Counterintuitively, reduced choice can be a life-enriching experience.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I don’t particularly care to revisit the meltdown that was my abortive attempt to discuss the mediocrity of UK supermarket produce, but this thread is a sort of spinoff from my mounting dissatisfaction with the whole thing.

I resolved to seek out in-season, local (or at least UK-grown) produce. Among other good places, my search lead me to Riverford Organic Vegetables.
Sidenote: I’ve never been particularly bothered in the past as to whether my vegetables were organically grown or not and I’m still not really bothered now, except that organic production, in this particular case, translates into a tangible improvement in the quality and flavour of the vegetables (mainly, I think, due to the fact that they are not being intensively grown or forced out of season).

Anyway, the thing with their veg box scheme is that you don’t get much control over what’s in the box you will receive - there are ordering options that will control the overall size of your delivery and ordering options that will control whether the box contents are biased towards veg, fruit or salads, but you don’t get to pick individual items.

On the face of it, this might seem like a bad thing - we’ve been conditioned so that we expect to wield ultimate choice over what we eat; it matters not that strawberries are not naturally available in February, dammit, we demand strawberries in February and who or what is mere nature to thwart our volition!? So we get our strawberries; flown halfway around the world from somewhere or other where they had to be forced to produce fruit - nevermind that they taste like moist paper towels as a result of this treatment - we’ve exercised and fulfilled our choice.
Not only does this all-round availability dull our appreciation of (say) strawberries, but if we’re accustomed to accepting wet-paper-flavoured strawberries for three-quarters of the year, we’re not so likely to notice if they suddenly start tasting of wet paper all the damn year around.

So am I arguing that choice should be removed? Not at all - if anyone wants out-of-season produce (at the likely expense of quality), they should feel free to demand it and if any business feels the need to respond to this demand, they should generally not be constrained from so doing.

Am I then arguing that humans should not use their ingenuity to extend the availability of items outside of their season? Not at all - humans have actually been doing this in different ways for centuries anyway - preserving for out of season use by drying, pickling, jamming etc - knowing that there’s a tradeoff - strawberry jam is not fresh strawberries and neither are the sad, pale things that we can buy out of season in the supermarkets.

So what am I saying? What is the alternative? Only that the restriction of choice can be a stimulating thing - a positive thing, rather than neutral or negative - we don’t yet have control over the seasons, so when the daffodils appear in early spring, their presence is all the more enjoyable for their absence at other times, because while they were away, we missed them; when the first strawberries come into season, the burst of their aroma and sweetness on our palates is familiar and beloved memory and at the same time, a surprising and new joy, as well as the fulfilment of an intense yearning that developed in their absence; we remembered it from last year, but also in a sense forgot how good it was - we get to experience it again as if for the first time.

So I let a mere farmer’s co-operative choose the contents of my vegetable basket for me; this sounds risky - in a sense it is risky - I have no guarantee that I’ll be able to cook the same things this week that I did last week - but repeating myself was never all that much fun anyway; they want to ensure my continued custom, so they strive to offer not any item I want, regardless of quality, but the very best that is available at the time. The result? In every single item of produce, the quality and flavour has at least matched and in most cases, comfortably surpassed anything I have ever purchased from a supermarket and I have been provoked to work creatively with the materials available, which is also a good thing.

2

I had a similar experience years ago when I used to buy bags of vegetables from the local prison farm. The vegetables were really great and as fresh as possible and a bag was cheap but its contents were pot luck. So I would end up with things that I never would have bought or quantities of things that I wouldn’t normally contemplate. I would adjust my menu for the week to make use of what I had. Indeed it was fun.

3

So… you’re saying…

…uh…

The McRib is back?!

YAY! I love those things!
Mmmmm… McRibs!

4

Well, I thought there was a lot of sense in your OP in the thread that dare not speak its name (before the stalwart defenders of the market stepped in) but leaving that aside, this post is further encouragement to me to join a similar scheme for my area - ideally one that can provide organic meat as well. Actually, I’m moving house soon (hopefully) so I really mean my next area.

The few times recently I’ve managed to eat fresh and local food my taste-buds were left in a state of shock. One particularly memorable experience was the free-range chicken I and my friends were served in Lithuania a few years ago. We were there for a week and spent part of that staying on a farmstead which had opened up to provide accomodation and activities (canoeing and sauna) for tourists. There were a number of hens running around on the farm (no, really), so when we were served roast chicken for dinner, we were pretty sure it didn’t come from a supermarket. And ye Gods - chicken which tasted of chicken! I had actually forgotten what it was meant to taste like and found it incredibly rich.

5

Indeed; the produce I’ve been receiving is pretty much all like that, in terms of eating experience; the potatoes are all different sizes in the bag and are still covered with a thin layer of soil, but they taste incredible; the carrots are a bit knobbly and bent, but they taste intensely of carrots; the outer leaves on the lettuce are bruised and tatty, but they leave them on so that no additional packing is required to protect the inner leaves from damage and drying out (and the lettuce actually tastes of something other than water); the turnips were actually solid all the way through, instead of being pithy in the middle.
Same with everything else; the whole eating experience, particularly the richness of flavour was actually startling in contrast to what I’d grown used to.

6

I just wouldn’t get too attached to the place because we all know what is going to happen :smiley:

7

Riverford is actually a bit of a success story (amid an ocean of less fortunate stories); they started their box scheme after they got reamed in the ass by a large chain - they were in the process of building a packing house to meet the stringent conditions imposed by the supermarket and the buyer phoned up, asking the owner to visit London meet with their technical department on the Thursday of that week; he asked if there was any chance of making the meeting on Friday, as he would be able to combine the visit with another he had already planned; the buyer simply hung up on him. When the farm owner called back, the buyer said “No sonny - when we whistle, you jump”. It would be nice to imagine that this is just an isolated case of a cranky buyer, but it isn’t; it’s an attitude that is deeply pervasive of the whole industry.

8

…but that’s really not what I came here to discuss; The topic here is how familiarity can breed complacency and contempt and how absence can make the heart grow fonder.

9

On a more serious note, reduced choice = more satisfaction is a phenomenon that social scientists have found to be pretty consistent across many different applications. You aren’t the first one that has noticed it.

10

Indeed; I’m sure that will be why we have such well-worn idioms about familiarity and absence. I suppose there’s also a sense that something is being done for me - that (in this case) the business of selecting the very best that the season has to offer is being handled for me by people who really care and can do it well.

Odd, because I’d normally expect myself to rebel against such interference, on the basis that I don’t require such meddlesome coddling.

11

I definitely cannot handle having many options.

When I started shopping for laptops, I was completely overwhelmed. I quickly realized that I wasn’t qualified to judge between different processors, amounts of RAM, types of RAM, video cards, yadda, yadda, yadda, so I asked some of my tech-savvy friends for advice, and they all had completely different recommendations. I was getting more and more stressed out and upset until I finally said, screw it, I’m getting a Mac. That cut the field down to eight models, and I chose the one best suited to my needs and my budget, and I’m happy with it. Was it worth it, or could I have gotten a cheaper, better machine if I’d kept shopping? I dunno. But it saved my sanity, that’s for sure.

Whenever I shop for big-ticket items, I inevitably and arbitrarily fixate on some obscure feature that I must have, just so I can eliminate 90% of the options and get it down to a small set that I can actually get my head around.

Our TV had to have the capacity to adjust the volume when certain stations BLARE THEIR COMMERCIALS REALLY LOUD. That cut it down to 2 models in our price-range and desired size. We probably could have lived without that feature, but it was such a relief to narrow it down! When we bought a used car, I insisted that it had to have a manual transmission. That gave me exactly four choices in my price range in town. Salesmen tried ot argue me out of it, describing various fantastic deals on automatics, but thinking about it made me dizzy.

I suspect that for any purchase there are many, many, many choices that would ultimately be satisfactory, so eliminating most of them with some ad hoc filter doesn’t really hurt me that much. Maybe I missed out on a great deal, but I also saved myself a lot of headaches. FWIW, I’m ecstatically happy with my iBook, my Altima and my Sony TV.

More in keeping with the OP, I definitely think the produce at the Farmer’s Market is much, much better than at the supermarket. It does throw my menu-making system into a tizzy to some degree, but if I have to punt on one of my planned meals because there aren’t any green beans at Market, a serendipitous heirloom eggplant will usually come to the rescue.

12

The more options I have, the more likely I am not to take advantage of any of them.

However, when I have only one option in any important area of life, I generally want at least a second and preferably a third. Of course, this doesn’t apply to stuff like ketchup, but it would apply to (say) shirt collars and definitely to jobs, hometowns, cars, etc.

13

Oooh! I get to be the voice of dissent!

I like me my options, which is part of why I hate being forced to eat in a college cafeteria. I don’t care if the tomatos aren’t particularly good: I just want some tomato sliced on my bagel, dammit. I know what I want, it’s feasible to have it, so why shouldn’t I be able to customize the hell out of absolutely everything in my life?

14

I’ve heard the brits are tough, but metal anal buttbeads… :eek:

:smiley:

15

You know, I thought about doing that box-from-the-coop thing this summer, but I live alone and while I enjoy cooking I often go a week without cooking anything. Also what if it’s collards and kale and kohlrabi, whatever kohlrabi is? Because I am not eating collards. Or okra. And I’m not all that excited about the concept of cauliflower. So maybe it’s not really the plan for me.

16

The pop sociology book that discusses this most famously and recently is Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. It’s a pretty interesting read, but this Slate article summarizes his thesis pretty well.

17

I think you are slightly mistaken, you are not actually lacking in choice, that would be a negative. Instead you are adding a random elliment to what you make your meals from. This randomness is what is enriching your experience of life. See if you wanted to you could still go out and buy the supermarket vegitable you used to buy. It isn’t as if you are being required to only use that which is provided to you by the organic seller. Instead you are getting random produce at it’s peak in season quality, this will force experimentation and exploring ideas you might otherwise scip over for safer tried and trusted recipes. I am really quite envious, if only I could find a similar scheme here.

18

I agree with those saying that fewer choices increases satisfaction. The stunning array of choices for things that don’t seem to need to be that complicated upsets me. When I want to buy a toothpaste or deodorant, I don’t want to stand helplessly in the aisle for ten minutes, trying to figure out why I need my armpits to shimmer. Manufacturers, we’re on to you - you’ve gone too far, and we are starting to catch on that putting additional features that no one cares about doesn’t make a product worth 30% more.

As for the food choices, I experience choice bewilderment frequently in restaurants. A ten-page menu is just too much - give me about six choices, do them all very well, price them reasonably, and I would be happy.

19

I needed toothpaste the other day–and I was somewhat taken aback by the selection.

Since when did toothpaste choosing become like pantyhose shopping? Why should I ahve to read ever label to make sure every possible option is covered? One reason I don’t wear dresses is because I hate to shop for hose. Let’s see, I need a seamless, nude, fine denier, non-control top (ha! good luck with that one), pair, size B.

Believe me, I could stand there all day, just appraising the options. Same with tampons, now and toothpaste. Yogurt is getting to be like this–hell, M&M’s are getting to like this!

I agree with the OP–a few good choices is fine for me. I don’t even mind some randomness ( I am picky about veggies, so that particular one wouldn’t work for me). Car, vacuum cleaners, ovens, blenders–there is too much choice for this brain pan.

20

I know what you mean. I love pomegranates. Where I am, they are only available around October - December time frame. Each year, when they arrive, I shop for a nice juicy looking one. I then don an old painting shirt, and spend a couple of messy hours picking it apart to get at the tangy pips. Mmmmm…

If they were in the stores all year around, I would probably not bother to get pomegranates at all. They would be to common to make it worth the effort and the mess.