Whew. Okay, I’m finished with the posts that explain why I avoid the 5 things in my Top 5 Ingredients post.
I truly do hope you learned a little something about how to feed your family a little healthier. If you are new to reading labels, you may find yourself getting frustrated at how many of the products you regularly buy that contain those 5 ingredients. Please don’t let that stop you from starting with just one ingredient!
Pick one ingredient and start cutting it out now. Even if you can’t cut out the ingredient completely, maybe just cut out a few of the products that contain said ingredient? For example, most crackers I have seen contain high fructose corn syrup and/or hydrogenated oils. Try going to the health food section and buying your crackers from there. If you want to get really crazy, you could cut out grains completely. Our society eats way too many grains anyway! Just so you know, my family does eat crackers. However, it is a treat, not a daily, or even weekly snack.
Anyway, like I was saying, go to the health food (or natural) section of your grocery store. Usually, you are fairly safe in that section. However, don’t assume that just because you are in the ‘natural’ section of the store that you are okay to buy anything. Please still read the ingredients. Once you are comfortable with the substitutions you have made with that ingredient (whatever ingredient you decided to start with), move on to the next ingredient.
If you missed the posts, click on them below and you can get all caught up! :)
- Top 5 ingredients to avoid when shopping
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Hydrogenated/Partially Hydrogenated Oils
- Sodium Benzoate
- Artificial Sweeteners
- Glutamate
Just take baby steps toward better health!
Then, come back here and comment to tell me how you are doing with your new shopping habits! I would love to hear your feedback.
Have a great day!
That's a hard question to answer, because it totally depends on your meals for the week. What I try to do is make a weekly meal plan. I then make my grocery list based on that. I generally just try to stay to the outer rim of the grocery store… meaning, I don't go down the aisles much. Most of my fruits and veggies are fresh. I will buy some frozen berries (organic) for the kids smoothies and some frozen peas. The kids like to snack on the frozen peas. I just started getting my meat from a local farm. It is grass fed and not given any antibiotics/hormones. Basically, the animals are left to do what they are intended to do! Maybe sometime soon I will post my weekly meal plan and grocery list so you can see. Does this help at all? What else would you like to know?
[Reply]
So, what does a "healthy" grocery list for a family of 5 look like?
[Reply]