Supermarket Lean Tips

Supermarket LEAN TipsShirley Strembel, MS, RD, has great tips and activities to better your awareness in the supermarket.The supermarket is a natural nutrition classroom. Instead of bogging consumers down with a whole lecture about nutrition, you can go from aisle to aisle showing them actual foods and inputting various tips to help them remember key messages and be able to do something with all your valuable information when they get home.After reviewing fat facts and label facts with a flipchart, we go to each section of the store.At the bread aisle, I ask them to pick out what they think is a whole wheat bread. After that I show them that the first ingredient must say whole wheat.In the cheese section, I ask them to line up cheeses from the highest fat to the lowest fat according to the daily value on their labels. A cheese with 5 grams of fat or less per serving is a good bet. Here it is important to tell them that you can’t tell the fat in cheese by its color.With processed meats, our activity is the same as for the cheese - line up products according to percent of daily value of fat using hot dogs, bologna and lean ham and poultry. Some interesting tidbits: Products made with turkey can be as high in fat as regular products because the skin is ground in and increases the fat content. Regular hotdogs may contain as many as 17 grams of fat per dog. A good rule of thumb for lower fat meat is 30 calories or less per ounce and no more than 1 gram of fat.At the meat counter, We discuss that a 3.5 ounce serving size is about the size of a deck of cards or compact. We compare regular ground meat with extra lean. I point out different grades and tell them to marinate lean cuts and not overcook them to avoid drying out.At the dairy refrigerator, we line up dairy products according to their fat content here so they can see how much they can avoid by making the right choice. I ask participants to pull a Coffeemate or Mocha Mix and read the ingredient label. Oil is the primary ingredient, making these products high in fat; furthermore since these products lack calcium, they are not good milk substitutes. Another fun activity here is to have participants check the fat content of their favorite yogurt.Margarines and butter are all pure fat. Every calorie is a fat calorie. Diet products have air or water displacing fat. Some are more heart healthy than others but all are fat. Ask participants to pick their brand or one they want to know about. Here is a good time to educate people about transfatty acids. The softer the margarine, the fewer transfatty acids.In the cookie and cracker aisle I show them an actual portion size for Entenmann’s coffee cake. It is also good to show them that lower fat items have the same amount of calories so they need to pay attention to portion sizes. The most important message here is that if you take out fat and add sugar, your calories do not change significantly.In the oil section, I tell them to line up the oils according to calories. That is actually a trick because it doesn’t matter - all oils are calorically the same. I like to recommend spray cans because you tend to use a lot less oil.The bean aisle is one of my favorites. Canned beans are great mixed with salsa and make a great bean dipAt the fruit and vegetable aisle  I talk about the 5-a-day for better health campaign to reduce cancer risks. Convenience is stressed when I show them how fruit is nature’s portable snack in its own wrapper. Lettuce packages are great for easy salads.Dressings and mayonnaise have good lowfat substitutions. We compare labels and then look at ingredient lists, water is usually the first ingredient among lowfat types.  Ask participants if they actually eat suggested serving size.Cereals have a reference amount of 1 ounce for a serving; some have only ¼ cup while others are a cup per ounce. A good cereal choice is one that has less than 2 grams of fat, less than 6 grams of sugar and at least three grams of fiber per serving.Frozen dinners should have 300 calories or less and no more than 10 grams of fat. Participants look at their favorite one and see how their choice stacks up.Frozen desserts should be pulled out and compared for fat content. I show them lowfat choices such as sorbet, popsicles, fudgsicles and ices. Just because a product is nondairy doesn’t mean it is low in fat.