Never eat singing fruit

By Kellen M. Henry

If you find grocery shopping tedious with a car and a job, I challenge you to try it with a hand cart and student loan money guilt. By the time you throw in tax, the challenges of eating healthy and half a dozen wrinkled coupons, my bi-weekly shopping trip becomes an all-afternoon affair.

Plus, I’m trying something new– really eating healthfully on a budget. I just finished Mark Bittman’s book Food Matters, after reading his Bitten column in the New York Times for ages. I like how his cooking is chic without being snobby and simple without being, well… Food Network.

The book’s premise, culled in part from Michael Pollan, is that the American nutritional ethos is far too costly– we’ve been paying with the environment, with our health and with our wallets, too.

It’s pretty intuitive. He suggest we cut half of the meat and processed food from our diets, replacing them with fruits and vegetable, which he calls sane or “whole” foods.

No, not necessarily those Whole Foods. This is one potentially money-saving part I like. While it might be ideal that we be super-locavore-organic-obsessed shoppers, the greater message is Broccoli vs. McDonalds, not Regular Broccoli vs. Holistic Broccoli that has been read bedtime stories.

With the growth of health food grocery stores, it seems easy for the most casual shopper to make healthful grocery decisions. But if you’re paying higher prices for what you think is better quality, you owe it to yourself not to be fooled.

Take a look at the labels. Can you trust the claims that manufacturer’s are making about their products? The healthy foods industry ain’t no quaint farmers market anymore. As of 2001, sales of organic foods and beverages exceeded $9 billion, according to the USDA. Check for a USDA label certifying whether or not something is really as organic as it claims to be.

It’s the inside that counts. It’s just cheaper to buy a head of lettuce or a bundle of carrots than a big pre-packaged salad mix. Even if you’re not a chef extraordinaire, you can certainly wash and cut veggies. Plus, think of all the plastic that would be saved if we didn’t buy our pre-washed spinach in big plastic boxes. You’re just going to take it out and wash it at home, right? Right.

Go in with a plan. We’ve all heard the adage about not going grocery shopping on an empty stomach, but don’t go with an empty head, either. Wandering the grocery store picking up colorful packages will probably mean a higher bill than if you make careful lists, buy staple foods and plan meals. There may be some things you like from fancier specialty stores, but it’s probably cheeper to get the normal things at the big chain or the bodega. Price compare between chain stores, too. Sometimes things run different prices between Jewel-Osco and Dominick’s, here.

Be realistic. Sometimes it pays to buy in bulk, but only if you’re buying things that are fairly non-perishable. And know thyself. I love artichokes, but they’re a lot of work and how many times do they end up going bad in my crisper before they make it to my face? If you can work in extra trips, stock up on things that keep during bigger shopping runs and buy those fruits and veggies in smaller amounts for freshness.

Of course, there are always trade-offs. You can probably buy six pallets of Ramen noodles for one grocery cart of healthier fare, if you don’t care about taste or your blood pressure shooting up faster than the grocery bill at Dean & Deluca.

Happy shopping! And remember to bring your own bag…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 21st, 2009 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Commoncents, Recessioncents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.