It's not surprising that people eat in the wrong proportions, because the USDA "Food Pyramid" said they should eat mostly grains! The USDA got the proportions wrong, and this was curriculum in schools!

I live in the NYC suburbs and things are still OK here. Real estate has taken a hit but things seem to have leveled out. Costco has a lot of inventory. Maybe analogous to your experience with "meat markdown", it seems to me that Whole Foods doesn't have as many cuts on sale as they used to.

Had a neat experience in the Costco parking lot the other day. A brand new yellow Lamborghini Gallardo parked next to me and I talked to the very ordinary looking owners, they seemed just like regular folks (but apparently with quite a bit more money), wife had bought it for husband for his birthday.