Walking into the grocery store can be quite overwhelming — so much to choose from, so many brands, varieties and product packaging, not to mention aisles to walk up and down. It is important to keep a few things in mind upon entering the grocery store:
- Make a grocery list
- Stick to the outer perimeter of the grocery store
- Read nutrition labels: facts panel and ingredient lists
- Don’t shop on an empty stomach
Make a Grocery List:
Try your best to have a general idea of the meals you will prepare throughout the week at the start of your week. Then, choose a vegetable, and allow the rest of your meal to be centred around this vegetable. Remember when making your dish, half of your plate should be filled with vegetables, one quarter from a carbohydrate and one quarter from a lean protein source. There are many colourful vegetables (and fruits) that make up the produce section of your grocery store. Try to buy locally or visit your local farmer’s market on a weekend afternoon. These food items tend to be in their peak form, and choosing vegetables that are more colourful will also bring along more vitamins and minerals for your body. Be adventurous! Ever wonder how you can prepare turnips, parsnips, bok choy or endive? The internet is filled with quick easy recipes to help make any kind of masterpiece! Just add your favourite fresh or dried spices and herbs (hold on the salt) and bring a different excitement to your dish!
Making a basic grocery list at the beginning of your week will also save you time and remove stress when you return home from a day’s work.
Perimeter of the Grocery Store:
Think about this: in most cases, when you enter the grocery store, your first encounter is with the fruits and vegetables. If you continue around the outside of the store, you come across the milk and dairy products, meat and alternative products, and finally the whole grains before finding yourself at the check-out. These are 
the food items which have to be most accessible to the employees of the store as they are changed over most often having a lower shelf-life, or in other words contain few to no preservatives, and therefore can’t stay on the shelves for days. The foods in the aisles: cookies, chips, puddings, jams and frozen dinners to name a few, are less accessible because they do not require as much attention. Essentially, these food products can stay on the shelves for longer periods of times because they have longer ingredient lists and more preservatives, most times larger amounts of fat. So, if these foods can stay on the shelves for extended periods of time, think about what they do to your body when you eat them?!! Now, I’m not saying that we stay completely away from the aisles. There are still food products that help make up a balanced diet, such as oatmeal, cereal, whole grain crackers, pastas, peanut butter, legumes and tuna to name a few, but these are items we need to choose more consciously and compare the nutrition facts panels and ingredient lists from one item to the next. If given the chance to choose fresh produce, milk products and meat and alternatives, they are the better choice.
Nutrition Labels:*
The Nutrition Facts Panel allows the consumer to:
a) Determine the nutritional value of foods
b) Compare similar products more easily
c) Adjust the intake of a particular nutrient (increase or decrease)
d) Mange special diets
When looking at this panel, it is best to choose foods that contain less fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol and sodium as a first general guideline. Those with special diets may have to also pay particular attention to the amount of sugars (carbohydrate) in a product or certain vitamins and minerals.
The Ingredient List:
- clarifies all products used in making a product
- begins with the food item used in the greatest quantity to the least
- helps to identify any food items an individual may have allergies towards
- further identifies “hidden” ingredients such as added sugars (corn syrup, fruit juice concentrates, honey, dextrose, fructose, lactose, maltose, etc), whole grains (bran, germ, whole oats, oatmeal, rye, bulgar, etc) and trans fats (partially hydrogenated vegetable oil).
Don’t Shop on an Empty Stomach:
We’ve all heard this before, and it could not be more true. If surrounded by food, and your stomach is ready for a meal, it may be harder to resist those freshly baked Danishes (filled with sugar and trans fat). Have a well balanced healthy meal or light snack before making your way to the grocery store and stick to your list!
*Further information on the Nutrition Facts Panel is located under the “Nutrition” section of this website
{ 48 comments… read them below or add one }
I think we have all experience going to the shop and ‘willy-nilly’ adding things to our trolley or basket without giving it too much thought so i agree with you one hundred percent!
It is also the kiddies that play a huge role in what goes in the trolley and sometimes as our backs are turned.
To contribute to your Blog my focus is on the little ones because if we teach them early they will hopefull remember the goodness in our ‘wise-words’.
So firstly it’s us understanding what is nutritious enough to put in the basket and then also what to serve up to our children and how we serve it up.
Shopping will get easier….
The truth of the matter is that children are mini adults therefore they too have motivating factors to inspire them to eat healthy foods. Us adults are in some way more stubborn than children, ironically however these five factors are true of all of us.
1) Tasty choices. Many kids love plums, pears, watermelon, peaches, raspberries, blackberries, tangerines, cherries, blueberries, strawberries, and pineapples and it’s far too often kids’ fruit alternatives are restricted to only apples and bananas, and maybe oranges and grapes too. Try corn bran, Spoon-Sized Shredded Wheat, or oatmeal with fresh berries. Instead of crackers or toast made from white flour try bran crispbread as a snack especially whole-grain pancakes, children love these. Children will develop their tastes the sooner they start in this direction. Butter on green beans makes them a lot tastier so during the preschool years, make butter a treat for vegetables. Raw carrot sticks go down very well because of the “crunch,” many kids like all by themselves.
2) The limitation factor. If there are healthy foods readily available, children will pick their favorites from amongst those healthy choices.
3) Presentation needs to be FUN. Multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns compete against us all the time when we are deciding what to feed our children. TV doesn’t always help either because there are many commercials that promote sweetened breakfast cereals which while reaching their right audience, sweetened cereals are not as healthy as the unsweetened variety. Add fruit to cereals which would take place of the ‘sweetners’. Where are the commercials for fresh fruit and veggies? That job is left to us to promote. Children love shapes and things more interesting in color. Preschool children often love food that is shaped like a clown, a face, favorite hero or cartoon character or even a dinosaur etc. Processed macaroni is manufactured this way because it sells. How do we make healthy food as appealing as the empty or harmful alternatives? Try a whole-grain pancake with a strawberry for a nose, kiwi slices for eyes, and banana for the mouth. Stand corn on the cob up right when serving it (pretend it’s a rocket ship), decorate food in ways that children can ‘see something else’ besides a plate full of veggies – think like a preschool child – let your imagination run.
4) If that happens to fail, be a sneak and sneak it in. Make carrot muffins with zucchini bread. Add pieces of fruit or shaved vegetables to virtually any baked dish. While dried fruit is high in sugar, it is also high in fiber so dried cranberries can be a hit. Kids love smoothies! A great way to hide fruit and vegetables is in whole-food smoothies and juices. The Sneaky Chef and Deceptively Delicious are two recently published cookbooks that offer more ideas on how to hide the healthy stuff!
5) Multivitamins are essential. In this day and age so many foods are processed so give a daily multivitamin as a safety net. Vitamins are compounds necessary in trace amounts for the normal functioning of children and adults alike.
I have great respect for the longstanding relationship between humans and their natural foods. By eating whole foods (fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains, etc.), your child can get the necessary vitamins in the healthiest way.
In order to see the world around us we need these vitamins to grow as they help bones and connective tissue to grow, stop us from bleeding to death, heal wounds, fight infections and cancer, and keep our teeth from falling out.
As we know most preschoolers and toddlers are often picky eaters. As children’s tastes change as they grow, and they do eventually get to eating a more well-rounded diet. So vitamins (the “safety net”) takes the pressure off feeding issues during the primary years. You can be free to be creative about increasing whole foods in your child’s diet, knowing that vitamins are present to help your child grow strong and healthy without pressure or worry.
Now that we have mass advertising, children’s fun meals, and peer pressure makes the battle all the harder. Never push or force them, entice them, persuade them and most importantly teach them. The battle should never be with your kids. Battle bad nutrition rather.
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Thank you so much for this!! It is a wonderful addition to the information I love sharing with those who visit the site! It is very important to instil positive healthy behaviours in children especially, and for them to understand what are the right choices to make on a daily basis, compared to those that are chosen occasionally, as a reward, or IF there ever is a time when a healthier choice cannot be made……though this is the challenge we have to overcome everywhere…..one day!
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Thanks everyone!! I know there is a great deal of nutrition information out there, and where and what to look for when we’re going to the grocery store in preparation of our week’s meals. the best thing…..enjoy your breakfast on Saturday or Sunday morning, think about certain meals for the week to come (look at recipes, on the web, different ways of enjoying your favourite veg, or protein source), and MAKE A LIST! this will cut so much time at the grocery store, and give you that little extra bit of time when you get home to do some quick washes of fruits and veg to have ready to go, and then enjoy the rest of your day!
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