Leap of Leopards: Aaaah Comfort food - Shrimp flavored toothpaste and beer canned sausage?

Packaging is an art form. If you believe in god - s/he had style to create lots of different packages. Humans all come in different shapes and sizes, all bundled up in different wrappings, but in the end - our essence is the same no? Boys are made of slugs and snails and puppy dog tails, while girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice!!! or is it carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus.....either way, its pretty easy to recognize a human by its packaging. We as humans, then have taken this art and use it to wrap other things up for ease of transport and utilization. Each country I visit, it seems will invest in different materials and slogans and effort. In India - lots of just fresh stuff. Lots of non-packaging, come and get raw sugar, sticks of cinnamon...not much in the way of pre-processing for regular every day cooking. However, for the "metro" person, the "westernized" person - lots of pre-processed, packaged food (see previous blogs). Similar to South Africa (didn't have a blog at the time) and Mexico. Then, with in each country there is the market and art form of advertisement. Growing up in one place, I am sure, makes you familiar with products/slogans and how things are served. However, should you be from outside, what is standard and common place for the resident can be a little awkward and interesting for the visitor. There are people who spend their lives devising ways of packaging food, the color of the package, the name of the package, the utility of the package. There are people who have somewhere along the line agreed and said "yes, this is how we shall serve our people this dish". Apparently, this is not universal.

Seriously - shrimp flavored toothpaste?? OK, this is my "standard" of growing up without tubed foods and about the only thing I immediately associate with a tubed product is toothpaste. So, it was quite a surprise entering a grocery store and seeing tubed things everywhere. I recognized the packaging but the pictures on the front made me take a step back. Why shrimp? What the heck is in this thing? and why is it in the dairy/fish section?

Across the globe, as I am sure you know, each culture has its "favorite" types of food and its "standards". Well, in Sweden they sure do put a LOT of emphasis on the cracker section. The bread section takes up about 6' of space, but the CRACKERS!! goodness me! they sure do need quite the variety to choose from.

They have ISLES dedicated to crackers.
Whats up with that? Now, I know in USA we have isles too...but there seems to be a balance. Like the isle for crackers is just as big as the isle for bread. Here, bread is an after thought. CRACKERS are the way to go. Also, because I am not as familiar with the packaging process...they all look the same. At least in the USA you can get an idea that one type of cracker is different than the next.

OK and whats with the beer canned sausage?? At least I think this is sausage. It was surrounded by sausages, bratworst and other such plastic wrapped compressed meat products.

Mayo in a tube? really? well, I suppose that is better than all the BUTTER in squeeze bottles.

I know, I know pot calling the kettle black - we have butter in spray things, but really - they need this many types of squeeze bottled butter?

I do appreciate that their juice section is so so not as limited as the USA. There are so many fruits out there and yet we always see the same old processed sugarized stuff. Here - there is VARIETY and cool fruit. Not just orange and apple, but passion and coconut! Mango and leche

uhhhhh................what is this?

oh, more cheese...