Tights, sunglasses and boneless chickens have joined the list of casualties of America's economic crisis, as the era of impulse shopping gives way to more wary behaviour in the nation's grocery aisles.
Americans unwilling to pay extra for their food to be prepared bought $65m more whole frozen chickens in the third quarter than a year earlier, and $50m fewer boneless birds, according to a study of store loyalty card data covering 250m transactions a week.
“Instant gratification” categories such as sunglasses and tights registered some of the steepest declines in the study by Catalina Marketing, which gathers loyalty card data from 40,000 US supermarkets and pharmacies representing $800bn of US consumer spending a year.