The New York Times seems to think so. Indeed, many grocery stores in urban areas are closing up shop, and all that's left is a big open lot and a smattering of mom and pop convenience stores left in their wake. But despite the name, convenience stores aren't always, well, that convenient, especially when you're in need of fresh fruit and veggies, low-fat snacks and fresh poultry or seafood.

A study by New York's Department of City Planning estimated that over 750,000 New Yorkers live five blocks or more from a supermarket. And when that's the case, most people opt to drive or cab it to the store, especially if they have lots of shopping to do or little ones in tow. And at the end of a long work day, many people just don't have the energy - or the time - to stroll down to the grocery. (The study also found that there is enough need for 100 additional supermarkets across the city).

So what's a hungry person to do? Most people simply go without fresh produce and other things that are carried by larger supermarkets. Others are currently shopping at a store, but worry about it closing, because the only other option is miles away.

What about you? Did you or someone you know ever have trouble getting to a decent grocery store, especially if you live in a populated urban area?

Awesome: the idea behind bulk food. Cheaper, more control over the quantity, easy.

Not-so-awesome: the collection and storing of bulk food. Most supermarkets provide plastic bags, which are not only bad for the environment, but are messy to store, can break or leak easily, and typically result in a pile of unusable crumbs.

But a friend of mine has come up with an easy solution that I'm jealous I didn't think of first: she bought a few of these Droppar storage jars (at left) from IKEA (although any small metal or glass jar with a lid would do), and brought them to her local Whole Foods store. The cashier first weighed the jar itself, which she wrote on a piece of tape and placed on the jar lid.

Each time my friend buys in bulk, she simply brings her jar with her, writes the checkout code on a sticker which she keeps on the jar, and brings it to the cashier, who subtracts the weight of the jar and charges her for just the food. Easy, environmentally-friendly, and easy to store when she gets home. (Another idea? Just wash out peanut butter or pasta sauce jars, place stickers on the sides, and reuse those).

Warning: this should work at Whole Foods and Wild Oats, or other similarly-minded food stores, but I don't know if other stores would agree - you'd have to call your local supermarket out find out.

OK, so it's December 24th, and you completely forgot to buy a gift for your Aunt Loretta or your girlfriend's sister, who you weren't really thinking of buying anything for but you just found out that she's buying something for you so now you feel like you have to get something for her but all of the stores are closing and the only thing open is the local supermarket. What can you do?

Luckily, even supermarkets can yield some Christmas gifts you wouldn't be ashamed of giving to someone. Here are a few suggestions.

Yikes.

Officials are investigating 51 cases of salmonella (in 17 different states) that have been reported from customers who have bought Veggie Booty snacks. The company has decided to recall all lots and sizes of the snack food. And yes that includes all codes and expiration dates. The company name is Robert's American Gourmet.

This is a pretty big recall, since this is something that is probably sold in the store where you shop. Customers are urged to throw away the food if you have it in your home and call the company to get your money back.

You ever get in one of the modes where you eat the same snack for days and days and weeks?

That is what's happening with me right now with Planters Chocolate-Covered Cashews. They come in cans now (the bags vanished several months ago). They're big cashews, and the chocolate is delicious too. I have no scientific proof to back this up, but it seems to me that when companies cover their nuts with chocolate, they seem to use bigger nuts. It's especially noticable with whole cashews. Maybe they just seem bigger because they are covered with chocolate, I'm not sure. I just know I'm going through whole cans in one sitting while watching television or reading.

Whole Foods had been expanding breath-takingly fast over the past several years, with new locations - many of which are huge or feature unusual amenities - popping up all over the place. Being everywhere is one way to beat out the competition (think Starbucks), but another way is to buy them up. Whole Foods has just announced that they will be buying Wild Oats Markets, one of their top competitors, for $565 million, with the deal expected to to close over the next few weeks.

Colorado-based Wild Oats has 110 stores in 24 states and British Columbia and has not been doing as well as its rival. Whole Foods has twice the sales per square foot of retail space, though Wild Oats has smaller stores, and recently lost both their chief executive and chief financial officers.

Some stores will be closed and others will be relocated to fit in with existing Whole Foods stores, but Whole Foods feels that they can improve the Wild Oats stores on the whole and "put jet propulsion under [them]" to bring their sales up to Whole Foods levels. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey estimates that it could take two ears to fully integrate the Wild Oats stores

Supposedly, everything is bigger in Texas and up until now, that adage has certainly held true for Whole Foods Market, which has their 80,000-sq. foot flagship store located in Houston. The company is now planning an even larger store for San Jose, California. At 86,000-sq. feet, the store will be the largest Whole Foods in the US and probably will hold the title for some time despite the fact that Whole Foods does seem to love large stores. With restaurants and spas opening inside supermarkets, what was once one-stop-shopping is now a shopping experience.

But is this getting out of hand? How large can a grocery store before it gets too big? This new Whole Foods, which will be located at the intersection of Blossom Hill Road and Almaden Expressway, will take up about 2 acres without including space for loading docks and parking. It's safe to say that it isn't exactly necessary to have a store that large, but do you prefer to seek out the biggest stores for your shopping when given the choice between a larger and smaller store of the same type?

The USDA's nutritional guidance system, MyPyramid, has not been the smashing success that organizers hoped it would be when it was unveiled almost two years ago. The problem seems to be that the new pyramid, as opposed to the old one, only provides guidance, not hard and fast numbers to follow. This means that diners need to take responsibility for their health and their choices - and motivating them to do so is not an easy task.

Trying to help the public to better understand and make use of the already in-place system, food manufacturers and retailers have joined together to create the Take a Peak program. The program aims to get people thinking more closely about health and using MyPyramid with in-store advertising, banners, signs and kiosk. Displays will how reminders of how many servings of whole grains should be eaten per day and what serving sizes look like. Some products will be given a logo indicating why it maybe a good choice.

The trial run of the program will cover 2,000 stores in 17 states and includes Publix, Raley's and SuperValue. Depending on the response from consumers, it may not be long before the plan (or propaganda, if you prefer to look at it that way) ends up in stores at the rest of the US, as well.

A lot of supermarkets make pretty good roasted chickens in their deli sections. They are inexpensive and usually fresh, so they make a convenient dinner after a long day of work. While some supermarkets package theirs in grease-proof bags, it seems like the majority use large plastic boxes that are way too much packaging for the product they contain. This is just one example, of course, but there are many others that illustrate the ways in which supermarket packaging, like that of so many other industries, is wasteful.

Now, some supermarkets are being asked to do something about it - in the UK, at least. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has called for 13 of Britain's biggest retailers, including all their major supermarkets, to cut back. Statistics show that one sixth of household waste "comes directly from supermarket packaging." Fortunately, the markets have already taken some steps to help, investing in recycling centers and reducing the thickness of bags and other packaging materials.

If only the same could be said for those chicken containers at markets in the US...

Growing up in the NYC suburbs, I always thought most grocery stores were the same. So many of the foods seemed to be generic items that were aimed at an ideal of America circa 1950. I assumed that if you wanted Kosher, Italian, Asian, and Latino foods you had to dig out that minor bottom shelf section in the back of the store. That is until I did several road trips across America, and lived all over during college and grad school. I came to realize that markets tailor their products to the region and even the city.
Now this regional specialization is being fine tuned to its maximum potential. Many markets, whether small and local, high end, or the big chains, are researching their customers to find out what they want and need. Attention is focused on ethnic and religious background, economic levels and education, and supplying products to fit their local neighborhood. The most progressive stores in custom tailoring tend to be privately owned independent markets that are in urban areas. The Philadelphia Inquirer has been investigating this trend among the smaller, urban markets in Philly. It seems that the "old-fashioned corner store" is back, and better than ever.

New York supermarkets are grimy and disappointing after a summer of farmer's markets, but you can find some foods that aren't completely worthless: Steel cut Irish oatmeal, Cabot sharp cheddar cheese, Progresso Lentil Soup, Walker's Shortbread, Total Greek Yogurt. Unfortunately, Moskin doesn't share which market she went to, so it may be hard to find all of her picks at home without searching a few places. While you're shopping, you might want to pick up some basics for your pantry, too.

Supermarkets are making changes to hold on to customers that are increasingly shopping elsewhere. They are increasing prepared and specialty food selections, adding new services, offering high-tech gadgets to aid consumers, and vastly increasing the quality and selection of their produce.

The secret to a good basic salad is more oil, less vinegar and lots of salt. If you don't want something quite so basic, try Dandelion, Bacon and Egg Salad, Apple Cranberry and Goat Cheese Salad or Chicken and Parsnip Salad.

Couscous was developed in the middle ages and is still made in much the same way as it was, not to mention that it is a staple of many diets

Tis the season for making soup with dumplings, preferably ones that use Matzoh.

Fran Bruni dines at Freemans and gives it a "satisfactory".

Mark Bittman, the minimalist, makes Mongolian stir-fried lamb.

Hannaford Bros. operates 150 grocery stores in upstate New York and throughout New England and is implementing its own system, perhaps in lieu of a nutritionist at each location, to let customers know the nutritional value of the foods they're planning to buy. Their rating system assigns stars to food items based on USDA guidelines, adding points for nutrients and taking away for high levels of fats and sugars, but not taking calories into account. The system is:

• 1 star: good choice
• 2 stars: better choice
• 3 stars: best choice
• 0 stars: no nutritional value

The store stocks over 27,000 items and only 25% of them got one or more stars. Some staples, like cooking oil, were not evaluated. Is it a perfect system? No, but it does accomplish its goal of giving consumers a general idea of the nutritional value of foods without requiring "a nutrition degree to understand." A store survey said that 8 out of 10 customers wanted some form of nutritional guidance and they're trying to deliver it in a basic form.

Consumer Reports always delivers the information that shoppers need to know: what's out there, what is (and isn't) good about it and whether or not it is worth the price or time involved. More often than not, they are evaluating products, but in a recent study, they took a look at some of the stores that sell them.

Based on a survey of more than 20,000 consumers, CR found that the three most important things to grocery shoppers were "short lines, low prices, [fresh] produce," though good service and clean stores were also important. Most shoppers went to multiple stores each week or each month to pick up all the things they needed, shopping for produce at one store and dry goods at another. But using these criteria as a baseline, five supermarkets came out ahead: Wegmans Food Markets, Trader Joe's, Publix Super Markets, Raley's and Whole Foods Markets. All five had a desirable combination of qualities that kept shoppers coming back regularly.

The traffic light labeling system, which clearly indicates whether foods have high, low or medium levels of fats, sugar and salt, has enjoyed good success with consumers in England and is even being adopted in other parts of the world. Some supermarkets have expressed displeasure over the system, but now five major food manufacturers are launching their own campaign to try to bring it down.

Kellogg's, Danone, Kraft, Nestlé and Pepsico say that they are being made scapegoats for the UK's obesity problems. The traffic light system essentially tells consumers that "This food is bad!" according to the companies. Working together, they have come up with a new labeling system that will get information about the nutritional value of a product across to consumers without turning them off the food entirely. The system will have a "guideline daily allowance" (GDA) of sugar, fat and salt is contained in a product, meaning that there will be a percentage on the label and no foods will seem forbidden to buyers.

Critics of the GDA plan say that percentages are too confusing for the average consumer and that they need the black and white (or red and green) of the traffic system to help them make food choices. A trial run should help determine wither the GDA will catch on.

A new study, done by a supermarket consulting firm, says that nearly 60% of consumers are consolidating their shopping and taking fewer trips to the grocery store. A first reaction to this might be to say that consumers are doing more shopping at specialty stores and even local farmers' markets, and only taking trips to the main supermarket for staples. This may be true, but the study actually showed that the biggest decrease in shopping trips was in "downmarket" shoppers, which seems to indicate that a desire for specialty goods (or the often more expensive local goods) might not be driving the trend.

This raises the question of how often people actually do shop? Just a few short years ago, it seemed that most people, especially those with children, stuck to a once-a-week schedule, often heading out to the store on a weekend morning. Do you go to the market on a daily basis, picking up fresh ingredients, or do you take trips once a month to a warehouse store like Costco to stock up on bulk items and simply augment that with a couple of brief trips to a local store in between larger trips?