Navigating the Grocery Store. Spotting Marketing Traps and choosing healthy foods on a budget.

Do you often find yourself overwhelmed with information when you go to the grocery store about what foods are considered healthy? You are not alone! This past weekend, I took a group of people on a grocery store field trip educational experience to show them marketing traps to look out for and teach them how to properly read nutrition labels so they can make better, more informed decisions about the foods they are purchasing and consuming. It's important as a coach to realize that there are various interpretations about what foods are considered "good" for you vs "bad" for you. The food industry has perfected how to engineer and market food with flashy labels so we buy them eat them and want more.

During our little field trip, we started off in the produce aisle and immediately the topic of organic vs non organic came up in a question. This was the perfect opportunity to discuss the "dirty dozen" and "clean 15" with the group. Dirty dozen foods are considered the foods that farmers in most cases will use unfavourable pesticides on and they include crops such as strawberries, spinach, kale, peaches , apples, tomatoes, celery, potatoes, grapes, nectarines, pears, and cherries. The clean 15 on the other hand are types of foods that have lower pesticide use and don't require as much thought when deciding between organic and non organic. Foods in the clean 15 list include, bananas, avocados, sweet corn, pineapple, onion, asparagus, eggplant, kiwi, cabbage, honeydew melon, broccoli, cauliflower, papaya, cantaloupe, and mushrooms.

From the produce aisle, we moved along to the section where the plant based meat alternatives were shelved. Over the last 10 years these meat alternatives have become increasingly popular for the vegetarian and vegan communities as an alternative to meat options, which provides more variety than was available in years prior. The question though, is it healthy? It depends how you look at it. If you are a vegetarian or vegan and you don't have the time or skills to plan and cook 100% whole food meals, this is going to be the best solution you have available. Most vegetarians and vegans choose this diet for moral and ethical reasons, so eating meat is not an option and that is OK!

From a health perspective, if we were to compare the ingredients and the nutrient density, the animal protein is going to be superior as it is more bioavailable, whereas the plant based alternative has to be constructed by many ingredients and preservatives to make it look, feel and taste as close to the real thing. If you take lean ground beef for example, it is just derived of lean ground beef. That's it. If you were to take the ingredient list on a package of plant based ground beef alternative usually includes ingredients like seed oils (usually rapeseed and coconut oils), preservatives like potassium lactate, stabilizers such as methyl cellulose and calcium chloride. These products have 15+ ingredients, some of which are questionable when it comes to health, so if from a health perspective plant based doesn't necessarily mean it is is healthier.

This led us to the next discussion in the meat section about grass fed meats. The group noticed that there are a lot more options now for grass fed meats in your regular grocery store, but they didn't know the difference and noticed the cost was higher than the other options. Something that most don't realize that food industry doesn't come out and clearly tell you is that when it comes to grass fed, if your budget allows and you are looking to eat grass fed for health reasons, make sure you are choosing 100% grass fed or grass fed + finished. This is another marketing trap. A cow can be grain fed it's whole life, and then sent out to graze and eat grass the last few weeks of it's life and they are allowed to package it as "grass fed". The reality is that it is a grain fed cow for 98% of it's life and only grass fed for the last 2%. So look for the 100% grass fed or grass fed and finished options. I personally purchase all of my meat from Butcherbox.ca (I have a code you can use on my contact page of my website to get 10% off your first order!) because they work with local Ontario farmers who produce 100% grass fed products and free range chickens, and they deliver right to my door each month. These days there are a lot more regenerative farming options available if you are looking to improve your meat quality that are affordable.

We briefly touched on seafood and what options are best for consumption. The group was familiar with farmed fish based on what they had heard, and we were able to discuss the difference between farmed and wild caught. Wild caught is the better of the options, although there are still debates with the conditions of our large bodies of water whether it makes much of a difference. What I can say is that for sure if you take a wild caught filet of salmon and compare it next to a farmed version, you will noticeably see the difference. A wild caught piece of salmon is much darker orange, almost red in colour, and you can taste the difference. A farmed version is much fattier and lighter in colour. The Omega 3 is also much higher in the wild caught in comparison to the farmed version providing better brain fuel!

Probably the most eye opening thing the group saw in our field trip was the difference between original Corn Flakes and the Organic brand. When we did a line by line nutrition label comparison, the Corn Flakes surprisingly won against the Organic brand, which was perfect to show the group that Organic doesn't always mean better. We talked about buzz words such as "Organic", "All Natural" on the front of packaging that is often used to make us think that it is healthier option. In addition to comparing the two cereals, we took two versions of your classic white Wonder Bread and did a comparison. One version was the classic original and the second was the same but it indicated +Fiber on the package. When we looked at the serving size ratio and ingredients list the added gram of fiber to the one that was marketed as higher in fiber really wasn't much different than the original brand. It cost a little more, but was essentially the same, and in neither package did it meet the daily value of fiber that is recommended. It was just another way to market and sell a second version of a product.

Moving along we spent some time talking about all the various names for sugars that are often hidden on ingredient lists. Everyone knew that if you see see sugar as one of the top ingredients it is most concentrated, but they didn't realize just how many added sugar names and sodium was added to packaged products. The group was REALLY shocked to see how much sugar and added seed oils are in a jar of peanut butter! I always love blowing people's mind about peanut butter because it's something that has been touted as a health food for so many years that it's just kind of stuck (pardon the pun). I often find myself educating clients that peanut butter is not a protein it is a fat. Two years ago I had onboarded multiple nutrition clients at the same time and they all had their weekly check in's with me the same day. They were all under consuming protein and needed to bump it, so I asked them how they did it the week prior and 2 of the 3 said they added peanut butter to their breakfast thinking that a tbsp of peanut butter would increase their protein. It didn't make much of a difference, but their sugars and fats definitely spiked!

To finish off our little tour of the grocery store we went to the potato chip aisle. This was good because we all can fall victim to a good big bag of chips, myself included. No one, not even health coaches are immune to the temptation of the potato chip! We took a bag of a standard BBQ no name brand chips and looked at the calories which is where everyone always goes to. The nutrition label said 260 calories for 25 chips or 50g. The bag was a 200 gram bag of chips. I asked the group "how many of you could crush this whole bag of chips in one sitting?" Most raised their hands. When I told that is 1,040 calories their jaws dropped. And, there wasn't even any real nutrition value that they were getting. Just pure processed ingredients that have been manufactured to make you want to eat more. A bag of chips has approximately 4-5 medium potatoes if you were to slice them up make them and bag them. I once made home made potato chips and was sadly disappointed how little chips you get from one medium potato. I then asked the group if they were to bake 4-5 medium potatoes and eat them with nothing on them, how many would they be able to eat. All said "maybe one". That was a great place to leave off our little grocery store adventure.

Of course we are all human and we don't have to be so rigid in how we eat and it was likely more overwhelming for the group to learn what they did, but it also shed a light on things that will help them make more informed decisions when they go to the grocery store next time. I always love to see the people that sit in the aisles reading over the packages for a few minutes before selecting their item, because I know they are putting thought and intention into what they purchase and put into their bodies. If we all just did that a little more often, we could make a huge impact on the health crisis that is manufactured.

If you want to learn more about nutrition coaching and how to better make informed choices about the foods you purchase and consume, hit me up in the contact us page of my website!