This is the first part of a two-part series on how to get the most of your supermarket-shopping experience. Part One discusses how supermarkets try to get you to spend more time and money than you originally wanted. Part Two, to come later, will lead you step by step through a supermarket trip, and give you tips on how to buy food the right way.

The simple fact of the matter is that going grocery shopping isn’t—and never was—as simple as you imagined, whether you’re on your own for the first time, or you’ve been shopping for a family of eight for 20 years.

Sometimes it seems less like you’re going out to buy milk and bread than you’re buffeted by endless marketing, too many choices, and not enough information. Does the perky green label mean that this box of cereal is good for me? Are there certain expiration dates that are less important than others? Am I a bad mom if I buy frozen spinach for dinner? How do I know what kind of fish to buy? Am I right to be a little scared of the butcher? And how did I end up spending $150 if all I went in for was some milk and bread?

Even professional food writers and editors ask these questions. (Butchers' cleavers look scary!) But if you really want to learn how to do something right, you have to put aside your ego, go back to the basics, and approach everything you thought you knew as if you were a newborn—or maybe a freshman in college whose every previous meal had come from Mom, McDonald’s, or the lunch ladies at school.

And who better to teach these lessons than five experts who could deconstruct a basic trip to “make groceries” (as they say in New Orleans) from five different angles? In this case, they were BA senior food editor Dawn Perry; environmental psychologist and author of What Women Want: The Science of Female Shopping Paco Underhill; architect and supermarket designer Kevin Kelley, of the firm Shook Kelley; the director of the graduate nutrition program at the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University, Sharon Akabas; and efficiency expert Gwynnae Byrd.

And they had a lot of wisdom to impart—so much, in fact, that it's best to tackle this topic in two parts. In the second part, to come later, the experts will lead you through the basics of getting the most out of your supermarket shopping, step by step, from the parking lot to checkout.

In this part, they talk about how the supermarket gets you to spend your time and money. From the lighting to the little old lady handing out cheese on crackers, everything inside the store has been plotted out to make you buy more, more, more. And if you’re going to be a conscientious—even conscious—shopper, you should know what you’re up against.