I lead my first Grocery tour with my client, about 2 weeks ago. I wrote down my guidelines and am sharing it with all of you today! :) If you have been looking for a guideline to help you maximize your grocery skills this may help!
1. Shop Around Perimeter of The Store
* The produce section is found here
* Less packaged foods are found around the periemeter
Grocery stores have a strict layout that cater to people's taste buds rather than health. If you were to really get behind the blueprints of how and why the stores place what they do, where they do, then you will begin to realize that profit is more important than your health problems, weight gain, and chronic dis-eases. It gets deeper when you really start realizing and reading into figuring out that stores are tied with the pharmaceutical and medical industries. Meaning the big boss behind these super markets know that they are receiving money from the pharma and medical industries to not completely help the people eat and choose healthy foods so that the doctors and the pharma companies can gain profit from sick, ill, dis-eased people. When people are eating heavily processed, packaged foods it is understood that they will experience dis-ease and will need to take pills to supposedly treat the symptom, instead treating the cause. It is all out there for you to discover.
DID YOU KNOW THAT GROCERY STORES HAVE AROUND 47,000 DIFFERENT PROCESSED PACKAGED FOODS!
AND EYE-LEVEL PRODUCTS ARE THE MOST PROFITABLE TO THE GROCERY STORES. HENCE WHEN YOU GO TO CHECK-OUT, YOU SEE TONS OF CANDY BARS, CHIPS, SUGAR WATER, COKE, SODAS AND OTHER SMALL ITEMS, BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT PEOPLE WILL BUY IT. SO THEY PUT IN YOUR FACE AT EYE-LEVEL, AND NOT TO MENTION THE HEIGHT OF THE SHELVES CATER MORE TOWARDS KIDS BECAUSE KIDS LOOOVE CANDY.....
2. When Shopping Around Perimeter of Store
* Produce has PLU codes (PLU= Price Look Up)
* digit code starting with 4 means conventional
* digit code starting with a 3 means irridated
* digit code starting with a 9 means organic
Irridated produce means that it has been exposed to ionizing radiation from cobalt, e-beams, or x-rays creating ions of free radicals to cause injury to plant cells, insects, or microorganism cells preventing insect or microorganisms from growing or reproducing. This process basically adds shelf life to the produce.
I don't know about you... BUT I would stay away from irridated produce. Organic is where the party's at.
3. PLU Code Rhyme
9 is good, 8 not so good, 3 or 4 wash for sure!
If you cannot afford organic produce, don't worry, in time you will devise a plan to bring more organic foods into your life after you re-evaluate and re-prioritize what you are wasting your money on. Make sure to wash conventional produce because it contains pesticides, chemicals, and insecticides on it.
4. Stay Away From Processed Meat!
This is super important. All meat bought from any store has been PROCESSED. Unless you go out into the wilderness and hunt for animal flesh cut it up, chop it up, package it into your freezer, then go head and enjoy your meat. It was processed by you and you know exactly how it was packaged and stored. And you also know that the animal was wild and ate nothing but fresh grass and maybe even some fruits and herbs in the forest. Hunted fresh, whole meat versus the processed meats at the store, who the hell knows what they are doing to these animals. The only things we do know for a fact is that the meat in stores are from animals that are not free, caged up, fed corn and soy, not able to feel or eat grass, and are suffering before they end up on your dinner plate. Even the grass-fed beef and other so-called healthier animal processed meats in stores are still not better. All meat has been PROCESSED in a big machine, how can that sound normal?? its madness.
I just choose to avoid any meat and animal related products. It does my body well. I am vegan by choice.
5. Foods With No Labels Are Best!
Foods with no labels are whole foods, which can be found in the produce section. You see that they do not have ingredient labels. That is the best food to eat. Packaged processed foods have a label to basically give a small warning to be careful with what you are eating. Read ingredients first then look at sodium, sugar, and calories.
6. Don't Be Fooled By Gimmicks
Processed foods have false labeling where you think that what you are buying is healthier than the other packaged processed food you use to buy. Avoid foods that say low-fat and low-sugar because most of the time if it is low in something, then it must also be high in something else for it to maintain its addicting taste flavors.
7. Avoid Dairy Milk, Cheese, And Other Dairy Products From Stores
Dairy is very dangerous to humans. It has been advertised as being one of the essential liquids to human growth. This liquid from another mammal is not okay for humans to drink a lot of it. Milk is not the same. If you still want to drink Animal milk then buy from a local source where the cows are fed grass and taken well care of. Just be careful with drinking another mammals milk, there is a reason why human mother's produce milk....... for Human babies to drink. When we are no longer babies.... no more milk. Which is totally normal, that means when the human baby is done drinking there mother's milk it is now time to eat fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and water!
8. Stay Away From Processed Wheat, It has Been Genetically Changed Through out History And Has Increasing Amounts of Gluten
If you want to understand more about this head to my other blog post about gluten! click this link! https://steemit.com/health/@stefunniy/what-is-gluten-gluten-list-provided
9. Boxed, Bagged, Canned, Processed Foods Should Be Very Minimal Because of High Processing
Most of these food items have been stripped away of essential microbes for our digestive system. Theses products are added with chemicals that allow longer shelf life, making these items not fresh.
10. Be Careful With Oils
I know that the safest oils to use are coconut oil and Olive oil. I am not to familiar with the other oils, there are many oils that do not even need to exist. The oils I know for a fact to stay away from are canola oil, vegetable oil, soy oil, corn oil, hydrogenated oils, and any oil that is not organic, fresh pressed, and in a glass bottle container. Plastic containers are bad and do not preserve the freshness of oils. So, make sure to select oils that are actually what they say to be, do some research.
