Supermarket Rules

• Work the Edges - For the most part, the healthiest food in the supermarket can be found around the edges of the store - meats, seafood, dairy, and produce. The inner aisles of the store are dominated by boxes, bags, and cans.
• Look High and Low - Many supermarkets charge "slotting fees" to food companies who want prime food placement on shelves - eye level (or kids' eye level in the case of candy and sugary cereals). Thus healthy food (from smaller companies) can normally be found more on the top and bottom shelves.

• Go for Fewer Ingredients - When you must choose from two or more competing products, one of the easiest ways to tell which is better for you is to choose the one with fewer ingredients.  For example, real peanut butter has only two ingredients - peanuts and salt.
• Watch the Totem Pole - Think of the ingredient list as a totem pole.  The ingredients at the top are the most abundant in the product.  So if you are trying to avoid corn syrup, you are better off with a product that lists it 10th in the ingredient list as opposed to a product which has it listed second.

Hope this helps everyone! I hope to be posting weekly from this point forward.

Blueberries...Real or Fake?

If you like eating cereals, muffins, or other snacks with blueberries inside, get ready to have your world rocked.  Most likely, those are not real blueberries, but blueberry 'crunchlets', 'blueberry bits', or 'artificially flavored blueberry bits'. What does this mean? It means that you are not getting the antioxidants, vitamins, and fiber provided by the actual fruit. Instead you are eating 'sugar, artificial dyes, and soybean oil.'

The problem with these blueberry-flavored things is that they almost always contain oil or hydrogenated oils, increasing the fat and trans fat content, which actually detracts from the health value of the product.

I really can't say it better than this video from NaturalNews:




Just thought you all should know.  Buyer beware.

Nuts About Peanut Butter

Many of us looooove peanut butter - peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, peanut butter cookies, peanut butter on bananas, Reese's peanut butter cups, and the list goes on and on. But nowadays how do we know which peanut butter is the best for us, with all of the different brands, varieties, and marketing schemes?

Walking through the grocery store, there is a huge section in one of the aisles devoted to peanut butter.  I kind of find this ridiculous, since you only need two ingredients to make it: peanuts and salt.  Though, I don't think any of the jarred peanut butters have only two ingredients. Personally, I like Jif, so I am going to use their products here for comparison, but other brands like Skippy could be compared in pretty much equivalent ways.

Ingredients:

• Regular Jif - Roasted peanuts and sugar, contains less than 2% of molasses, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, mono- and diglycerides, salt
• Reduced Fat Jif - Peanuts, corn syrup solids, soy protein, sugar, contains less than 2% of molasses, salt, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils, folic acid, niacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, alphatocopheryl acetate, copper sulfate, ferric orthophosphate, magnesium oxide, zinc oxide (whew!)
• Simply Jif - Roasted peanuts, contains less than 2% of fully hydrogenated vegetable oil, mono- and diglycerides, molasses, sugar, salt
• Natural Jif - Peanuts, sugar, palm oil, contains less than 2% of salt, molasses

Personally, looking at this list, I would choose the Natural Jif, or any other peanut butter with the fewest unpronounceable ingredients.

America is focused on losing weight, and low-fat, low-calorie type foods, but I have a problem with reduced fat peanut butter. Yes, some of the fat is gone, but it has been replaced with cheap carbohydrates or chemical fillers used in many processed foods.  This means you're trading the healthy fat from peanuts for empty carbs (7g per serving up to 13g per serving of carbs), four times the amount of salt of the natural Jif, and more sugar. 

What you want to find is a peanut butter with the bare minimum: peanuts and salt; try to reduce on the oils and ingredients you can't pronounce. Also, try something new like cashew or almond butter. Since these products are a bit more rare, the ones I have seen are more 'natural', with fewer added ingredients. Most importantly, just read the ingredients list - don't be fooled by marketing claims without understanding them fully.  Now that my appetite is all worked up, I'm off to go eat some PB&J!

Kitchen Starters

Many times, people ask me how to get started cooking.  They are generally moving into an apartment for the first time, or are just making the (very healthy) shift away from only eating frozen dinners.  I have decided to compile my own list of (non-perishable) ingredients that I always keep in stock around my kitchen, and that I think everyone else should keep in theirs.

General Items

Oils - extra virgin olive oil, vegetable oil
Condiments - soy sauce (low sodium), ketchup, mustard, balsamic vinegar


Herbs and Spices
Seasonings - Morton's table salt, black pepper
Herbs - oregano, basil, rosemary, parsley (all dried), bay leaves
Spices - garlic powder, ground cinnamon, mustard powder, smoked paprika


Baking and Dry Goods
Sugars - granulated sugar, brown sugar, (powdered sugar if you intend to bake a lot)
Other Sweets - honey, maple syrup, almonds or mixed nuts
Baking - whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla extract, almond extract
Other - pasta, rice, stock cubes: vegetable, chicken, and beef


Freezer Items
Vegetables - broccoli, green beans, peas, sweet corn
Other - fruit (see previous post), shrimp

This list is just an outline of the kind of things you may want to stock up on when you start to cook more seriously.  Generally, buy what you can (not all at once), and discover what ingredients are used in the recipes you like best.  Most of these items will sit happily in your pantry or freezer for months, and having them nearby will help you get a bit more creative in the kitchen.


Let me know (comment below) if you think I missed something vital. =)