Buying is not easy. The stress we experience as customers having to decide what is best for ourselves, our households and our families is immense. As the complexity around buying decisions has increased, we as customers need help keeping up and keeping our heads up.

What You are Up Against

When you are buying groceries for your family, you are facing an enormous machine staffed with advertisers, marketers, food scientists, business bureaucrats and data scientists. Chances are that they have more information about what you are buying than you do. Their careers are dedicated to influencing what you buy, whereas buying food, consumables and home goods might not be your full-time job.

There are many well-intentioned buyers that are selecting the most quality products they can offer while keeping their business viable. However, many businesses are compromising on quality or safety to cut costs, chase trends or appeal to more customers. This is best-known in the case of food.

For example, when high-fructose corn syrup became readily available and cheap to support the United States’ vast expanse of corn crops, consumers were told that it was perfectly good for them. After decades of research evidencing the horrific diseases that its addition to processed foods causes, high fructose corn syrup is finally being phased out, only to be replaced by other sugar substitutes with enumerable side effects yet to be experienced by the blind-sided public.

Big Business is Getting Bigger

Maybe you think this is a great super-positive trend. Maybe you do not. Without getting too deep into economic theory, I will do my best to help you be aware of the impacts this may have on consumers, from inflation to deregulation to food deserts.

Invest in Your Health, but Don’t Waste Your Money

Every year, customers are presented with something else that is wrong with them and can be fixed with a superfood or dietary supplement. Being afraid of all these emergent ailments is stressful and expensive, but the “normal, modern” American diet statistically leads to chronic illnesses.

Finding a balance of concern for health but not falling for every supplement or elixir requires practice and unbiased information. I will do my best to provide that.