Introduction

Grocery shopping might seem like just another errand, but the choices made in the aisles can impact your health. What you put into your cart determines the food quality on your plate, influencing your overall well-being. Understanding the difference between natural, whole foods, and processed items is needed for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. By making informed choices, you can nourish your body with nutrient-rich foods and avoid those that contribute to inflammation and chronic health issues. A trip to the grocery store is more than just a task-it's an opportunity to invest in your long-term health.

The Importance of Grocery Shopping: More Than Just an Errand

It's Saturday morning, and it is time to run all those errands... drugstore, hardware store, department store, and finally, the grocery store. Most of us consider the grocery store to be just another errand. But that one single errand, going to the grocery store, has more consequences for your life than almost anything else you'll do all week.

Imagine going to the drugstore and getting the wrong shampoo. You may have lifeless hair or look greasy by late afternoon. Not an intended consequence, but certainly not life-altering. What if you got 3" nails at the hardware store instead of 3" screws? Again, not perfect, but no life-altering consequences. But what happens when you must make better grocery store choices? It influences every food decision you make for the rest of the week! When you do this week after week, it influences the food decisions for your whole life, and this does have life-altering consequences.

Going to the grocery store is NOT just another errand! It's an important part of caring for your life and health. It takes planning and hard work to make sure that you get accurate, wholesome, good food in your house each week, but the benefits last a lifetime.

What Is Food Anyway?

It doesn't seem we should have to ask this question! Many of us presume that everything in the grocery store is food. But most packaged foods in the grocery store aren't real food. We now know that inflammation causes disease... and processed food causes inflammation. That means we must learn to eat non-processed, real food. And the sacred weekly visit to the grocery store is just the place to do it!

Some Practical Advice for Grocery Shopping

The first few times you go to the grocery store and look for real food, it can be a lot of work and confusing. Here are some tips to help you decide what to buy.

Give it the Farmer Test

Before you toss something in your cart, ask yourself whether you could knock on a farmer's door and ask them to harvest the food item you're considering from their field or barn. For example, could you walk down a country lane to a farmer's house and ask for an egg? Of course! Farmers worldwide grow corn, pineapples, mushrooms, and pork chops. Our fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and whole grains pass the Farmer Test. So do fish and meats like roasts, steaks, and chops. However, much of what we buy in stores still needs to pass the Farmer Test. While the food may have originated in a field or barn, it has been processed into something that may taste good but isn't real. Take cereal, for instance. Even though cereal starts as a grain, it's no longer a whole, living food. Farmers don't grow hamburger buns, Pop-Tarts, or Doritos. These fail the Farmer Test and cause inflammation in our bodies.

Read the Ingredient List on the Food Label

If you need clarification about whether a food passes the Farmer Test, read the ingredient list. If you can pronounce the ingredients and picture them, you're buying minimally processed, real food. Most bakery items don't qualify. Also, watch for the "Frightening Four" ingredients: flour, sugar, fructose, and oil. These indicate processed, inflammatory foods.

Buy Foods You Have to Prepare

If you have to clean, peel, dice, or chop what you're about to eat, there's a good chance it's real food. You must clean grapes, peel a banana, and chop an onion-all signs of real food. You don't have to clean a breakfast bar, peel a Cheez-It, or dice your Jello. These aren't real foods!