I am responding to Chris's post about how food quantity is related to obesity. He discusses the fact that other countries tend to eat and buy food in smaller portion sizes than we do, and mentioned studying abroad in South Korea and noticing the frequency with which his host family had to attend the store, since the amounts of food they bought with each trip were so small. I noticed the same thing when I was in Germany with a host family--they went shopping more frequently, and as a result, the food they bought was much fresher when they ate it.
Food is something that is naturally supposed to "expire." As Americans though, we seem obsessed with buying things in bulk and therefore, we need them to last us a long time. This leads to the use of artificial preservatives and increased consumption of processed food. So not only supersizing our portion sizes have an adverse effect, supersizing our shopping lists does as well. I understand the idea of convenience and the fact that we don't really have much time, but is it really worth sacrificing our health?
I also like how Chris mentioned that we could benefit from more frequent shopping trips simply because they would require us to be more active. Even if we drove to the store, walking around a store and carrying shopping bags a bit more often would definitely be a beneficial break from our sedentary lives.
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