very loudly that before she had children she used to shop at Waitrose all the time, and now she had to slum it at Sainsburys. Another mum made a joke about Asda, and then the first mum announced quite loudly that she wouldn't ever dream of setting foot in that shop and if you ever found her in there, you would know things were really dire indeed.
Now, don't get me wrong, I shop in Sainsburys too, but not because I'm slumming it. There are many reasons.
1. I used to shop at Tesco Kings Meadow. Huge shop, lots of choice, great value. But got disillusioned with the staff as they were unhelpful and rude.
2. I used to shop online with Tesco until they moved the store they used to get my shopping from Kings Meadow to Wokingham (tiny shop) so my wide choice narrowed considerably as the store was smaller.
3. I wasn't happy with the quality of the meat that I bought from Tesco.
4. I wasn't happy about spending that amount of money in a supermarket that seemed to be swallowing up the country. (An ethical choice.)

So I moved to Sainsburys because:
1. The local store is small but still has a wide variety of choice and I can get everything there that I need. (Apart from the really weird stuff that I buy from the Oriental Wholesalers).
2. The staff there are very polite and very helpful.
3. When I buy online, the shopping comes from Calcot Savacentre, which is ginormous, and never seems to run out of anything.
4. Although the price is a little more, I usually buy supermarket brand anyway, so there isn't that much difference, but the quality is better.
5. Sainsburys seem to have much more of a family feel about them. They appear to be much more nurturing and concerned about the environment and ethics, which sits much more easier in my life.

The biggest reason that I personally don't shop at Asda is because of our local store. Whenever I go to visit a friend of mine who lives in Swindon right near a very new and very big Asda/Walmart store, we always go in and have a look. I actually do like Asda, even though it's been taken over by the biggest company in the world. But my local store is old, and dingy. The aisles are cramped and it is very busy. The toilets aren't even in the store, so if you take the kids, they invariably need a wee half way around the store, irrespective of when they last had one. You have to leave your trolley in an aisle somewhere, not quite sure whether it will still be there when you return. Whenever I go in there they have moved everything around and it takes me forever to find anything. In fact a few times I have been in there with the kids, I have got so frustrated I have just dumped the trolley and left, to save my sanity, and to stop me screaming at the children.

If I had loads of money I would shop at Waitrose. So does that make me a food snob? I guess it does. But, my brother in law, who is the biggest food snob in the world does his regular shop at Asda, so it's obviously not the quality of the food that is the problem. But then he like me gets most of his meat and fresh veg somewhere else.

So what is a food snob? Am I a food snob really? I don't buy all my food branded, (which you can get in any supermarket and I am reliably in formed that a packet of Kellogg's cornflakes tastes the same in Asda as it does from Waitrose) so that can't be it. Maybe I'm just of an age to realise that you can make a difference, however small, to your own life, those around you, and what you put in your body affects your mind too.

Oh how philosophical!