Is the supermarket contributing to the loneliness epidemic?

Grocery shopping every single day?! How?!

Shopping in a market in Oaxaca with my cooking teacher, Doña María, reminded me how much I love the daily shop. Not the big, once-a-week, stock-the-pantry kind. The little, everyday kind.

Somewhere along the way, we've prioritized convenience and efficiency above all else. We get in our cars, wander supermarket aisles collecting ingredients for seven days of meals, exchange a few words with a cashier (if we're lucky), and head home. Or, if you're me, skip the human interaction altogether and have groceries delivered.

And repeat.

When we lived in Spain, it was different. No weekly meal planning. No car or giant shopping list.

We'd get home, talk about what sounded good for dinner, and walk down the road for the handful of fresh ingredients we needed that day.

I'd stop at the chicken shop, the meat and cheese shop, the vegetable shop, and maybe a few others. All within a 20-minute excursion, filled with little conversations with shopkeepers I knew and neighbors doing the same.

I'd ask what was good that day, maybe discover something new, and head home to make something simple with the freshest, tastiest ingredients.

Shopping became part of living, rather than another chore to squeeze into an already-full schedule. How much did we lose in our pursuit of convenience? We made feeding ourselves more efficient, but at what cost?

If we save time shopping, we fill it with something else. We gained convenience, but lost the little everyday interactions that make living a joy.

The US isn't set up for us to abandon supermarkets, and I'm not suggesting we can all shop for dinner every day. But not everything that saves time is worth the cost of connection.

It reminds me to ask a neighbor to borrow their drill instead of turning to Amazon. Or stop by the local hardware store to ask a question, pick up a part, and likely learn something. And when I do head to the supermarket, I want to lift my head, make eye contact and really be in the experience.

We may not have the luxury of shopping at local shops every day, but we can find small ways to support local businesses and invest a little in a more connected world.