If you haven't had an invitation to a free educational dinner to explain the wonders of this product, you have been living a sheltered life. [...] I had an epiphany - a sudden knockdown realization that we need to buy financial products in exactly the same way food writer Michael Pollan says we should buy food. [...] order, I learned that the entire carbonated beverage aisle was really just a distribution channel for sugar. Other aisles were salt distribution channels, devoted to selling salt in entertaining forms such as potato chips, tortilla chips and peanuts. According to the Food Marketing Institute, for instance, a typical supermarket now offers 42,000 items for sale. [...] if you're skeptical, see how many yogurt labels you need to read before you find one without corn syrup. [...] I started reading labels, I found the bounty of supermarkets exciting and charming. If it is complicated, if it needs to be explained by someone sitting at a lunch table, if it's proprietary, if it's only available from certain companies and if it makes claims about your future financial health, don't buy it.