Welcome to part 3 of Shopping Supermarket Savvy, a series
designed to help you navigate grocery stores in ways that will help you save
money while buying real foods, avoiding
overt processed junk, and outsmarting processed junk marketed as health food.
In part
1, I talked about the strategy of “shopping
the perimeter” – sticking mostly to the outer aisles because that’s where
the whole foods are concentrated – meats (including poultry and seafood),
dairy, and produce. Part 2
introduced the earth-shattering concept of reading
price stickers. An obvious thing to do, maybe, but it’s less obvious what to look for on those
stickers. (Hint: it’s the unit cost,
and not always the price for an individual item.)
What’s another simple way to save money at the store? Again,
it’s a pretty obvious one, but maybe one you haven’t been employing much.
(Picking up on a theme here? If you’re thinking this is “not rocket science,”
you may be on to something!)
Buy in bulk.
Yes, it’s that simple. BUT – there might be more to it than
you think.
First, I should define what I mean by “buying in bulk.” Most
health food stores and some better-stocked supermarkets have sections where you
can buy things like nuts, beans, oats, various flours, trail mixes, and granola
by the pound. (You know…where you get to use the cute little plastic or metal scoop
and pour the amount you want into a bag, and where there are signs everywhere
alerting you to the fact that you will darn near be arrested if you dare to
help yourself to a sample.) This isn’t what I’m talking about. When I say “buy
in bulk,” I mean buying more than you need at one particular time and keeping a
stash of whatever it is on hand, be that in the freezer, fridge, or pantry.
Of course, some things are better to buy in bulk than
others. Canned tuna? Load up your cart! Strawberries? Not so much.
So let’s start with the obvious items: canned, jarred, and
dry goods. Things that generally won’t go bad for ages and that you could
theoretically hand down to your great-grandchildren (although that would be a
pretty sorry inheritance). Canned tuna, salmon, sardines, coconut milk, tomatoes,
fruit (in their own juice, please, not
syrup), vegetables, jarred pasta sauce, and any kind of bagged or boxed rice, beans,
or grains—provided your digestion and blood sugar control are good enough that
you’re “safe” to consume those last three. (Not sure if you fit that
description? May I
recommend a nutritionist to help you find out?) Canned fish is a fantastic,
budget-friendly source of protein. As for vegetables, I prefer fresh over canned—forget
the nutritive value; from a flavor and texture standpoint, there’s just no
comparison—but there are most definitely worse things you could eat than canned
veggies. There is one item that deserves special mention. It’s the single most
underrated canned good in the entire supermarket: pumpkin.
Not the pie mix, just straight-up pumpkin. (The pie mix contains yummy spices
like cinnamon and clove, but also lots of sugar.) You can find it in the baking
aisle, and they have it all year long, not just around Halloween and
Thanksgiving. Forget pies and quick breads. It is an amazing dessert all by itself. I may or may not be speaking from
experience that it’s pretty delicious eaten with a spoon right out of the can.
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| Y-U-M. |
What else can you buy in bulk? How about meat? Well-packaged
meat lasts a long time in the freezer. Some supermarket meat departments mark
down meat that’s close to its “sell by” date, to try and get rid of it before
they would have to dispose of it. There’s nothing wrong with this meat; it’s
just near the date the government and food safety bigwigs tell them it has to
be sold or gotten rid of. Buy it. Stick it in the freezer and stick it to the
man at the same time. (A good way to prolong the freezer-life of meats is to
vacuum seal them. Or if you don’t have a vacuum sealer, simply unwrap the
original packaging and rewrap in a plastic bag or whatever vessel you prefer,
as long as you can remove as much air as possible before sealing it tightly. What
causes frozen foods to develop freezer burn isn’t necessarily the amount of
time they spend in the freezer, but how much air and moisture they’re
exposed to. (And if something does
get freezer burned, it’s still safe
to eat. The color might change, and you might get a hit of that lovely,
distinctive freezer burn taste, but there
are no safety issues there.)
Fresh produce is a little harder to buy more of than you
need at any one time. It does grow
mold, get soggy, and otherwise become undesirable. But there are still ways to
make your money go a little further on fresh vegetables and fruits. Some
produce managers offer “seconds” in their departments—fruits and vegetables
that got a little roughed up in shipping and don’t look as appealing as their pristine,
unsullied brethren. Unless you’re having the queen over for high tea—and maybe
even if you are—you don’t need to
worry about how the stuff looks.
Especially if you’re going to cook with it anyway, and its appearance won’t
matter in the final dish. If you’re talking about a salad or some other way in
which the foods will be served raw and you absolutely don’t want to compromise
on presentation, this isn’t the stuff for you. But if it’s going to get cut up
and thrown into a stew, chili, stir-fry, or smoothie, the seconds should be your
first choice. (Ba-dump-bump!) Not
every supermarket does this, but most vendors at farmer’s markets do—especially
those selling apples, pears, tomatoes, and other foods that are often canned or
transformed into pies, spreads, and sauces. If you’re gonna cook the bejeezus out
of it, does it matter if it was a little bruised when you brought it home? You
do yourself and the farmer a favor
here – you get the produce at a lower price and you spare them from either having
to throw it out and take the loss, or having to box it up and bring it back to
the farm or to the next market.
The other reason grocery produce managers mark things down
is that it’s on its last legs. It’s still okay now, but another few days and it’s a goner. Overripe, mushy, wilted—they’d
rather sell it to you at a huge discount than throw it away and get nothing for it. I’ve seen perfectly good
vegetables and fruits at ridiculous markdowns just because they only had a
couple days’ more life in ‘em and the manager had to make room for the new
stuff. The major drawback with buying this older stuff is that it may have lost
some of its nutrients, since some nutrients degrade over time. (Vitamins more so than minerals.) So the longer something’s been sitting in
the store, waiting patiently while all its buddies were bought and sold, the
less of some vitamins remain. Still, I think that’s a small price to pay (no
pun intended) if you’re on a tight budget and are trying to stick to real food. Better to buy the discounted
stuff and get some fresh vegetables into your body than to skip it altogether
because you can’t afford the organic, anointed-by-angels stuff. (Besides, have
you ever tried to remove a halo from a red pepper? It’s a pain in the butt.) This
might not be the best tip for buying in bulk, but it’s useful for stretching a
dollar just a little further. This also works best for foods you’re going to
cook, rather than eat raw.
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| Remember: there's good mold and there's bad mold. (This is the good kind.) |
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| SALE: A good four-letter word! |
One more thing you can stock up on when there’s a sale is nuts.
With the exception of peanuts—which
are not actually nuts but legumes—nuts
are pretty expensive. If you catch a good discount, take advantage. The
important thing to keep in mind is to store them in the freezer or fridge.
They’ll last much longer without turning rancid. Why? Nuts are rich in polyunsaturated
fat, which is the most susceptible to going “off.” You can delay this by
keeping them cold and as airtight as possible. Yes, we usually think of nuts as
being entirely “shelf-stable,” since they don’t technically require refrigeration. But trust me,
they’ll last longer if kept in cold storage. (Then again, if you’re anything
like me, nuts don’t last long enough to go bad in your house! It’s like telling
someone how to best store the leftover brownies. <<Leftover brownies? Error! Does not compute.>>)
Stay tuned for part 4, where I’ll talk about a sneaky way
you might be paying more than you should at the checkout counter. (Sneak
preview: things ring up at the wrong price. A lot.)
P.S. I would also
say you can buy dairy in bulk-ish, but that would require me to confess that if
I have a block of cheese that has a little mold on the end, I just cut off the
moldy section and keep on keepin’ on. Also, I have eaten many a cup of yogurt
(full-fat, of course) long past its expiration date. If you keep them in the
fridge, unopened, those things last way longer than they’d have us believe.
(Who are “they?” Why, the little factory gnomes who write the sell-by dates on
yogurt containers, of course. What? You say they have machines to do that now?
Oh. Well then.) What usually makes things go bad is exposure to air, heat, and
light. Kept cold and unopened, there’s no reason for things like yogurt, sour
cream, or cheese to magically turn poisonous and/or deadly the day after the
sell-by date. Once opened, though, all bets are off. Use your nose and your
eyes. If it looks or smells bad, it probably is*.
* I am a nutritionist and not
a food safety expert. Please do not construe this as advice on what you should
or should not consume. I seem to have inherited my father’s iron stomach and
have never gotten sick from food, despite having eaten things way older and more questionable than
unrefrigerated, day-old pizza and stale beer in my college dorm†. Your mileage may vary.
† Don’t hold it against me. I wasn’t always a nutritionist. J
Disclaimer: Amy Berger is not a physician and Tuit
Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this
site is not intended to diagnose,
treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.
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