If you’re keen to shop smart, you’ll need to do a lot more than just hunt for the bargains. Nobody can avoid grocery shopping, and we’ll all spend a lot of time walking the aisles throughout our lives. Making the right decisions during your visits to the grocery store will have a rebounding effect on your dietary decisions throughout the following week.
Whether you’re keen to lose weight or you just want to make the healthiest choices for yourself and your family, avoid these 25 grocery shopping mistakes from this moment on. You should notice an immediate positive change to your lifestyle.
1. Bulk buying food
Bulk buying is a great way to save money – but that’s about where the positives end. When you’re tempted to buy that big box of cookies or family-sized bags of chips, you’re making the decision to buy something that’s too big for you, making you more likely to overindulge. When it comes to unhealthy snacks, less is always best.
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2. Shopping for eye-level items
Grocery stores are designed with the most tempting foods and best offers at eye-level, and the rest above or below. You’d be surprised at just what you’re missing on those higher shelves when you only shop what’s in front of you. Oftentimes, the healthiest foods are the ones that are out of immediate sight.
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3. Not reading the nutrition label
Nutrition labels on foods are incredibly helpful when you know what they mean. Learn about “good” nutrition and “bad” nutrition, then start looking at the labels of the products you buy all the time. You might just find that they’re much higher in unhealthy fats, salts or sugars than you ever would have assumed.
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4. Choosing “organic” items
Do you assume that because something is organic, it’s automatically good for you? Well – it doesn’t always work like this. Lots of foods can be organic, including chocolate, and the term doesn’t automatically grant them a “healthy” status. Organic food helps the planet, but it doesn’t always help you.
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5. Grabbing the free samples
If you know there’s always someone ready and waiting to tempt you into a free sample at your grocery store, avoid them! There’s no point grabbing food just because it’s free, so unless you’re genuinely interested in the product on offer, stay away. The majority of free samples are designed to be tempting, not healthy.
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6. Shopping at the deli counter
Because deli counters offer “fresh” meat, you might think you’re making healthier decisions than if you were to buy packaged produce. This can be true in some cases, but deli meat is often high in salt and saturated fats because of how it has been processed. Because you’re not presented with the nutrition info about foods at the deli, you have no idea what you’re eating.
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7. Shopping while hungry
Even the best of us make bad decisions when we’re hungry. If you’re shopping just before dinner, you’re more likely to give in to your cravings, or grab an unhealthy snack for a “quick sugar fix” on your way home. Unless you want to leave with dollars-worth of items you didn’t even have on your list, make sure you shop on a full stomach.
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8. Falling for “whole wheat”
“Whole wheat” and “whole grain” are essentially identical terms, but they don’t mean the same things. A loaf of bread that’s whole wheat is still made with refined flour, and likely has a whole load of sugar inside it, while whole grain breads are high in fiber and much lower in sugar per slice.
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9. Arriving without a list
Shopping without a list is just about the most disorganized thing you can do. If you don’t have some sort of meal plan set up for the week, you’ll find yourself filling your cart with random foods and ingredients that don’t really make a full meal. You’re also much more likely to give into temptation when you’re meandering down the ailes rather than grabbing what you need and moving on.
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10. Buying too much from the freezer aisle
There are always going to be those staple freezer foods that you find yourself buying time and time again – frozen peas being a great example. But some frozen foods are packed full of sodium and other artificial preservatives. Watch what you go for – healthy frozen foods are hard to come by. Avoid beige foods, like fries or potato products, and frozen meals are usually a big no.
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11. Shopping the center aisles
While most people start at one end of the store and gradually make their way to the other, the center aisles are often worth avoiding. These are typically where the unhealthy stuff is kept, and, as we all know, there’s always a sale that’s just too good to resist down there. Skip the aisles altogether and you won’t know what you’re missing.
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12. Shopping while stressed
We can’t always predict when something stressful’s going to come along, but if you are stressed, don’t add shopping to the mix. Shopping while you’re stressed or distracted can make you more likely to pick up foods impulsively, or to not pay attention to what you’re adding to your cart. Let the stress fade before heading to the grocery store.
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13. Choosing food based on the packaging
Credit to the packaging designers of certain products, because we’ve all been tempted to buy something by its appearance alone at least once. Whether you notice something with cute or cool packaging, or the packaging’s artwork suggests that the food inside is going to be delicious, avoid it if you didn’t intend to buy it. You can save your treats for Christmas – the period of all the fancy packaging.
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14. Shopping at aisle ends
You know how the end caps of every aisle always have an intriguing offer, like a discounted multipack or new chip flavor you just have to try? That’s deliberate – brands that sell there stock them with junk food because they know you’ll be tempted. It’s how you find yourself with a pack of chocolate from heading down the fresh produce aisle.
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15. Buying from the salad bar
The salad bar is definitely a convenient place to grab some foods for your lunches and dinners over the coming days – but have you ever thought about how healthy those foods really are? Don’t assume that because you’re loading up on veggies, they’re immediately good for you. If they’re pre-dressed in high-sugar, high-fat high-salt dressings, or topped with unhealthy toppings, you’ll be getting something far less healthy than if you were to make it yourself.
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16. Buying sale items
Very rarely is a healthy item on sale, which is an unfortunate reality of supermarket shopping. You’ll always have to be prepared to splash twice, or even three times, the amount of cash on a healthy item, while unhealthy foods are often showcasing discounts or sales. Ignore the price-drop unless you know a food is good for you.
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17. Letting the kids pick
Fair enough giving your little one the option to pick out one special treat as a reward for being a good shopping buddy, but don’t take it any further than that. Kids aren’t by any stretch a good influence when it comes to food. They listen to their tummies, which, most of the time, are calling for chocolate.
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18. Buying high-priced products
There’s nothing wrong with treating yourself from time to time, but don’t let the temptation of a “specially selected”, “premium” or “extra-special” label encourage you to buy something you wouldn’t usually be interested in. If it’s a high-priced pizza, it’s still a pizza. You could make something much fancier yourself for half the money.
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19. Buying from bulk food bins
Like shopping at bulk food stores, buying from bulk food bins can help you to save money in the long run. But you’re also more likely to buy foods in larger quantities than you need, and, instead of leaving them lying around in your cupboards, figure you may as well finish them off as a snack. If you know you need a certain sized bag of fruit or nuts for a recipe, buy the bag instead.
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20. Falling for buy-one-get-one deals
Unless it’s something you genuinely buy in bulk anyway, avoid buy-one-get-one deals. There’s not always a need for you to buy two bags of chips, even if one of them is free or half price. And if you didn’t need the food in the first place, don’t buy it just because you’ve seen it’s on offer.
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21. Grabbing something from the checkout aisle
Checkout aisles have deliberately placed food that’s designed to encourage that extra bit of unintentional spending. It’s likely that you’ll find a deal or discount, or a moreish healthy snack, sitting within arms reach at the checkout. Keep your head on the task ahead – and if you usually grab these checkout items, start packing a healthy snack in your car that you can eat on the way home.
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22. Buying multi-packs
Soups, baked beans, chips, cereals… if you only need one, don’t bother buying an extra-large pack or a multi-pack. Bread is another one that you can be smarter with – if you don’t want to buy a whole loaf, head to the bakery and pick up a fresh small loaf, or look for brands that sell small or half loaves of bread.
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23. Shopping when you’re too full
Yes, there is such a thing as shopping when you’re too full. When you have a full stomach, no food is going to look appealing to you – especially not the healthier fruits and veggies that you’ll be more interested in tomorrow. You’ll end up buying less than you need, or buying the more-palatable unhealthy foods instead.
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24. Shopping with a cart, not a basket
A shopping cart can fit more in, so, naturally, many people opt for it when they’re grocery shopping. But do you really need a trolley? Shopping with a basket can encourage you to stick to your shopping list, because once the basket’s full, it’s full.
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25. Only buying for one meal
We all get weekly cravings for meals, but don’t let one craving blindside you from buying everything else you need. No matter how much you can’t wait to tuck into your homemade cheese and tomato quiche tonight, don’t forget about the other six nights before you plan to go shopping today. Hence why lists and meal planning are a great idea.
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