Mark Morford over at SF Gate wants us all to know that Safeway and the rest of its ilk are sucking your soul dry.

Morford, who does most of his shopping at co-ops, farmer's markets and the like, makes this observation:

... (W)hen you least expect it, you find yourself in some situation or in some town with no other grocery options and you innocently walk back into Safeway to try to buy some organic hormone-free eggs (ha-ha yeah right good luck) - and WHAM. Sensory overload. Low-vibration overload. You get what in meditation circles they would call whacked, slapped upside the spirit by dank, malicious energy. Supermarket Syndrome.

Pork-like sausage in a can. Cool Whip with enough high-fructose corn syrup to caulk your driveway. Creepy chicken-flavored sauce packets, ten to a box. Precut celery. Precut cookie dough. Precut everything because you're too lazy to handle a knife. Nabisco honey-flavored Teddy Grahams shaped like Dora the Explorer. Dawn Wash & Toss. Crustless white bread of sufficient consistency to plug Hoover Dam.

Well yes. And no.

I prefer the Co-Op and Trader Joe's and the farmer's market too but I don't get freaked out by the common grocery store. I mean, after all, these are the places I frequented as a kid. Or rather they're the places where my mother shopped. The Raley's, the H.E.B.'s, the Piggly Wiggly's (no, really), the Safeways and Luckys. And because one can't find everything at the Co-op or Trader Joe's or the farmer's market, I still venture into these flourescent netherworlds.

Today I made a run to the new Safeway and although I'm sticking by my belief that it's just a freaking grocery store, it's certainly no consumer-driven hellhole. It has the nice dim lighting, it has the gleaming hardwood floors, it has the health food section - just a few aisles over from the Pop Tarts and Cap'n'Crunch. (Mmmm, Pop Tarts).

Of course, the new Safeway - in all its shiny, still-clean, organic-offering glory, is the exception and not the rule. Which brings me to this: While I try to be good about what I consume and how I consume it, I found a certain (repulsive) snobbish tone in Morford's column. An elitest attitude if one can be elitist about grocery stores. And I guess, as Morford shows us, one can.

So if you live in a place where there's no easy-to-get-to Trader Joe's or farmer's market (which are usually cheap) or co-op (or worse, you can't afford the oft-overpriced co-op), well then - you deserve to live in your Red Dye No. 5, sloth-promoting, nitrate-burning wasteland.

Bon appetite!