As I mentioned in other posts and interviews, most items sold in a supermarket should not be called food. After all, food is defined as any nutritious substance that people or animals eat or drink or that plants absorb to maintain life and growth. Suppose we accept figures such as those from the UK, which attribute 80% of diseases in the Western World as partially or entirely caused by lifestyle and poor nutrition – wow. How can you possibly continue to buy from supermarkets?

Well, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. After all, many of us are living under less-than-ideal circumstances and harnessing the purchasing power of a supermarket chain can reduce your food bill significantly. Also, compared with smaller shops there is a faster turn-around of produce which can be of benefit. As such, I do not wish to bedevil supermarkets. Instead, I want to share my simple survival strategies to get the healthiest products at a fair price.

To do so, please let me first take you on a tour through a supermarket from the owner’s point of view.

Here are some of the key benefits of having a proper grocery store layout strategy:

1. Increased sales

The first thing you will notice when you create a good layout is an increase in sales. When customers can find what they need quickly and in an organized manner, they are more likely to make purchases.

2. Increased customer satisfaction

A well-organized store layout makes it easy for customers to find what they need, which leads to increased satisfaction. This can lead to more repeat customers and better word-of-mouth reviews.

3. Increased brand recognition

Having a good store layout will make your products stand out from the competition. Placing specific brands at eye level or prominently near the checkout counter will help customers recognize these items.

4. Increased profits

The ultimate goal of any store layout is to increase profits. By optimizing the placement of certain products and taking advantage of strategic entry and exit points, you can improve your bottom line in a big way.

5. More brands would like to work with you

If your store is well-organized and looks inviting, more brands will want to do business with you. Since you have customers, brands would like to get a place for their products in your store. This will help you build a larger selection and bring in more customers.

6. More returning customers

All a customer needs is an organized store, good customer service, and competitive prices to make them come back. All of these elements will be achieved by having a good layout strategy in place.

If you manage to fulfil the customer’s expectations, they will return and keep coming back to your store.

Supermarkets have certain layouts with two main objectives: 1. To easily restock items, and 2. to provide the shopper with the greatest satisfaction. In other words, grab-and-go items are the products that customers want quickly and easily. These items are typically placed at the front of the store, as customers will often enter to simply grab these items before exiting. Common grab-and-go items include

• Snacks
• Beverages
• Bread
• Milk
• Eggs
• Lunch meats
• Candy
• Cleaning supplies, etc…

Once you know this fact you begin to see patterns which allow you to be more efficient, if this is your main goal.

However, for our purpose here, we want to maximise our chances of getting out of the place with the least amount of unhealthy food possible. And the items more closely resembling food tend to have higher storage requirements, such as electricity outlets for freezers and cold food, proximity to in-store baking facilities, and proximity to cold storage for perishable items.

Fresh-frozen vegetables can offer several health advantages compared with “fresh” produce that is lying around for a bit on a supermarket-shelf. Here are some key points, supported by references:

1. Nutrient Retention:
   • Analysis: Fresh-frozen vegetables are typically processed shortly after harvest, which helps retain their nutritional content. The freezing process can preserve essential vitamins and minerals.
   • Reference: Rickman JC, Barrett DM, Bruhn CM. (2007). Nutritional comparison of fresh, frozen and canned fruits and vegetables. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17591589/
2. Minimization of Additives:
   • Analysis: Frozen vegetables often have minimal additives, as they don’t require the same preservatives and chemicals used in some supermarket produce to prolong shelf life.
   • Reference: Martins ZE, Pinheiro AC, Vicente AA. (2012). Freezing effects on vegetables’ cell structure: A microscopic evaluation. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22122943/
3. Extended Shelf Life Without Loss of Quality:
   • Analysis: Fresh-frozen vegetables can be stored for extended periods without a significant loss of quality or nutritional value, providing consumers with access to a variety of vegetables throughout the year.
   • Reference: USDA FoodData Central. (2022). Nutrient data for fresh, frozen, and canned vegetables. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/
4. Convenience and Reduced Food Waste:
   • Analysis: Frozen vegetables offer convenience as they are pre-cut, pre-washed, and ready to use, reducing preparation time. This convenience may lead to increased consumption of vegetables and, in turn, improved health outcomes.
   • Reference: Krebs-Smith SM, et al. (2010). Americans do not meet federal dietary recommendations. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20420822/
5. Year-Round Availability of Nutrient-Rich Options:
   • Analysis: The freezing process allows for the availability of a wide variety of vegetables year-round, ensuring consumers have access to nutrient-rich options even when certain vegetables are out of season.
   • Reference: Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. (2013). Changes in nutritional quality of vegetables during frozen storage. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jsfa.6362
6. Preservation of Phytochemicals:
   • Analysis: Freezing can help preserve phytochemicals present in vegetables, which have been associated with various health benefits, including antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.
   • Reference: García-Alonso M, et al. (2007). Effects of microwave heating on the loss of vitamin C in vegetables. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17995742/

Personally, I am torn between convenience, my desire to support local producers and my desire to eat the healthiest produce available. Because of this, I have created a kitchen garden that provides me with plenty of vegetables – you can’t get it fresher, and I know exactly how biological the products are. But I will talk about this in another post. Back to the supermarket – unless you have a plan of what exactly to cook over the next few days, it is likely that some of your fresh veggies will end up in the bin or the compost. I am guilty as charged here. Therefore, frozen vegetables indeed work for me.

I do admit – I am opening a massive can of worms here. If you have never done that, you are in for an awakening. The reason is simple – our food has changed to become an industrially mass-produced combination of carbohydrates, fats and protein (in probably all the wrong proportions). Why is that? Well, once upon a time, your food could not be preserved unless you added salt/reduced the water content, or added acidity to the mix. To increase shelf-life, producers started experimenting with various ingredients that made the food last longer. It indeed started as a noble attempt. But down the line, we are faced with monster foods. Regrettably, a computer crash wiped out my pictures of the ever-lasting cheeseburger. I you are looking blank here, it is a social experiment in which you go to a fast-food chain of your choice and buy a standard hamburger or cheeseburger. Then, put it into a transparent container and put it somewhere on a shelf. Then wait and see… But don’t hold your breath. I took 11 months for the first mold spores to appear on my cheeseburger. Talk about some serious survival abilities. But unless you want to preserve the inside of your gut, do you really think that such ingredients are good for you?
So, to start of with – keep it simple. Ingredients and nutrient content can vary a lot by brand and preparation. When there’s more than one choice, compare labels. Choose the item with the lowest sodium, saturated fat, trans fat and added sugars. I will go into more detail in other posts on some of the more questionable additives that have been put into foods.

Please let me introduce you to the Standard American Diet (SAD), which provides you with a whopping 17 teaspoons of sugar a day. This is somewhere around 270 calories per day. Having said that, these figures are from the 2015-2020 US dietary guidelines (ODPHP) and more recently, I have come across higher numbers. How could this possibly happen?

Simple! Sugar is a cheap way to make food far more attractive (and addictive). Our ancestors would hunt for hours and expose themselves to dozens of stings to get to a bee hive and raid its honey. Sweet things were rare in the past, and our brain recognizes them as things to be highly cherished. Your body also releases endorphins such as dopamine and serotonin to accompany this sugar rush, which is why, at first, you’ll feel happier and perhaps even calmer. Needless to say, your body throws out large amounts of insulin, and you quickly come crashing down. But the damage is done. Your brain has linked sugar with this emotional release, and it craves as much of it as it can get.
And social engineering has provided us with all the sugar we can push down our throats. Since food labels have to list the ingredients from the largest to the smallest amount, it would be a bit obvious if most of them start with “Sugar, Salt, …”. Instead, the food industry has become wiser. If I were more of a songwriter, I would try to give you my own rendition of Simon and Garfunkel’s “50 ways to leave your lover”. Instead, I can only give you a list of 65 different ways to say “We added sugar”,

1. Anhydrous dextrose
2. Agave
3. Agave nectar
4. Beet sugar
5. Brown sugar (light and dark brown)
6. Cane juice
7. Cane juice solids
8. Cane sugar
9. Cane syrup
10. Carob syrup
11. Caster sugar
12. Coconut sugar
13. Confectioners’ sugar
14. Corn syrup
15. Corn syrup solids
16. Crystalline fructose
17. Date sugar
18. Demerara sugar
19. Dextran
20. Dextrose
21. Dehydrated cane juice
22. Evaporated cane juice
23. Evaporated cane syrup
24. Evaporated sugar cane
25. Fructose
26. Fructose crystals
27. Fruit juice crystals
28. Fruit juice concentrate
29. Glazing sugar
30. Glucose
31. Glucose syrup
32. Golden sugar
33. Golden syrup
34. Granulated sugar
35. High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS)
36. Honey
37. Icing sugar
38. Invert sugar
39. Invert syrup
40. King’s syrup
41. Lactose
42. Maple syrup
43. Maple sugar
44. Maltose
45. Malt sugar
46. Malt syrup
47. Molasses
48. Muscovado
49. Nectar
50. Pancake syrup
51. Panocha
52. Powdered sugar
53. Raw sugar
54. Refiners’ syrup
55. Sorghum
56. Sorghum syrup
57. Sucanat
58. Sucrose
59. Sugar
60. Superfine sugar
61. Table sugar
62. Treacle
63. Turbinado sugar
64. White sugar
65. Yellow sugar

Do I need to say more?

Start paying attention to the increasingly mandatory food labelling. As a rule, don’t buy anything with more than 3, 4 or 5 ingredients. I give you some lee-way here. When you start, many of the items on a label are not recognizable to you, and to ease your way in, you may start with five ingredients. You will quickly be amazed at how much @#$% is in your food items. I will go into more detail on this in a separate post.
But just for the sake of it, if I make French Fries / Chips at home, I use Potatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika. If you go to a fast-food restaurant, you will likely consume potatoes, vegetable oil (which contains canola oil, corn oil, soybean oil, and natural beef flavour with wheat and milk derivatives), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate, and salt. I rest my peace.

There was a time when it was expected that families bake their bread and when women (and men) knew how to preserve food. In the medieval ages, bakers became an increasingly prominent part of society and depending on the country you research, you may find strict rules and regulations for bakers dating back as far as the 18th century. However, the Industrial Revolution quickly put an end to that, and things began to shift in the 19th century. New baking techniques arose which didn’t follow such strict rules. The early 20th century saw the establishment of sizeable mass-produced baking in the cities. By the 1950s, the small family bakery was becoming less common except in small villages and rural areas. In the 70 years since, we’ve seen the advent of “modern” bread making, which has included using chemicals and additives to make bread that is cheaper to produce and lasts longer. A break-through of science to celebrate or the beginning of the end for our gut microbiome?