Grocery shopping is an often ignored part of the story of how food ultimately gets to our pantry shelves and tables. A Theory of Grocery Shopping explores the social organization of grocery shopping by linking the lived experience of grocery shoppers and retail managers in the US with information transmitted by nutritionists, government employees, financial advisors, journalists, health care providers and marketers, who influence the way we think about and perform the work of shopping for a household's food. The author provides insight into the contradictory messages that shape how consumers provision their households, and details how consumers respond to these messages. The book challenges the consumer choice model that places responsibility on the shopper for making the "right" choice at the grocery store, thereby ignoring the larger social forces at work, which determine what products are available and how they get to the shelves.

"Grocery shopping is an often ignored part of the story of how food ultimately gets to our pantry shelves and tables. A Theory of Grocery Shopping explores the social organization of grocery shopping by linking the lived experience of grocery shoppers and retail managers in the US with information transmitted by nutritionists, government employees, financial advisors, journalists, health care providers and marketers, who influence the way we think about and perform the work of shopping for a household's food. The author provides insight into the contradictory messages that shape how consumers provision their households, and details how consumers respond to these messages. The book challenges the consumer choice model that places responsibility on the shopper for making the "right" choice at the grocery store, thereby ignoring the larger social forces at work, which determine what products are available and how they get to the shelves."--Back cover

Occupational therapy practitioners and other clinicians understand the importance of accurately evaluating a client’s ability to accomplish necessary everyday tasks, especially those in the community setting. The Test of Grocery Shopping Skills is a new performance-based assessment that measures how accurately and efficiently clients can locate items in a grocery store. Developed primarily to assess individuals with serious mental illness, this assessment also is ideal for use with other populations in which cognitive impairments could interfere with community living skills, such as persons with brain injury, stroke, dementia, or developmental disabilities. The manual clearly discusses how to administer the test and to score and interpret results. Two different but statistically comparable pre- and post-test forms allow practitioners to measure changes in clients’ abilities. This user-friendly assessment also includes instructions for the test administrator and test taker, score sheets, grocery lists, and a sample store map and answer sheet—all of which are available on the enclosed CD-ROM for easy use with clients and also in the classroom.

Thie book describes how the theory of Nash Equilibrium described in the 27-page 1950 doctoral dissertation of John Nash, who spent over 40 years in a schizophrenic fog. Eventually economists discovered his work, and realized that it was a replacement for capitalism, in which lying was not permitted. The internet made this utopian scenario a real possiblity. In 1994, Nash was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work with Nash Equilibrium. The author, an economist who studied at Rice University, describes how Nash Equilibrium could solve difficult problems in the "free market", which can only exist if Nash Equilibrium can be achieved: Topics include health care, crime prevention and rehabilitation, full employment, education, civility, and democracy. The equivalency of the outcomes of Nash Equilibrium and of Artificial Intelligence is examined, demonstrating that this is a technology that has already arrived; it's not science fiction. Using a new Internet protocol - HTTPV (the 'V' is for 'Verify') which essentially fact-checks websites and only displays their content if they survive a fact-checking verification step, each of these difficult problems can be dealt with in such a way as to ensure justice. In particular, ignorant voters will never again be allowed to elect an ignorant fool as President. The free market has failed us, as has democracy. Full disclosure of all relevant information, and using only facts to come to a decision, are the keys to dealing successfully with the most serious problems in our civilization. The author hopes that this book will start a dialog about how to fix our broken world.

The field of everyday information behavior addresses how individuals interact with information in their everyday life. Previous research in the field has largely ignored the banal and quotidian portion of everyday life that scholars of the critical and cultural theory of the everyday emphasize. This dissertation seeks to enhance the scholarly knowledge of everyday information behavior by demonstrating that critical and cultural theory offers concepts and theories that enable the field to more thoroughly explore the everyday. Through two empirical studies using qualitative methods inspired by institutional ethnography, this dissertation shows how everyday information scholars can investigate the mundane everyday activity of grocery shopping to gain a deeper understanding of the information behaviors involved. The first empirical study addresses the nurturer persona, a concept based on the role of the food provider. The second empirical study addresses the creative persona, a concept based on the creativity a recreational grocery shopper can enact in the grocery store. The data from the empirical studies is analyzed using three different perspectives (grocery shopping perspective, information behavior perspective, and critical and cultural theory perspective) drawn from distinct but related research literatures to highlight the complexity of grocery shoppers’ information behavior. The findings from the grocery shopping perspective show a strong presence of the nurturer and creative personas that impact a grocery shoppers’ experience in the grocery store. The findings from the information behavior perspective show the process of grocery shopping as information-rich and consisting of many different information behaviors. They also show how aspects of the nurturer and creative personas influence the information behaviors of grocery shopping. Finally, the findings from the critical and cultural theory perspective show that grocery shopping engages in an intensive and active way in ‘everyday’ information behavior. This finding is demonstrated through concepts developed by combining critical and cultural theory with concepts and concerns from everyday information behavior research.