Question: What is the best and fastest way to go healthy grocery shopping?
Answer: Go without your family.
Sometimes when I’m feeling lonely grocery shopping without my children, I play a pre-recorded message on my ipod over and over…
“Can I get this? I want this! Why can’t I eat sugar with some sugar on top for breakfast? He touched me! Why does she get that and I don’t? I want…I need…Please, please, pleeeeeeaaaasssee????”
Kids in the grocery store are a recipe for Stuff in the Cart You Didn’t Plan on Buying. If you can, go it alone and with a list. Preparation is the key and the answer to one of the biggest issues I hear my mom clients complain about: they don’t know what to buy when they get there and they don’t have the ingredients at home.
That’s because the ingredients are in the grocery store. Taking a pre-made list with will make finding them even easier.
However, if you are with the small people whose eyes are closest to the shelves with unhealthy, nutritionally-dead food, you will be sidetracked no matter how deftly you try to avoid them. If you can create your list at home and not deviate from it once you get to the store, you’ll make the right choices. Leaving the children at home is not always an option, but giving them tasks while in the aisle with you can help keep them busy. Let them pick out the beans or choose the vegetable for dinner that night. Even I allow some democratic decisions to occur around mealtimes.
A good, recent article on healthy, affordable groceries is at http://nutrition.suite101.com/article.cfm/healthy_frugal_family_food_shopping. The only part I disagree with is purchasing canned veggies. Try to stay away from canned food – too much sodium and smushy veggies are never really good, even if it is cheaper. The big joke in my house is that everything I want is expensive from my shoes to my groceries. But I don’t plan on coating my stomach or my feet with cheap, inedible stuff. Healthier groceries do cost a little more, I agree. However, by not buying the extra garbage (how many 100 calorie snack bags do you really need? ), you will save those extra pennies to go towards the good stuff.
Fit Mom offers a service to moms that includes compiling healthy recipes from ingredients that your family likes to eat. We’ll send you the ingredient list and the recipe with its coordinating nutritional values. Just let us know at kerrie@fitmomusa.com
Happy Eating!
