Ideas In The Raw: Single Servings.

Here's a problem I have. I am a single person household and I waste so much food and money having to buy such large portions for myself. Take for example, spaghetti sauce. I've never used a full jar. They make them so huge. The smallest size you can usually get is around 9.5 oz. It goes bad before I can get to it. Now I realize this isn't a HUGE problem in life but I hate being wasteful.

My solution in the past has been to a) freeze it (so much for fresh), b) cook it all at once (and I still end up wasting it) or c) throw out the rest. Sacrificing dietary variety is the only surefire way to assure I eat it all within its expiration date often times.

But here's an idea that centers around packaging. Make single servings for us singles. Please! You can sell a two pack of 4oz jars. They make single servings for people who have health concerns but the packaging industry could meet the needs of other people following that same concept with a different spin. 

If any of you packaging people out there have the urge to take my recommendation, please apply the concept to bread too. How many times has that huge loaf molded before I can eat 4 sandwiches?

Fresh Thoughts.

The other day I went grocery shopping. 

It got me thinking about the word fresh. It was only after working in an agency and helping on a grocery client, that I began to understand the importance of that one word. I remember thinking at the time that the word is one with no real dimensions. I was wrong.

The dictionary describes fresh as recently made or obtained; not canned, frozen, or otherwise preserved. 

While I think that's (obviously) true, I also think that fresh has been given new meaning in recent years. The popularity of natural and organic have really changed the the meaning of that word. Here's why:

While at the grocery store, I purchased the freshest mozzarella. Ever. Stark white, wet, salty. I also purchased organic salsa.

My not canned, not frozen, not otherwise preserved mozzarella made and obtained recently was obviously fresh. I walked into the store with the intent to purchase fresh mozzarella and did just that.

But I realize while standing there looking at all the salsa options on the shelves, I have come to think, in recent years, that organic, even in a jar, is more fresh than the same product in a jar without the word organic attached. 

So now not fresh grocery items, those that are canned, frozen and otherwise preserved, can be fresher than their counterparts (as in the case of salsa). That means that fresh grocery items can also be fresher than their counterparts. A fresher fresh if you will. There's freshly grown strawberries and then there are fresher freshly grown strawberries that are organic. 

While organic can't own fresh, it can own fresher. The idea of pesticides and chemicals on anything takes away from our old notions of fresh. 

I wonder if other consumers think the same and how that effects the marketing of grocery and the highly competitive fresh wars that pepper the category.