For me, supermarket shopping is like navigating a processed-food obstacle course.
Eighty kinds of cereal on the left, Entenmann’s trap at right, dangerous potato chip display ahead!
Think about it: The average grocery store offered 800 choices more than half a century ago.
Now shoppers have roughly 40,000 items to consider.
“Many are marketing ploys,” Rangan says.
“Even savvy customers have trouble translating them.”
I’m definitely not savvy, so I asked Rangan to meet me at the market for a tutorial.
“It’s difficult to aim for 100-percent-perfect shopping,” she told me.
In only an hour, I learned to pack my cart eco-consciously.
By opting for fresh items, “you’ll avoid most chemicals used in processing,” Rangan says.
Another reason to buy unadulterated edibles: Manufacturing and packaging burns up energy and generates pollution.
Be picky about produce.The organic label ensures your fruit and veggies haven’t been doused in industrial pesticides.
Buy nonorganic thick-skinned produce, because you peel it anyway.
I happily exchanged my 89 cents-a-pound organic bananas for 59 cents-a-pound nonorganic bunch.
(For a list of what’s in season, visit FruitsAndVeggiesMoreMatters.org.)
Rather than trust a local label, look for one that says exactly where the food is from.
Rangan points to the sticker on my clementines: South Africa.
She grabs Georgia oranges.
“Not local exactly but closer, so these are a better option,” she says.
“Some preservatives can be highly chemical-based,” Rangan says.
Products baked on-site eliminate most of them, as well as the energy used for transport.
Get certified-humane poultry and eggs.Rangan smiles when I show her my free-range, hormone-free eggs and chicken.
“And U.S. poultry isn’t allowed to have hormones.”
She suggests I buy organic, certified-humane eggs and poultry.
Certified humane indicates that they had a higher quality of treatment.
To see which are healthy, print a Guide to Ocean Friendly Seafood from BlueOcean.org/seafood.
Opt for organic beef.Rangan nixes my store-wrapped meat because it doesn’t say how it was raised and produced.
My store doesn’t carry those options, so Rangan selects organic steak.
Photo Credit: Todd Plitt
