Is it just our mid-Atlantic Safeway Stores that have become giant fast food delis, or is this an epidemic?

I just came back from a humble shopping errand -- picking up cream cheese and cocoa for a mock Danish (my first). There was no cream cheese. There was no cocoa. No, there hadn't been a run on these items, it's just that everything they had was, as they would put it, value added. I.e., processed to the gills.

There was cream cheese and strawberries, and chives, FAT FREE!!!! Probably cream cheese with hog jowls, but no just plain cream cheese. I settled for something that was reduced fat -- 1/3 less fat. Says it's less than one gram of carbs.

I did find cocoa, finally, in the sugar section near cake mixes, up on the top shelf, safely out of the reach of children. On the cocoa aisle -- with coffee and tea -- there was no cocoa. There was sugar free, fat free, sugar and fat free, sugar free with marshmallows, etc etc. Five shelves of it.

growl

I do run these little ideas by the manager occasionally, but they A) do not care and B) would have no power to change it if they did.