Gma's got my food monopolized!

My first thought on this assignment in coherence with last weeks reading was the impact of the food monopoly in my life. Let me explain, I live with my grandmother who definitely has a monopoly over what I eat. On one hand, I am grateful that she buys and usually has food ready for me after my long days of school and she does comply to some social responsibility to comply to my no meat but fish standards of eating. Other that that, I have little “choice” on what I eat. My cost- benefit analysis as Richard Posner explained that people make in some approximation in their decisions is so true. The food I eat is free and so I could choose to scrap up my almost non-existent income to buy couscous, parsley, and mint for tabouli or settle for Mortons fish sticks with Siracha fancy-sauce. I am aware that I could specifically ask for these things or sneak them into her epic grocery list for the week but my cost to possibly not making her feel that her kind food preparation of leftovers from the day at 9pm when I get home for 2 ½ hour Spanish class isn’t appreciated. If I would decline then it is me who has to scrap together food form items that I still haven’t ultimately chosen, but are only there because she has previously purchased them.

I see my microeconomics of my food “choices” as a very good example of what many people are faced with on a grander scale. In almost every level of food purchases a higher power is choosing for us what will be available for us to eat. Even farmers markets may have a business office that grants permits for booth placement and variety of produce. Grocery stores, as Pollen points out are seemingly stocked by the corn industry, produced under which Milton Friedman aptly described as a governmentally run cartel. As we all could possibly gain form the point of this assignment is the fact that most of us are under the illusion that we are choosing or are able ot choose a vast amount of products, when in fact many of which have been previously filter and displayed right in front of us that we are convinced that it is the easiest and most convenient to our cost-benefit approximations of what we eventually end up deciding on. Yet it seems to me that all of our choices have been laid out for us systematically in on way or another. (for a great explanation of how this works check out Malcolm Gladwell on TED.com explaining how we got so many varieties of spaghetti sauces!) Found here: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html