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Pfft, I always buy a frozen pizza specifically because I already know I'm not gonna feel like cooking after grocery shopping because it sucks. I don't even pretend anymore. All that fresh food is for another day.
I specifically buy easy dinner stuff while.im out shopping for the same reason. I spent an hour getting food so now imma take it easy and eat this mac and chicken strips from the deli.
I'm curious how your shopping trips look like to be called exhausting, i just bike to the store, scan the products, stuff them in my backpack, pay, and bike home. Takes 15 minutes tops if i don't leisurely walk around looking at the shelves.
As a family that tries to cook as many of our meals as possible and generally visits the store once a week, it can be a big endeavor. To make balanced, healthy meals for the whole week requires a large variety of ingredients. This makes meal planning before the trip and having a list necessary, and then there’s a lot of searching for things that may not always be in stock.
Additionally, we often restock household necessities and toiletries on this trip as well, which requires more planning and a longer list. Add all this together with carrying all the bags, putting things away, etc, and it can be pretty exhausting.
I've been on both sides and they're both true. Biking in to get ingredients for one meal is quick. Taking a car to gather a week's supplies (I still have to go back for something later) is a bigger endeavor.
I try to time it with my work schedule, which changes a lot. Old people block aisles and chat from 10 to 12. It's deathly busy from 3 to 5.
I'm not the person you replied to, but when I go grocery shopping I usually buy ~$200 worth of groceries and expend a bunch of energy hauling them all up 3 flights of stairs to my place which can be tiring, plus traffic to/from the store, plus putting them all away, clearing space in the fridge, etc.
I'd guess it's a combination of the physical and mental tolls of grocery shopping.
A lot of Americans don’t have grocery stores within 15 minute bike distance
Taking a look at the other replies can certainly explain how American grocery stores became such big places. I’m American, but have the luck of comparing to European town layout and actually being walking distance from a grocery store. Theoretically, if the shops (and streets and parking lots) themselves were smaller, you could make frequent backpack-sized trips for fresh whatever because it would be a tiny distance.
I'm in the UK, the supermarket is less than 10 minutes away by car, but it seems impossible to spend less than an hour in there shopping for a family of 4. There's a smaller shop in walking distance, but everything costs more there and it's not economical for a weeks worth (not to mention the more limited range).
My solution is to pay the big store to pick it for me, then I just collect it. Cheaper than delivery, they're the ones sat waiting for me and if there's a sub I don't like or something I forgot, it's just a quick visit, not an odyssey.
Still use the local but just for top ups if needed
Like the last day it looks like it can still be usable before you're forced to "throw away money".