Healthy Food Shopping: Are You Doing It Right?

Confident grocery shoppers, especially those who keep an eye on what they consume often have a few rules to live by buying what’s appropriate for the season, avoid some types of ingredients, avoid too much sugar, and much more. But even those we believe to be health-focused supermarkets can get stumped by slight dilemmas that suddenly pop up when we shop, like which one is better, what color of an egg should be the right pick, skim milk or not and such. As that problem should be ended now, here are some shopping mistakes that people should stop making.

1.    Buying imported foods. Foods that we can buy from grocery stores are shipped worldwide. That means they are picked days or weeks in advance, while they are still under ripe. When they get to us, they are already a few weeks old, and in that lag time, nutrients start to degrade. Try getting something from the local farmers’ market where products were picked a day ago or the night before and get the most of the nutrients.

2.    Picking pre-washed lettuce. In choosing greens, we often select those that were already cleaned rather than those that are still bagged. Well, you should know that the lesser hands on the green, the better. Having the loose kind means you’re the only one washing it and you don’t need to rely on the hands of someone you don’t know to do it for you.

3.    Buying farmed fish instead of wild. Just like your vegetable choices, it is always better to choose meats of organically grown animals rather than on commercial feeding. The best choice is to select products that are pasture-raised and if unavailable, go for those that were grass fed. There is a big difference in the nutrition of meats in different ways of feeding.

4.    Purchasing of eggs depending on skin color. Often than not, we always hear people ask if egg shell color does affect an egg’s nutrients. The answer is no, but the color of the egg yolk does. Eggs bought at a local farmer’s market have more pigmented and brighter than those we see in grocery stores.

5.    Choose skim milk. When choosing milk, people often choose to have the ones with a lower fat percentage. But this isn’t right. With similar reasons for choosing an organic meat, going for organic milk is the best choice. The fat is what tastes good, and when companies take them out, they need to add something to it, which is sugar. Thus, while it has the low fat percentage, it is, on the other hand, high in sugar.