I believe that many people could improve their nutrition by simply changing their grocery shopping behaviour. If you don’t buy processed “food” you won’t have it to eat. Similarly, if what you primarily buy is good, whole food, then that’s all you have to choose at home. Supermarkets, however, are designed to make you buy, and buy stuff that you don’t actually need. Here are some practical tips to get you shopping better.
Keep to the Perimeter
Avoid the aisles and keep to the perimeter of the store. All the real food is kept to the outer ends of the store. Real food is perishable. The further in to the store you go, the longer the shelf life of the products. Stuff with a long shelf is circumspect!
Don’t Eat Anything with a Label
That is, anything an ingredient label. The longer the list of ingredients the more processed it is, and the worse it is for you health (and waist). Real food wasn’t manufactured so what you see is the ingredient. A lot of foods nowadays do have nutrition labels, though. But those are there to give you the macronutrient profile of the food and it often contains information about mineral content.
Shop on a Full Stomach
When you’re hungry you want to eat everything. When in that state you end up buying more of what you need as well as a bunch of stuff you don’t need. And the stuff you don’t need is typically something that is laden with sugar to shoot your blood sugar back up quickly. So have a good snack or meal before you go shopping, and then stick to your shopping list!
Eating healthily isn’t difficult and I don’t believe that it’s much more expensive than eating poorly all the time. Eating healthy, however, is a choice.
