You want to get the most bang for your buck in the grocery store right?  As the Nutritional Gatekeeper, you also want to find the best foods for your family.  I love to host grocery shopping tours and hope you will join me next month.  However, if you can’t join us or just want a few tips to get started, I hope these will help.

1.  Buy products from U.S.A.  Each fruit, veggie or green leafy has a label that indicates where it was grown.  Buying from the USA ensures it has spent less time in transit so hopefully it will be fresher and if organic, it will not have been irradiated.  Irradiation kills parasites and other creatures but also kills the vital enzymes that we need to remain healthy.  For example, why would you want to buy an orange from Chile when we grow them in California and Florida?

2.  Read Ingredient Label before the Nutrition Facts. If it isn’t real food in the first place, do you really care about fats, calories and sodium?  The first ingredient is the most predominant and so on.  My other rule is if you can’t pronounce it, never heard of it or it contains more than 15 letters, it’s NOT food!

3. Before you purchase a product, ask yourself “could I make this without preservatives, tastier and cheaper from scratch?”  A good example is taco seasoning which consists of about 6-7 different seasonings that you probably already have at home.  What you are NOT getting are the preservatives or the MSG (monosodium glutamate) which are not healthy or safe.  This also saves you a ton of money and time as you can make this for pennies instead of dollars.