Shopping the Perimeter

As all good dieters know, shopping the perimeter in the supermarket is of major importance. Vegetables and fruits, low fat dairy products, fresh fish, meats and chicken.

Of course, one has to wander down an aisle every now and then for stuff like canned tuna and toilet paper. Just saying.

These days, it costs more to eat healthy than not. So how do we stay healthy by eating healthy in an overpriced world of supermarket chains?

The other day I filled up my cart with greens and tomatoes and broccoli, mushrooms, peppers and eggplant, a few cans of solid white tuna in water, coffee beans (you knew that was coming), olive oil and a bag of chopped walnuts (I like those in my oatmeal). My tally was not quite $75. With the exception of the olive oil, nuts and coffee (well, maybe not the coffee) everything will be consumed before the week is over. In fact, I usually shop for produce easily twice a week. And this is not including kosher meats which are astronomical in costs.

So I decided to do an experiment. Just for fun. I put packaged foods like mac and cheese, cookies, hamburger helper and other processed foods into my cart. Buy one get one with chips and other junk foods. Even frozen pizza. Filled the cart up and did a mental calculation of the total cost. Yeah. You guessed it. Less than ½ of  what it costs for me to fill my cart with the good stuff. By that I mean the HEALTHY stuff. It was fairly depressing.

I’m not talking about diet foods here. I love potato chips, tortilla chips smothered in cheese and salsa and cheese curls. I LOVE those. It’s been a long while since I’ve had any of that stuff. I could make a meal out of nachos washed down with diet coke. No, make it diet root beer. And you know…it would cost me so much less than a piece of salmon, poached with a little yogurt dill sauce on the side. Greek yogurt. It’s the best.

America. Listen up. We need to eat healthy. You know the old saying. You are what you eat. Well, unless we do something and make eating healthy affordable for everyone, we are going to continue to become obese with all the problems that go along with it.

OK. Lunchtime. Salad and veggie burgers for me. And some of that olive oil.

And by the way at this posting I am down 53 pounds (24 kg) since January 2.

Loving it!!!