See, this is why I hate Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is convenient to the bus line, so every once in a while the grocery shopping gets done there. Now, I usually have a little container of yogurt as a mid-morning snack at work. Usually I get the grocery store brand, which isn't fabulous yogurt but is pretty good. So we picked up the Wal-Mart equivalent.

Ugh! Ack! Melodramatic gagging sounds! That is absolutely the most disgusting thing I can remember having eaten. The stuff tasted like flavored corn starch. And since those were two of the top three ingredients, I suppose that's not surprising. I know a lot of commercial yogurts have corn starch in them, but most of them don't taste like it. This was not yogurt. I'm sure it met some legal definition of yogurt, but it's not yogurt.

OK, so I got some lousy yogurt. But this just reinforces my biggest gripe about Wal-Mart: its exploitation of the poor. There's this strong (and I would say cultivated) air about Wal-Mart of "you have to shop here because you can't afford anywhere else." And indeed, I know many people who shop at Wal-Mart because they don't think they can afford anywhere else. But the thing is, and the thing my family members can't seem to catch on to, is that Wal-Mart has a very bad value-to-cost ratio. The stuff they sell isn't just cheap, it's crappy beyond what it's price suggests. Take the yogurt again. The grocery store brand is actually cheaper, tastes much better, and I think has better nutritional capabilities. In my experience, just about everything Wal-Mart sells can be had elsewhere at similar prices and better quality. But they've cultivated this image of "we're the cheapest", and a further insinuation of "you can't afford any better" to those most struggling to keep it together financially.

No more Wal-Mart shopping, I don't care how convenient it is.