Shopping for health a wise idea

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Blustery winds and low temperatures make one hungry. Hunger means more grocery shopping. Food costs have seemed to increase with higher gasoline and fuel costs. More consumers are aware of the relationship between diet and health.

Nutrition articles urge us to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains. How does the wise consumer put all the nutrition information into practice and not blow the family food budget?

Many grocery stores provide tools for buying wisely. Pamphlets are there to give tips on nutritive values of foods as well as recipes for preparation of many of their products.

The shelves contain unit pricing information that allows us to compare the cost of the store brand versus a nationally advertised product.

When you are trying to decide which box of crackers or cookies to buy, do you read the nutrition information panel? We need to look at the serving size to compare the same amount of food before we decide which one has the most fat or sugar.

When buying many products, like juices for example, the ingredient list is important to tell us whether pure juice or water and sugar come first. Remember, ingredients are listed in descending order according to their weight.

Foods of color are the hot tickets in nutrition. We need the flavonoids that are present in colored fruits such as blueberries, purple grapes and oranges. Berries are of interest due to their large content of anthocyanins and other flavonols.

These dietary antioxidants are believed to play a role in prevention of chronic disease as cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Every day there should be some leafy green and deep orange food on the plate.

Whole fruits are preferable to the juice since they provide fiber, vitamins A, C, and E, folic acid and selenium. One can get discouraged at the price of fresh fruits and vegetables during this time of year and venture over to the canned food aisle.

Canned and frozen fruits and vegetables are great choices because they are picked, packed and canned at the peak of ripeness when antioxidant and nutrient content are the highest.

But before we leave the produce section, we need to remember that every member of our family should have two or three cups of vegetables each day. Although we like fresh asparagus, spinach and tomatoes, they are out of season now and thus more expensive.

We can get the same nutrients for less money if we buy carrots, cabbage, sweet peppers and bok choy. Carrots – so full of beta carotene that produces vitamin A – can be used in many ways, raw for snacks, cooked with a whiff of ginger, pureed and mixed with peanuts ground in the food processor and low fat plain yogurt.

Did you know that cooked carrots will give us more vitamin A than raw carrots? That also is true for processed tomatoes such as those fresh-tasting diced tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste.

Some member of the cabbage family should be in our grocery cart every week. Who would ever think that something as plain looking as a head of cabbage could be so valuable for its content of sulforaphanes and dithiolthiones? That humble onion with its sulfites is equally important in stews, soups and stir-fries – foods we can make from scratch and not pay for those frozen packets of meals with sauces that may contain trans fats.

As we keep our cart on the perimeter of the store – never strolling down each aisle picking up items not on our list -we come to the cereal, rice and pasta aisle. Each of us needs six servings per day and three of those should be whole grain to give the fiber we need.

Bushels of money can be saved if we make our own bread using whole wheat flour mixed with white flour. If we get tired of oatmeal for breakfast, why not try the recipe that the University of Maine Cooperative Extension just sent:

Baked Oatmeal Breakfast

2 cups dry oatmeal, old-fashioned or quick

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 cup raisins or any dried fruit

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 cups milk, preferably low fat

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 egg

1 tbsp canola or corn oil

Stir together the oatmeal, brown sugar, raisins, baking powder and cinnamon. In another bowl, combine the milk, applesauce, egg and oil. Mix well with a whisk or fork. Add to the dry ingredients and stir well. Pour into an oiled baking dish. Bake at 350-375 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Serve warm. May be stored in refrigerator or frozen. Yield: eight servings. Cost per serving: 17 cents, much less than bakery muffins at 99 cents each or doughnuts at 50 cents; about half the cost of a frozen waffle.

Breakfast bars and granola bars are convenient, but cannot hold a candle to this oatmeal treat when it comes to nutrient density.

Since we know that we need to have fish two or three times a week, we go by the canned meat aisle and pick up tuna, sardines or mackerel, fish that give the omega-3 fatty acids. At the fresh fish counter, a good buy is tilapia.

Buying whole chickens allows us to remove as much fat and skin as we can and then cook the chicken in enough water to give us great chicken broth for soups and stew.

We cannot get as much protein for the dollar from any food as we can from eggs. Use them freely – not necessarily two at one meal. Why swallow supplements of antioxidants when eggs are excellent sources of lutein and zeaxanthin?

Another good source of protein can be found in the dried bean aisle. We need to cook at least a half-pound per person of dried beans, peas or lentils per week to serve in a variety of ways – baked beans, chili, hummus, 3-bean salad, black bean soup and dahl. The legumes, like oatmeal, contain soluble fiber, and also folate.

A first step to stretching our food dollar may need to be pushing our cart by the many convenience, packaged foods that fill our grocery store shelves. They do save time but is it worth the wide difference in the cost? A bigger factor than cost may be the difference in our health if we eat foods prepared in our kitchens where we know the ingredients are those that have been used by generations.

Katherine O. Musgrave is a registered dietitian and professor emerita at the University of Maine.