Supermarkets: Here’s how to make your customers feel fat

My local supermarket is nothing special. Its pricing’s above average but I guess it stocks about 80 per cent of the stuff I need to buy on a weekly basis, and its proximity means that I can generally get home before the frozen goods leak out of the freezer bags and run, laughing and spoilt, around the car boot when the car’s 60˚ inside.

But this unremarkable supermarket’s recently found a way to make me feel really bad about myself.

How? It’s made its aisles smaller.

Talk about the aisle of shame. I have nightmares about getting stuck in “crisps”

Not just smaller, but Lilliputian. So Lilliputian that I can’t get down the aisle without brushing a hip on the cashew nuts, or a bum cheek on the raisins.

Walking down these tiny aisles is not dissimilar from that feeling we all know, when we’re slightly over our ideal weight and our pants dig into the flesh of our hips, our belts are too tight and our trousers recriminate us for biscuits past, as they rub in places they should not rub.

It’s like the supermarket is telling me, with every step, that I’ve over-indulged on the cruise ship, on holiday in Spain (oh tapas, tapas, sangria, tapas) and on holiday in the UK (farewell, dear Café Rouge, with your deep-fried salmon fishcakes, your croque au saumon fumés, your fries and your 250ml glasses of wine), for example.

There is a reason, dear supermarket bosses, that I haven’t yet stepped into my skinniest clothes this August. Making me feel enormous doesn’t make me want to buy more food.

I hope it’s just temporary. The extra padding and the aisle thing.