Your Shopping Trolley Determines Your Health: Shop Smarter Every Week

Now, coming up next, we're going to be talking about how to transform your supermarket trolley. And this is a funny story that I need to share before we get started. One of my favourite things when I'm at the... Actually, it's not even a favourite thing. One of the funniest things when I'm at the supermarket is bumping into members. And it's quite funny because so often, as soon as they spot me, you kind of... I see them kind of quickly trying to steer their trolley down a different aisle, trying to like, oh, I didn't see Snidge was there. It's really quite funny. Or if I happen to cross them in an aisle, they'll often say, oh no, don't look into my trolley. Or, oh, we're having a party, so we've got all this stuff in there. And you know what's even funnier is that it's actually made me a little bit more self-conscious now. I sort of catch myself out thinking, oh, I hope none of my members see what's in my trolley today. And there'll be times where we've got treats or whatever going on, and I'm thinking, oh, I hope I just don't bump into anyone. It's actually really funny. But here's the thing. If you happen to see me out, I'm never judging anyone's trolley because we all buy whatever we're going to buy, convenience foods and things we simply enjoy from time to time. What I'm more interested in is what your trolley says about the week ahead and helping you to make better choices for your trolley. Because the thing is, is that whatever goes into your trolley comes home with you. And then it becomes tomorrow's breakfast. It becomes tomorrow night's dinner. And they are the snacks that you reach for when you're hungry and the lunch that you pack for work. Your trolley is setting up your future self. And it really is an important stop. So whether we're talking about trolleys or the hand basket or whatever, whatever you're bringing home from the supermarket is pretty much dictating a lot of your food choices. So I think it's a really important point to get some help on and some strategies around making the better choices. So today we're going to transform your supermarket trolley. And my first tip has nothing to do with the food at all and what's actually going into your trolley. My first tip is to never shop when you're hungry. Now, honestly, this is one of the biggest game changers because when you're hungry, everything looks good. And the things that take more of your attention are the things that are higher in sugar and higher in fat. And suddenly, the biscuits and the chocolates seem to be calling your name. The bakery smells amazing. Those croissants are absolutely delicious. And those specials at the end of every aisle, the chips, the biscuits, they somehow seem to be impossible to resist. And you're like popping them into your supermarket trolley. So if you arrive at the supermarket after a long day of work or after a day of activities, and you are hungry, my first suggestion is walk straight in, grab a bottle of water, unless you have one in your bag or in your car, pick a healthy snack, maybe a handful of nuts and a piece of fruit, something that you can eat on the go, maybe one of those bounce protein balls or something like that. Try to avoid the actual other protein bars, but I think they're fabulous. But get yourself something, a punnet of cherry tomatoes and a segment of cabana even, I don't mind, whatever it is, or some jerky, that's a If you have a spoon in your bag, I tend to always carry a spoon, you can grab yourself a yogurt and a piece of fruit, sit outside, take five minutes, have your drink of water, because a lot of the time it's just dehydration when we've had a busy day, eat the snack, give yourself just that couple of minutes, then head back in. And you'll be amazed how much easier it is to make decisions that are going to be such better options for you when you get home the next day and probably the rest of the week. So that's the first step. Now that we are feeling better, we're making better conscious decisions because the stomach's not growling, which is then changing what we are seeing, like that hunter-gatherer, we are only seeing the things to fulfill the gap at the moment. So once that is out of the way, then we can start to look at, well, what are some of the things to choose? I'm going to talk you through a typical supermarket trolley experience for myself. As we walk in, the first thing that I'm walking into is there's the bakery and the fresh produce. So I'm grabbing some wholemeal bread, I will grab, we're not big wrap people, so I don't do a lot of wraps, the thins, the kids like those when we put burgers together for lunches. Then I'll grab some fruit and veg, always having some apples, depending on what's in season, there's always bananas, veggies, some salad veggies, veggies that we can steam, veggies that we can stir fry, grabbing all that, making sure I've got garlic, onion, ginger, turmeric for my morning smoothie. Then heading into the protein or into the deli section. From the deli, I'm always getting either some fish, some chicken, or definitely getting some feta. If I haven't had time to marinate olives, I'll get some olives as well. Then going into the protein section, going to get definitely some chicken thighs, some sort of a mince, whether that be turkey mince or a beef mince, and then some other pieces of meat, whatever it is that you've got, according to the recipe, whatever I've got on. Then going into the milk section, always getting full cream milk and a soy milk and an almond milk. Then going into the sort of pantry aisles, I guess I make sure that I've got, oh, the health food section is always across from the protein section usually, always grabbing from there cacao, my spirulina powder from there, nuts, seeds, peanut butter, getting all those from there. I tend not to get honey from the supermarket, but if you're not, if you don't have another place to buy your honey, then grab it from there. Then going to go into making sure I've got oats, that's probably the only real cereal that we buy. We always do sometimes have some cornflakes that we can mix seeds and nuts with and fruit with as a quick snack. I mean, sorry, as a quick breakfast, but then also going through making sure through the pantry aisles that we've got our apple cider vinegar, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, peanut oil, we use for some cooking, sesame oil, making sure we've got soy sauce, making sure we've got the tinned foods. The only things that I buy is the canned tomatoes and then the beans and chickpeas. I get the tuna in olive oil all the time, although some of my kids prefer it in the spring water. Then we're getting rice, basmati rice is usually my go-to, variety of pastas. Sometimes I might get the red lentil pastas or the chickpea pastas or something like that, but generally it's just the traditional, normal lentils. What else? And then I always get rice crackers, the brown rice cakes, sorry. I get brown rice cakes. I'll always get some of the plain corn chips as well. And then we're going into making sure that there's coconut milk in cans for smoothies. Then along the back, we're making sure that we have eggs, making sure that we've got cheese and yogurts, Greek style yogurt is pretty much what I'm getting. Then from the healthy aisle, the fridge section, I'm always getting packets of tofu. So I've got that there. In the frozen section, making sure that we've got a nice blend of mango and other frozen berries, some edamame, then your frozen beans and peas. I always like to get, I don't buy a lot of frozen veggies other than corn and peas. They're kind of my main go-to's, but if you're going to find it challenging to cook and cut up veggies and get all that ready, there are so many frozen ones that you can get that are just as good and fresh, but all of a sudden you've got, that's kind of it. So as you can see, a lot of the ingredients that I am getting are things that I can throw together and build on. A lot of them are the sort of raw or the base ingredients, I guess, that we can then throw together. But I always like to shop to some recipes so I know roughly what I'm getting, but sometimes I just like having the ingredients there that I can just throw things together. But definitely having those snacky things, the lunch and the breakfasts, I'm always topping those things up and usually I'll have a shopping list that I'll go and get the lunch ingredients. But simple and easy, I bypass a lot of the heavily processed foods in the fridges and in the pantries. I try to pick the plain versions of all of the crackers and things like that because that's where you can pair them with something that's going to give you, you know, whether that's dips or cheese, sliced tomato, tins of tuna, whatever it is, it makes it a whole heap easier. But I hope that's given you some good ideas around how to navigate around the supermarket. There's some aisles that I completely ignore and don't go down, like the soft drinks aisle, although they're blending them all together, which I've noticed now they're kind of forcing us to go into all of the aisles because they're putting random things in random places. That's what I noticed at my local supermarket anyway. But I can still quite confidently walk past a whole bunch of stuff that I'm not going to need. But I hope that gives you an idea of some of the things that you can bring home and you can throw together. But the most important thing is to make sure that you are not hungry when you arrive at the supermarket.