Comfort Foods Still Top Grocery Sellers

Sorry, Michelle Obama. You can lead people to broccoli, apparently, but you can’t make them buy. At least that’s the message thumbing its nose at us loud and clear from Information Resources Inc. The Chicago based market info services firm calculated the top 10 best-sellers in American grocery stores for the last year (ending June 14, 2009.) Produce in any form, fresh or frozen, didn’t even make the list. Nor did meat, fish, eggs or even toilet paper. (I know, you’d think, right?)

The warnings that soda (both diet and regular) does little but pile on pounds and erode your teeth have, for the most part, gone unheeded. Carbonated beverages top the list of best-selling grocery items, and sales are up almost 2% from last year.  I’m hoping that a healthy portion of these sales is from seltzer water.

Not a big surprise that beer and wine are up – sales of alcoholic beverages often rise during a recession. Or that cigarettes (scratching the bottom of the bestseller’s list at 11) are down, given their higher price, additional taxes and waning social acceptance of smoking. Sneaking cigs in the rain at a proscribed distance from nearly any building anywhere in America while braving dirty looks is bound to give a smoker another reason to quit…or at least cut down.

Sales of salty snacks are up…probably those downing a beer want some pretzels or chips to go along with them. Sounds like someone’s having one big honking party and I’m bitter that I’m not invited.

Frozen dinners and entrees are holding their own (hopefully, you may find something green- and that may have once been alive - alongside the Salisbury steak.)

Cold cereals, #9 on the list, showed a 2.12% increase, but, apparently, we’ve been eating it straight out of the box – grocery stores are reporting a whopping 8.44% drop in sales of milk, which accounted for 11.2 billion dollars in purchases last year.

Guess we don’t “got milk” after all. Or maybe it’s just getting too expensive.

We do like our fresh bread and rolls (third best-seller after milk, and up 4.77%), and our “natural” cheese (that’s up 7.75%...uh…sorry Velveeta fans.)

It sounds like America’s tanking up on grilled cheese sandwiches and potato chips, and washing it down with a Coke. Which may be comfort food at its down-and-dirty best, and in times like these I have no judgments on the comfort food (take away my chocolate at your own peril), but a daily diet of it is not exactly a formula for good health.

Hey, America…at least slip a few slices of tomato into that grilled cheese, OK?

So…what’s in your grocery cart? Or…what’s NOT been in it lately?