Going grocery shopping can sometimes be a bit overwhelming, there are so many products to choose from! Just look at the bread section: depending on the size of the supermarket, you can get up to 20 different brands and types of bread. So, which should I choose? More often than not, we just go with what we know (man is a creature of habit, after all). But you might be missing out on the good stuff and instead buying loads of rubbish full of saturated fats, sugar and eco-nightmarish palm oil. So, for this week, we thought to give you a few tips on how to find your way in today’s grocery jungle and make the good choices for your body and our planet!

  1. Have a plan

This one might seem obvious, but a lot of people actually don’t do it. Make sure to make a shopping list before going out to buy your food and stick to it. This way, you will avoid unnecessary and often unhealthy purchases. Don’t forget, if you don’t buy it, you won’t eat it!

2. Read the labels

All too often we don’t really look at what we buy and that’s because, again, we’re creatures of habit and tend to buy things we’ve always bought. So, why look closer? It’s worth the additional time to check out the nutritional label and list of ingredients, to make sure that what we buy is also good for us. Avoid products high in sugar (to be found under Carbohydrates: of which sugars), high in fat and the ones who use palm oil. While palm oil is a vegetable oil, thousands of acres of rain forest are destroyed due to its production, which is one of the main causes for our current climate crisis.

3. Favour natural and local food

By buying natural, non-processed foods, you make sure that you only get the nutrients that your body needs and none of those chemicals that we now know can have a negative impact on your health by harming our endocrine system and causing various types of cancer. And if they’re local and seasonal, even better! Yes, tomatoes are usually produced in heated greenhouses when it’s autumn or winter (even in Spain), which have a huge CO2-footprint. So, don’t forget that your choices in the supermarket CAN have a big impact on global pollution. Think about it: if nobody buys tomatoes out of season, then production will eventually stop, therefore pollution will diminish.

Every time you buy a certain product, you also vote for a certain type of production!