Going to the grocery store

By David Patchell-Evans

In many of my columns I mention nutrition and food. So where do we get most of our food? We get it from the grocery store. Today I'm going to talk about the art of grocery shopping.

I think the grocery store is one of the greatest "inventions" of our society. You can go to one place to find meat, fruit, vegetables, dairy products, and foods from around the world to satisfy every taste. My own particular joy is the organic section. Many supermarkets have great organic sections where you can find food the way it was a hundred years ago before pesticides and chemicals. In my opinion, the more natural foods you can eat, the better it is for you.

Let's begin our trip to the supermarket. First of all, you have to realize that grocery stores have a lot of marketing skills. The companies who make groceries and sell them cater to people's desires, and even create those desires. Often it's the most attractive packaging or the most prominent display that draws you to put food products into your shopping cart. So the first thing you have to do is learn to resist the intriguing displays and not to do impulse shopping.

Concentrate on foods that help you look after your body. Choose the simpler foods first. The first place you should stop is in the produce section—fruits and vegetables. Fresh fruits and fresh vegetables help you stay healthy. If you have children, it's a good idea to help them get into the habit of eating fruits and fresh vegetables, rather than candy. I find that a really appealing thing about the produce section is the great variety of colours. It can be fun to try some vegetables or fruit you may not have tasted before.

Men are often impulse shoppers, more so than women. Guys tend to want to buy a whole bunch of groceries at one time. That doesn't work! If you buy too much, the produce will lose its freshness, won't taste as good, and won't be as nutritious. So never buy produce to last longer than a week. I would rather make two trips a week to the grocery store for fresh produce than trying to store it at home. Meats, cheeses, and eggs can be stored longer, and in the case of meats and fish, they can be frozen for a period of time.

Always shop the outside aisle of the supermarket. That's where you find the fresh produce, the fresh meat, the fresh dairy products. I call the inside rows of supermarkets "sugar central". That's where the packaged foods are—and packaged foods tend to have too much sugar or too much salt and food preservatives. I'm not saying you shouldn't buy cereal or barbecue sauce, just that the bulk of your groceries should come from the fresh food section.

If you follow my "once around the outside aisle" method, you'll end up with a lot more nutritious food in your shopping cart, and this will help make your visits to the middle aisles more sporadic. As much as possible, buy fresh! That's one more way you can taste the good life!