Grocery Shopping 101
- Lyndsay Grega
- One Comment
We all want a healthy relationship between ourselves, our finances, and our food. When we take a trip to the grocery store, there is a wide variety of ways in which your decisions affect these relationships. Check out some tips to keep in mind when visiting the grocery store to save money, save time, and make nutritious choices.
Saving Time
- Make a list. Going into the grocery store without a plan makes you much more susceptible to overspending on foods that are not necessary at the time. Creating a grocery list can make it easier to budget and ensure that you are going to stick to the necessities and not overspend.
- Check your kitchen. Before heading to the grocery store, check out what you already have at home to help save confusion in the store while avoiding overspending on items you do not need at the time.
- Use your store’s “Shop Online” option. Using the store’s “shop online” option can save time and stress by having the help of employees to bag your groceries and either meet at you storefront or deliver them to your home! This not only saves time, but can help manage what you put into your cart by showing you the grocery total as you add items into your cart online.
Saving Money
- Set a budget or add up as you go. Giving yourself a set amount of money you’d like to spend at the grocery store can help reduce money stress as well as ensure you will not buy unnecessary items. Using a calculator or keeping a mental note of how much you have put into your cart so far can help you avoid stress at checkout!
- Sign up for your local grocery store’s member rewards program. Oftentimes, it is free to sign up as a member for a grocery store. Members can earn special discounts on many different items!
- Check out sales before you head to the grocery store. Clipping coupons or checking out deals on your grocery store’s app or website can help with preparing a list of thrifty foods to buy.
- Choose store brand versus name brands when you can. Although many name brand food products may have more attractive packaging, they often times are of very similar quality to store brand foods, which can be much less expensive.
- Choose whole or unprepared foods versus pre-prepared foods. Notice that pre-prepared foods such as pre-cut veggies are more expensive than whole vegetables! Choose foods that are not pre prepared to save some cash.
Making Nutritious Choices
- Shop the perimeter of the store. Understanding the layout of a grocery store can help greatly when it comes to making nutritious choices. Commonly, foods such as fruits, vegetables, meats, seafood, bread, dairy, and eggs can be located around the perimeter of the store. While there are still nutritious and affordable items in the middle of the grocery store (such as canned beans, frozen vegetables, grains, etc.), keep in mind that there is commonly many more processed foods or foods of low nutritional value in the middle of the store.
- Understand marketing tactics. Recognizing where food items are intentionally placed in the store (usually to increase sales) can help rethink whether it is a product you truly want or only looked.
- Eat before you shop. We’ve all been there- going grocery shopping on an empty stomach can be the perfect storm for a food frenzy. Making sure you’re not hungry before you leave for the store can not only make sure you’re not buying unnecessary food items, but can also help save money and provide you with an overall more positive shopping experience.
- Go shopping when you’re not rushing. Go to the store during slow hours or when you’re not in a rush to avoid impulse buying, feeling, overwhelmed, and have on overall more positive experience shopping.
Click the link below to download a grocery shopping worksheet to use!
Abby Broschard
Abby Broschard is a graduate dietetics student attending Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ. She spent time interning with the Mindful Eating Dietitians and is passionate about helping people find balance and peace within their lives.
Itís hard to come by well-informed people in this particular subject, however, you seem like you know what youíre talking about! Thanks