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What are healthy products and what should I pay attention to?! For many people, it is not yet entirely clear which products fall under the category of healthy. Many smart producers, for example, advertise their food as “healthy,” while this is often not the case. Why is it so important to make a healthy shopping list and to choose healthy products while shopping?
Benefits of a healthy shopping list
Here are some benefits of a healthy shopping list:
- Healthy nutrition and therefore healthy shopping ensure that you feel fit and your resistance is optimal.
- If you eat healthy, you also look fit; a good figure with beautiful skin, beautiful hair, and strong nails.
- You continue to look youthful, as your healthy shopping list slows down the aging process.
- Healthy nutrition enables you to lose or gain weight responsibly and also maintain your weight.
- Healthy food is good for your brain; your brain works better with these healthy groceries.
- Healthy eating, including enough fiber, ensures good bowel movements.
- Last but not least; you will also achieve the best results if you combine your fitness schedule with healthy shopping. Training and healthy eating go hand in hand!
To compile a healthy shopping list without being tempted to buy all kinds of unhealthy products, I would like to give you some smart tips.
Smart tips before you go shopping
Make your healthy shopping list beforehand
Making a shopping list may seem silly, but it’s certainly very useful. By writing down all your groceries, you can quickly go through the supermarket and you don’t have to think about what to buy while shopping. This way, you also won’t come home with all kinds of possibly unhealthy products that you don’t really need. And with the latter, you also save money, which is also nice, of course!
Don’t go shopping on an empty stomach
Who doesn’t recognize it; your stomach is growling, and before you know it, your basket is full of filled cookies, chocolate bars, ham and cheese croissants, and all kinds of other unhealthy groceries. So, a smart tip is not to go shopping on an empty stomach because you will be more tempted to come home with all kinds of unhealthy snacks & treats. Make sure you eat something healthy beforehand that fills your stomach well, such as a sandwich, a well-filled salad, a boiled egg, a bowl of quark, and so on.
Smart tips for in the supermarket
Visit the market for all your vegetables & fruit
They used to say; “at the market, your money is worth more.” Of course, the guilder has long been a thing of the past, but roughly speaking, you can buy a lot for little money at the market. So, I am a loyal visitor to the market every week, where I spend somewhere between €15,- and €20,- on fresh vegetables & fruit for a whole week. Nice, healthy, and cheap!
Read the labels: know what you eat!
When browsing through the supermarket, it’s good to take a look at what’s on the back of the product’s nutrition label. This way, you really know what belongs on your healthy shopping list at home.
Here are a few tips to keep in mind;
- Don’t be tempted by the product’s packaging. For example, the front might say “less fat.” However, less fat means loss of taste, which needs to be compensated, for example, by adding more sugar to the product. So, be critical and don’t be fooled, also read the label and pay attention to the term: sugars.
- Check the order of the ingredients list. The basic rule here is that the ingredients listed first are the ones that are most present in the product. For example, with candy, sugar and glucose-fructose syrup are often listed first, so you know that these are the main ingredients of the product and you shouldn’t eat too much of it! Also, with a very long list of ingredients, you can almost assume that this is not a healthy product that belongs on your healthy shopping list because of all the additives. Less is more in healthy eating!
- Check the E-numbers. E-numbers are food additives approved by the European Union. I’m not necessarily against E-numbers, as there are also many healthy E-numbers, but I would prefer to avoid some because of the health problems they can cause. For example, certain added colorings that can lead to hyperactivity and asthma attacks. Also, E621, also known as monosodium glutamate, MSG, yeast extract, or ve-tsin (often present in chips, bouillon, and Chinese food) can cause symptoms such as headaches, nausea, palpitations, and is said to increase appetite (hence why that bag of chips gets empty all at once).
- Check the portion size. It can sometimes seem very attractive when the front of a product says “a serving contains only 30 calories.” However, the question is how big that serving is because it varies for each product. So, it’s worth reading (and calculating) this on the back first to prevent you from consuming much more calories than desired.
White vs. Whole Wheat Bread
Regarding carbohydrate-rich products, you can make some simple adjustments to make them healthier for yourself. For example, with bread, but also pasta, you can choose the whole wheat varieties. Whole wheat bread, for example, contains half and whole wheat grains, which contain the majority of the vitamins, minerals, and fiber.
Often, the bread packaging says “100% whole wheat.” It’s not that white bread (made from wheat flour) is unhealthy, but it’s a less healthy choice because it uses the middle part of the
wheat grains where fewer of the important nutrients are found. This also applies to whole wheat pasta, and both consist of so-called “complex carbohydrates.” These carbohydrates are difficult for the human body to break down, resulting in more evenly released energy. This makes you feel satisfied longer. For rice, it’s best to choose brown rice, as all the good nutrients, vitamins, minerals, and fiber are retained.
Light products, a good idea?
Manufacturers like to deceive us by calling their products “light.” This gives the impression that their product is healthier, making people more inclined to eat more of it. Another disadvantage is that a product can be called light if it contains 33% less fat or sugar. For example, there may be 33% less sugar in it, but this doesn’t say anything about the amount of fat and calories in the product. So, once again, read what’s on the label and don’t be misled!
Finally; unlike light products, there are the so-called semi-skimmed products that contain less fat. For example, it can be useful to choose the semi-skimmed variants for dairy products, such as cheese and milk, if you eat these regularly. This way, you save some calories!
Track your healthy shopping list in the FITsociety app
Of course, you don’t just want to buy the groceries, but you also want to eat them. To make sure you stay within the set calorie budgets, you can download the FITsociety app. With the FITsociety app, you track your calorie intake and can also directly add all your healthy groceries using the built-in barcode scanner.
