Grocery shopping tips & tools

Ouf! It's been a busy few days- sorry for the lack of blogs!

This one's a short one- but thought I'd give you a few fun facts and tools you can use the next time you go grocery shopping.

Comparing salt content of fresh, frozen and canned vegetables

1 cup canned peas: 453 mg sodium
1 cup frozen peas: 170mg sodium
1 cup fresh peas: 8mg sodium

When buying bread:

Choose one with ‘whole grain’ as the first ingredient and with more than 2-3grams of fibre per slice.

When buying cereal:

A better choice has at least 4 g fibre per 30 g serving.

A better choice has less than 1-3 g fat per serving listed on the box- some granola-type cereals can have up to 5 g per serving!

A better granola-type cereal will have fruit and nuts listed on the ingredient list before sugar and oil.

When buying pasta:

Choosing whole wheat pasta provides 2-4g fibre per 1 cup cooked pasta

Rice

1 cup cooked white rice= 1g fibre
1 cup brown rice= 3g fibre
1 cup wild rice= 4g fibre

Milk & Alternatives

Comparing fat in milk (MF= Milk Fat)

1 cup 3.25% MF= 2 tsp fat
1 cup 2% fat MF= 1 tsp fat
1 cup 1% fat or buttermilk= 0.5 tsp fat
1 cup 0.1% fat= 0 tsp fat

Meat & Alternatives

Comparing fat content in ground beef:

Regular: 30% fat = 22g fat/3oz
Lean: 17% fat= 12g fat/3oz
Extra lean: 10% fat= 7g fat/3oz

Source: www.capitalhealth.ca