Have you ever tracked your weekly food shopping?
How much fresh food do you buy?
How much do you spend?
Do you buy processed foods?
What are the predominant ingredients in your shopping cart?
Take a look at these photos that show the food shopping habits of 30 families around the world.
The global food gap is nteresting, isn’t it? It made me take a closer look at what’s in my shopping cart.
Every Sunday when I send out weekly menus to my customers, I enjoy taking a look at the shopping list I provide. While the list pertains only to dinner recipes, it’s nice to see the lack of canned and processed foods plus the list of greens and fresh vegetables. I don’t plan “healthy” recipes, per se, but I focus on seasonal and fresh ingredients, which is integral to how I eat and cook. I don’t buy boxed food, junk food or processed food. Inevitably the dishes are “healthy” even though my focus is on flavor and enjoyment.
Yes, I sometimes eat pizza…but I make it myself. I eat cheese…on occasion. I enjoy dessert…but I make it myself. I’m all about making meals from scratch. I like real food, whole food.
Knowing exactly what I’m eating, that’s healthy to me. So anything containing xantham gum, poly something or other and hard-to-pronounce ingredients are NEVER on my list.
Next time you go shopping for food, take a photo of what you purchased.
Are you eating the way you want to?
Are you buying too much and therefore might waste some of it?
Are you buying too many already-prepared foods?
My #1 way to eat well without trying to is to make a shopping list. (Because of how revealing it is.)
- Plan out your meals for the week (this is a huge time saver)
- List the ingredients you need—either handwritten, something you can print out, or even a list on your smart phone
- Divide the list up into categories, such as fresh fruits and vegetables, spices, protein, dairy and staples.
Once you see the breakdown of what you’re consuming you just might change it up a bit. You might notice that you’d like to add more fruit or vegetables to what you eat each week, or that you’d like to cut down on cheese, or eat more seafood—the weekly shopping list really shows you what you’re putting into your body on a weekly basis and it can be enlightening.
And if you didn’t look at the great global food gap yet, you can take a look here.
What’s in your shopping basket? After seeing the global food gap photos, are you going to change what you buy each week?
Let me know in the comments below.
And if you ever need help planning dinner, I offer a Weekly Dinner Plan that, yes, comes with a shopping list.
When I plan out our weekly dinners we do really well. But if I don’t plan things go a bit crazy and that’s when we end up eating out.
This is something I really need to work at. Living alone has its challenges when it comes to cooking 🙁
I’m a big fan of eating whole, healthy and happy. I like to plan, but do like it when my brother comes to visit and we throw the plans out. We enjoy cooking together and like to head off to the shops and see what looks good. Always come back with something unplanned, yummy and fun. But I couldn’t do it everyday, so the food plan gets posted on the fridge and I don’t have to think.
Love your tips!
This is so interesting Tracey! The different shopping habits blow my mind…and the cost difference – WOW!
I’m not one for planning meals cause I tend to eat what I “feel” like eating each day. I love to cook and can easily go to the market to pick up supplies. BUT we do buy certain staples that we have on hand which consists of lots of fruits and vegetables and soy-yogurt, multigrain bread, goat cheese, pasta.
I have the luxury of having a big open air produce market down town Boston – Haymarket- where I go buy lots of inexpensive produce, and then lots of farmers markets when they are in season. I love fresh produce. My favorite summer dinner is fresh from the farm corn on the cob and steamed broccoli. Or a cheeseburger on the grille. 😉
I used to waste food cause I’d over shop, luckily my sweetie is awesome at whipping up something delicious from whatever is in the kitchen.
Hee hee right up my alley! Being vegan (and as a result extremely fussy!) most of my food is cooked from scratch.
I’m really not a fan of processed foods and very rarely buy them, I see most of them as “non foods” anyway and things like potato chips don’t usually find their way into my cupboard, I’d rather have a box of raisins or something.
I only usually have to cook for me so planning isn’t too much of a chore for me, I pretty much eat whatever I feel like 😀
I eat like a sparrow anyway and 2 meals a day is usually enough for me, and I only buy food that I need. I abhor waste, and I don’t like the supermarkets trick of trying to make us “stock up” on things we don’t actually want or need, so planning is always a good idea. Stick to the plan!
SO much good information.. right now I am eating very simply and everyone’s schedules are weird with both sons pretty much not around.. my husband eating later than me many nights and my desire for “real” dinner almost nonexistent.. so can get in rut of overly simple meals.. Going to give this more thought and add a couple of new recipes to shake it up..
I think you’re brilliant..
Love to you,
Lisa
Oh my goodness — the photos were an eye-opener. I wasn’t surprised (disappointed, yes, but not surprised) by all the processed, packaged stuff in developed areas. But I was really shocked by the meager portions and lack of variety in underdeveloped areas. I do pretty well with planning meals and buying fresh foods for the family, so I don’t know that I’ll change a lot logistically — but I will definitely have a deeper sense of gratitude for the variety and abundance in my cart every time I shop.
I’ve tried to plan weekly and even monthly, but realistically I can only handle about three days at a time. I keep a good cache of staples on hand (frozen chicken, salmon, meats, frozen fruit for smoothies, olives, artichokes, capers, mustards, vinegars, spices, etc.) then add in whatever fresh ingredients I might need. If I go more then three days, food will go bad. We also have found a few restaurants that have healthy fare and reasonable prices and that lets us fill in on those days we feel too rushed to cook.