What does the rice aisle in your local grocery store look like?

Has it changed over the years? I can remember when I was much younger that a typical rice display had a few bags of different types of rice and a few boxes of Minute Rice.

You never know where my mind will wander, tonight it has wandered to rice.

Definitely a big contrast to what we see today. I will start with two pictures that I took at the big superstores.

Here we see about eight linear feet of rice. However, it is mostly instant rices with very little bagged rice. Also, not much variety in the types of rice.

Here we have a section from another superstore. I did not get the entire section, but the other half is all boxed instant rice. Again, a lot of instant and partially prepared choices. Most of which you only have to put in the microwave after adding water. Some don’t even need water added.

At the grocery store near my house the rice aisle has a much larger selection. You even see a balance between bagged rice and prepared rice. You also have a large variety of choices in the bagged rice section.

Now, do you want to see a big rice aisle?

Look at all the rice on this rice aisle. Bag after bag of rice and many different varieties. You can’t even see the detail from the far end of the aisle.

This was in a grocery store in Toronto that is in an area where there are a lot of people who had moved there from Asia. The store was about the same size as the grocery store by my house, but the rice aisle is many times larger.

Of course, I can find a rice aisle similar to this if I go to one of the Asian supermarkets close to work. I also saw large bags of rice at an Indian food store just a few blocks from home.

The diversity of food that we have available to us today is much greater than what we had 27 years ago when I worked in a grocery store.

How big is the rice section where you shop?

Steven