The supermarket as we know it is the product of a rape machine; cows are routinely impregnated to produce dairy. This dairy is not needed to satiate the population, but day in and day out, cow after cow is raped and her milk taken from her to produce gleaming aisles of milk, cheese, and butter. A large percentage of this after-rape spoils and is discarded. The product itself is less important than the image, the immediacy, the nostalgia.

Grain-based products are mostly identical. They are part sugar, part grain, part coloring. The only distinguishing characteristic between many of them is branding, and that is often secondary to their placement on the planogram. Some have higher costs, some blare obtuse keywords and slogans, but they are all functionally identical. Lower-cost goods seek to make profit in volume, whereas higher-cost goods boast higher margins yet fewer sales. As with dairy, many of these products spoil and are jettisoned into a separate destructive system.

For the purposes of this article, I braved the section I often avoid: the murderers row of the meat counter. Some prefer to consume flesh, and all aspects of various sentient beings are on display under glaring neon in the acrid-smelling corner of the market. There are no warnings of carcinogens, no displays of the prior brutality, no brochures on the environmental impact of meat. It takes 900kcal of plant matter to produce 100kcal of flesh. This net 1,000kcal expires daily and is not composted. Murder, as with rape, is wasted.

This capitalist institution, the supermarket, is hopelessly flawed and immoral. No single aspect of it can be purified per se as long as it fulfills the founding virtue of the institution: profit. Any entity that does not concern itself with ethics over all else is tacitly allowing ethics to be eschewed when dealing with it. Therefore, the singular concern of any party in dealing with the supermarket should not be “fairness” in consumption, but more survival-based. If one can pay for any given item needed for sustenance, one must ask: why would you? Is there a directive to act morally for an immoral entity?

I’ve seen my Latinx folx struggle with paying their rent, feeding their children, and buying their food, not due to their own faults but due to the immoral system of capitalism that marginalizes and perpetuates violence against them. Why should they suffer while the supermarket prospers? Certainly, if your neighbor runs a bodega, pay them for their wares. But the purveyors of filth in supermarkets are not owed your loyalty. Lift their razors. Steal their salmon (I’m vegan, which I’ll address the merits of in a follow-up article). Fight the system of capitalism by feeding your folx!