I step forward, and the automatic doors open. Fluorescent lights beam overhead. Towering shelves frame my field of view as I slowly peruse each aisle. Mascots on cereal boxes, meticulously written nutritional contents and allergen warnings, stickers highlighting the ethical sourcing and recycled packaging of one peanut butter jar or the other, color-coded price labels, and sale signs swirl together in a carousel of consumption.

I’ve never particularly liked grocery stores. Standing before the refrigerated cheese display case, I feel dejection wash over me. Satisfaction in relation to the number of available options can supposedly be graphed with an inverted U curve, growing at first, only to peak and subsequently decrease as the quiet agony of comparing a hundred approximately equivalent products sets in. There are two preconditions to this choice overload. Firstly, there cannot be a dominant option in the choice set. And secondly, the decision maker must not have any preexisting preference or extensive expertise. Fitting both requirements, I must search for an objective system of comparison that may yield a favorable outcome.

Biologically, taste can be broken into tangible components. People experience this qualia when the chemical reactions of food in the mouth stimulate the gustatory system, creating one or more of the five basic tastes. Sweetness, savoriness, and bitterness result when molecules bind to G protein-coupled receptors. Saltiness is the detection of alkali metals, and sourness - hydrogen ions. Yet without a sample, having only the packaging and nutrition label to go off of, this scientific method is of no use.

Grocery shopping is more akin to aesthetic taste, permeated by a plethora of socially enforced value judgments instead of just Dionysian whims. In aesthetics, good taste is defined as the ability to recognize artistic merit. A proficient viewer - one knowledgeable about technique, style, and cultural context - can quickly form an educated opinion, sorting the authentic from the profit-driven. Analogically, the expert shopper, swiftly glancing at the packaging, can easily choose the product that is not only the most visually appealing, but the most eco-friendly, with the highest nutrient density, best price, or made by the company that pays the fairest wages. They effortlessly cast a vote with their dollar.

However, I have little emotional attachment to any of the cheeses on display and even sparser background knowledge on the production and distribution, or nutritional content of them. The volume of implied and explicit information on a single shelf is overwhelming. For a moment I stand frozen.

An announcement plays over the intercom. Fifteen minutes until closing. In an act of decision fatigue, I head for the self-checkout empty-handed.