Healthy Grocery Shopping Tips
Before going to supermarket for shopping create a list to shop from. It takes a few minutes, but saves time, money and to stay focused as you shop and avoid purchasing less-healthy items you don’t need
Don’t go to shop from supermarket at your meal time or while you are hungry, because you will tend to over buy unhealthy food which you don’t need.
Give yourself enough time for grocery shopping to read the food labels even for foods you think it may be healthy. Ingredients and nutrient content can vary a lot. When there’s more than one choice, compare labels. Choose the item with the lowest amounts of sodium, saturated fat and added sugars.
When buying canned fish, chicken or lean meat, look for items packaged in water instead of oil, and labelled no salt added or lower sodium.
Choose fresh vegetables and fruits over canned or frozen ones.
For canned vegetables, look for items that are labelled no-salt-added or lower sodium. Buy frozen vegetables without preservatives or salt. Before cooking or serving canned vegetables or legumes drain and rinse them with water to get rid of excess sodium. For canned fruits, look for items canned in water, natural juice, or labelled as no sugar added. Buy frozen fruit without added preservatives or sugar.
For grains and bread products look for items that list a whole grain first in the ingredients instead of enriched flour or “multi-grain.”
Divide the snacks when you get home from the store, portion out your snack foods into individual serving sizes. This will save you time in the future, help you avoid overeating, and may be cheaper than buying individually packaged snacks.