I have a very fortunate shopping ability when I buy clothing–I can walk in the store, look around a few minutes, pick something up that I like and as long as they have it in my size, I am ready to buy.  It’s fast and painless!

I could do that when it comes to food shopping too, especially if I go in there hungry.  It is so easy to breeze through, load up the cart (start to eat some of the purchase before reaching the checkout), and voila–food for the week!

But I don’t.  In the food store (grocery, health food or otherwise) I am a label reader and I bet you are too.  If you’ve been reading my recent posts you know how important it is to check on the quality of your ingredients before you buy them no matter what store you’re in.  (See https://mycookinglife.com/2012/03/18/the-whole-food-and-nothing-but-the-food/ and https://mycookinglife.com/2012/01/23/whats-good-enough-to-eat/ and https://mycookinglife.com/2012/01/24/a-bandwagon-worth-jumping-on/)

A row of shopping carts. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not only is it important to know the basic ingredients and make sure those are all actually real food, but you have to know the food adjectives.  These are the ones on the front of the packaging and in the ingredient list such as “healthy,”  “whole grain,”  “low fat,” and here’s a real doozie, “smart.”

To help you with more pieces to this puzzle, here’s an article I thought you would like to see:  Health – philly.com.

And P.S. I am all for going food shopping while hungry.  Some of my most inspired menus result from that!