This was inspired by a recent post arguing that the "swamp" analogy is misandrist. And I would have to agree, since it suggests that most of the options available to women are bad options.

So I am proposing a different analogy -- that of a grocery store.

We all know that in your typical grocery store, there are a lot of things like potato chips; soda; cookies; chocolate bars. The junk food is prominently placed at the end of the aisles or in the checkout lines in order to tempt people into impulse purchases. Junk food is very pleasurable in the short term, but ultimately harmful to the person consuming it.

Meanwhile, there is definitely healthy food to be found in your typical grocery store, but it's not as prominently placed and it requires some degree of discipline to limit yourself to the healthy food. Healthy food is not as exciting as things like potato chips and cookies, but it's ultimately much better in the long term.

There is also a problem of junk food which is disguised as healthy, but even that is usually not too hard to spot with a little work.

It's true that some people have difficulty making smart decisions in a grocery store. For those people, there's no shame in having a trusted family member help with the shopping.