Question for those experienced w/ the php and MySQL stuffs.

I am making a website that will allow a user to select items from a grocery store and place them into a MySQL table. A table has all the possible items already in it w/ UPC, type, description, etc. I'm trying to create a form that will provide dependent drop downs depending on the previous selection (ie if the user selects dairy, the next menu says cheese or milk, the next saying 2% or Skim). Is there a way to create the menus w/o having to create separate tables for each drop down? I saw some javascripts that will do it all, but they don't directly search the table, so I would have to create separate pages for each combination of selections to access the appropriate items in the table. Any links/advice would be nice, and thanks in advance

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