By RAY WYCHE

Today’s grocery shopper, be it housewife or reluctant husband, faces a bewildering choice of items available for the dining table, all bearing attractive, eye-catching labels that subliminally scream, “BUY ME!”

Today’s supermarket is a laboratory of “pysch-sell” as the experts continually develop schemes to entice us to purchase their products. They have honed their science to a fine edge and most of the time they succeed in luring us to buy items that we might well live without.

Figures vary but those who study such things say that a large percentage of what goes into our shopping carts lands there because of impulse buying; we didn’t leave home with the idea that we absolutely must have Product A out of the vegetable bin or our families would face certain starvation or at least severe malnourishment.

Why is the meat department always at the rear of the supermarket? Most grocery shoppers buy meat, the foundation of the main course of every meal, and the expert merchandisers want us to walk down long aisles filled with eye-catching items on our way to the meat section. Chances are, we’ll see some food article that we just have to have.

To those of us who consider that unless it’s cooked and on our plate, it’s not food, the kaleidoscope of colors and letters in gigantic type on packaged food products are challenging, to say the least, as to which item to buy. There are just too many decisions to make. When we go shopping for victuals, we know that when we return home with plastic bags bulging we will be subjected to the usual lecture; why did you buy this? Why didn’t you pay attention to the expiration date, the cholesterol, fat and sodium contents rather than the attractive, mouth-watering picture on the container and the price?

A registered dietician/executive chef would be hard-put to make selections of some supermarket products, so varied they are. The multitude of choices involves more than just looking at a likeness of the product, cooked, accompanied by tempting side dishes, and displayed on attractive china on a perfectly appointed dining table. Nutritional information, by government order, must be shown on the food product container. But some of us don’t have time or knowledge to read all that fine print. And we couldn’t understand it if we did. Percentage of Daily Values? Your Percentage of Daily Values may not come close to fulfilling my needs and tastes.

It used to be a simple matter to go to the store to buy a can of tomatoes. There was usually only one size and usually there was only a single brand. Decision making? There was only one decision: take it or leave it. Now, a can tomatoes has more add-ons and options than a new car. Crushed? Whole? Diced? No salt? With basil? With green chilies? Organic? Pureed?

String beans come seasoned, French or Italian styles, with no salt, whole, with dill, or with potatoes.

It was not always this way. A review of grocery store (they weren’t called supermarkets then) advertisements in some 1931 editions of The News Reporter indicates that shopping for something to eat was much simpler in earlier years.

Only one grocery, The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (the name mercifully changed to A & P in later years), carried a list of food items in its ads. Other food sellers were content with general, unenticing statements such as “Shop at Smith’s Grocery for Best Values.”

A & P probably was the only national chain grocery store in Whiteville in early years. Others were locally owned and were far different from today’s spacious and well-arranged food displays. These early stores were long, narrow buildings, with shelves on each wall behind counters that ran the lengths of the stores. There was no self-service; the customer told the clerk, usually a man wearing a white apron, what he or she wanted and the items were taken from a shelf, placed on the counter, and when the customer’s complete order was filled, the cost was added by hand.

The purchases were put in a paper bag or, in the case of large orders, a cardboard box. Plastic bags were not even a dream of the future in the 1930s.

Not only was food shopping simpler, it was also more economical. A & P listed only 15 or 20 items in its ad lists and these give an idea of just how far a food dollar would stretch in those days,

In February 1931, A & P offered a one-pound loaf of bread for 7 cents and a pound of coffee for 23 cents. Three bars of Palmolive soap went for 20 cents and a pound of hoop cheese costs 23 cents. Prices of other food items were similarly low as were the costs of most items, according to other advertisements in these early News Reporters.

Roses Store sold neckties—bow or four-in-hand—for 10 cents each. A one and one-half quart coffee percolator costs 49 cents, and brooms were going for 10 cents each. You could buy a man’s dress shirt for 49 cents.

Whiteville Meat Market advertised that they would sell a ham for 23 cents per pound and pork shoulder at 18 cents per pound. The local Ford dealer’s stock ranged from $430 to $630 each vehicle.

The good old days? The early 1930s were the heart of the great Depression, and jobs and dollars were hard to find. But groceries were cheap, and a lot simpler to buy.