I've just got back from Sainsbury's and was bothered by something that hadn't yet managed to infiltrate my already bother-filled mind.
I'm talking about the 'Taste the difference' range.
I'd been drawn to its otherwise overlooked temptations because of an offer on prawns. It served my purpose to succumb to a 'buy one get one free' offer on some king prawn that were, apparently, better tasting than others.
All prawns are probably caught in the wild, so quite how you guarantee one’s gastronomic dominance over another passes me by.
Then I started to notice other products in the ‘TTD’ range and it left me dumbfounded.
How, exactly, do you produce better quality carrots and how do they differ so massively from the ‘Basic’ range?
Carrots are carrots, right?
Then there are such joys as Taste The Difference flour, Taste The Difference water and Taste The Difference bananas.
I’m surprised they don’t offer you the chance to shop down a Taste The Difference isle, where the air smells of lavender and you’re pumped extra easy listening music.
Of course, it’s all utter rubbish.
Supermarkets want to make you feel special when you buy their premium stuff and walk around with it glinting on the eyes of other, jealous shoppers.
Buy the ‘Basic’ range and you might as well carry a megaphone, regularly stating that you are too poor, even though you’re actually smart enough to realise that a difference in the quality of carrots is actually quite impossible.