Mom Does Not Always Know Best

We’ve all witnessed that scene. A mom, obviously not rich, waiting in line with her brood, at the checkout counter, her shopping cart overflowing with bottled water and sodas. Inspired by that image, I decided to take a look at some hard Nielsen data on U.S grocery sales, and came across some rather stunning numbers:

La Marguerite Blog Compilation

Add it all up, and you’ve got the majority of households spending between a fourth and a third of their grocery budget on junk, and empty calories. That’s a lot of money, that could be used on other more nutritious groceries such as milk, fruit, vegetable, meat, and other non processed food. It’s also wasted precious dollars in increasingly dire economic times.

There are plenty of reasons why women – the primary grocery shoppers – persist with such deplorable spending habits. Ten, according to a recent report from US News & World Report, ‘10 Things the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know’:

1. Junk food makers spend billions advertising unhealthy foods to kids
2. The studies that food producers support tend to minimize health concerns associated with their products
3. Junk food makers donate large sums of money to professional nutrition associations
4. More processing means more profits, but typically makes the food less healthy
5. Less-processed foods are generally more satiating than their highly processed counterparts
6. Many supposedly healthy replacement foods are hardly healthier than the foods they replace
7. A health claim on the label doesn’t necessarily make a food healthy
8. Food industry pressure has made nutritional guidelines confusing
9. The food industry funds front groups that fight antiobesity public health initiatives
10. The food industry works aggressively to discredit its critics

Will the stores take the relay and act as advocates for the shoppers? According to another study, this one from Bishop Consulting, ‘In-Store Nutritionists Will Be as Commonplace as Pharmacists within Ten Years‘, some encouraging trends are taking place in grocery retail, along with initiatives from some manufacturers.

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Green Grocery Shopper Conundrum

All the kids are home from their various trips. Yesterday was major grocery shopping time. What to do? Shop at Whole Foods, within biking distance but horribly expensive. Or Trader’s Joe, a lot easier on my pocketbook, but too far not to drive to.

What would you have done?

This, folks, are the kinds of negotiations that take place daily in my life as a Green Girl Wannabe. I will keep you guessing as to what happened . . .

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Green Senior Moments

Too much thinking about my green blog. Green Guru stopped me, just as I was stepping out the door, my hand still on the handle. The same handle that holds our empty green bags. We joked that I was having a green senior moment. The trip to Whole Foods was very jolly. I was still laughing when I got out of the car. If not for Green Guru, I was heading to the store . . . without the bags.

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The Split

Last night, I attended my first gathering of the SiliconFrench CleanTech and Sustainability group. The theme was cars and alternative energies. I really got into the discussion, and left with my head buzzing with ideas, possibities for new ventures. On my way back, I had to stop for groceries at Whole Foods. That’s when the “Paper or Plastic” hit me once more, and with it the sinking feeling of my inadequacy, of the split between my intellectual declarations, and the sad reality of my actions. There are miles between understanding with one’s head, and taking steps. How do I reconcile that split within myself? In that answer, lies more than just the promise of a more whole individual person -me- , but also maybe the beginning of a global solution.

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