Variety is the spice of life and all that, but a lasting fallout from the pandemic will be fewer choices in food, cars, apparel and other things.
Companies that have been providing wide varieties of products trying to meet the different tastes of consumers are cutting back on that effort.
Things like watermelon popsicles, lightly salted potato chips and caffeine free diet Dr. Peppers have been hard to find in stores lately.
Consumer groups say the number of different items available in grocery stores is down 7 percent overall and as much as 30 percent for some bakery and meat products.
In the old days, the Lays company had four kinds of chips. They had 60 when the pandemic started. Campbell’s Soup has increased its varieties from 100 to 400 in recent years, and a grocery chain that had 40 kinds of toilet paper has just 4 now.
Some of us who are up in years will not be bothered much by this phenomenon. We grew up during a time when there were not nearly as many choices for shoppers.
The red Coca-Cola box at Barrett’s Grocery in Springhill had regular Coke, RC Cola and 7-Up. We could get Delaware Punch and Grapettes off the shelf but not cold.
It didn’t take long to survey the breakfast cereal section in stores back then. There were corn flakes, raisin bran and a few others. Cereal aisles are as long as football fields now.
My mother worked hard at providing a variety of meals, mainly because my dad said he got tired of fried chicken and meatloaf. I was surprised anybody could get tired of fried chicken and meatloaf.
But she was always putting something new and different on the table for supper with the understanding that nobody could complain about the meals.
Her rule was that if we didn’t like what she cooked we could fix ourselves a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
When my brother and I turned up our nose at liver and onions, she got us the mayhaw jelly out of the refrigerator and peanut butter from the kitchen closet.
The kitchen closet was a general purpose storage area. It was the panty for food that didn’t have to be refrigerated, and there were cleaning supplies, pots and pans and such on other shelves.
Space was limited in the three or four little cabinets over the sink and stove. That’s where she kept her good china and everyday china. The everyday china was the same as the good china but with more chips and stains.
There was a cabinet for cups, saucers and glasses. Some of the glasses had held peanut butter and jelly before they became part of her assortment of glassware.
Nobody ever complained much about my mother’s meals. She was a good cook and could make simple things like pork chops and spaghetti and meatballs seem like a delicacy.
A few things like the liver and cabbage rolls could divert me and my brother to the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
My dad loved mayhaw jelly on biscuits, but he never had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that I know of.
One night when my mother served a tuna casserole that we could smell from the front yard, he did fix himself a Vienna sausage sandwich while my brother and I had peanut butter and jelly.
So more variety is not always a good thing. Tuna casserole proved that for us.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES