To Your Health: Grocery Notes
Sep 5, 2009

Wow! I'm actually posting! Mostly, I wanted to create a list of grocery shopping reminders of things I have recently become aware of (or have recently had prior knowledge of clarified and enhanced). Rather than waste paper writing it down and losing it, I decided to write it down on the computer. This seemed as good a place as anywhere and maybe you'll get some use out of it too!

Grocery Notes

- Avoid Yellow, Red, and Blue dyes where possible

- Check for any sort of shortening or partially hydrogenized oils (cottonseed, soy, doesn't matter). If it has that, it has trans fat (it just meets the less than 0.5g marker of the FDA for being able to claim 0 trans fat).

- Peanut butter is a healthy after work-out food, go for less ingredients, 2 is best. Jif is safe enough, but look for one with less ingredients.Some peanut butters are loaded with extra unnecessaries like corn syrups or dextrose.

- Packed in water (for canned goods). I already do this, but it's worth noting again here.

- Avoid BHA in the ingredient list. This is listed by Dept. of health and human services as "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen" and seems unnecessary. Look for a different brand of instant potatoes!

- Watch out for bogus claims such as all natural and other marketing ploys, many of them are not subject to strict FDA claim regulations.

- Low fat does not always mean healthy, an extremely fatty food can claim to be low fat when it is a half fat version of itself.

- When something claims to be low in an undesirable, check the label to make sure they haven't compensated in another undesirable.

- When considering breakfast or after work-out snacks, protein should double the sugar content.

- Shop around for a new jam, Smuckers is not too bad, but I could do with less unnecessary ingredients.

- Eat more tuna-based meals (packed in water). Despite bogus and inflated claims, a tuna based meal every week is actually very good for you and an affordable way to get Omega-3's.

- Look for Honest Tea brand tea

- Pay more attention to sugars than fat. Foods high in sugar and some carbs tell your body to store fat, not burn it.

- Look into switching to canola oil.

- Avoid most artificial sweeteners, particularly the ones found in diet sodas. I actually already do this, but I found these are actually many times sweeter than sugar, which can lead to giving you a higher appetite for sugar, increasing the amount of intake and leading to much more weight gain than a diet high in regular sugar.

- Buy in season fruits or frozen. Out of season fruits are often allowed to ripen on a truck on the way to the store rather than naturally, making them not nearly as healthy as fruit frozen in season.

Target Foods in My Pantry/Fridge

- Peanut Butter (try to simplify the ingredient list some)
- Preserves/Jam (simplify ingredient list)
- Different brand of instant potatoes w/out BHA
- Weed out foods and drinks with added "colour" dyes like Tropicana
- Avoid yellow dye in particular with Michael's food and drink (it can cause or complicate concentration and learning problems in kids).
- Avoid Red Dye #3, the FDA has already proposed a ban anyway.

Local Farmer's Markets

Beacon Farmers' Market
Sponsor: City of Beacon
Location: Ferry Dock, train station parking lot
Times of Operation: Sunday, 10 AM – 4 PM
Season: May - November
Contact: Simone Williams
Phone: (845) 597-5028
E-mail: simplyvalley@verizon.net

Fishkill Farmers' Market
Sponsor: Village of Fishkill
Location: Main Street Center, 1004 Main Street (Rt. 52)
Times of Operation: Thursday, 9 AM to 3 PM
Season: July through October

The City of Poughkeepsie Main Street Farmers' Market

Fishkill Farms