We often get asked where we shop for our healthy groceries. So, we wanted to share a little about the places we go often (or every once in a while), in the hopes that it might help you with your own grocery shopping strategy.
First, when it comes to healthy shopping venues, here are the factors we believe matter most:
- Location – how close the grocery store is to your home or office
- Availability of healthy food options – both organic and non-organic produce, pasture-raised meat and eggs and wild-caught seafood
- Prices – how expensive said produce and meats are compared to other accessible stores
- Fun – the experience matters! If you enjoy shopping at a certain store, but it is a little further away than another option near you, it’s worth trying to make the further one work! For many people, grocery shopping is a tedious and time-consuming chore on a never-ending to-do list. The more fun you can inject in your daily life tasks, the more you support your feelings of everyday joy!
Which of these factors come out on top will be dependent upon individual preference. Some people find location and ease of access or convenience from work or home more important than better prices. You might think about where your current go-to stores fall within these four categories and whether you want to make any changes.
Also, if sticking to a specific budget is important to you, be sure to read our other post sharing six ways to eat healthy on a budget. It provides some ideas to consider when you plan your meals and shop for groceries.
Next, we’ll share the places we tend to shop at most and why:
Whole Foods
There’s a soft spot in our hearts for Whole Foods. Shopping there is truly enjoyable for us. Before the pandemic started, we’d meet on a Saturday, purchase a glass of wine from their little coffee and wine bar and sip and shop for groceries together. The store provides a sensory experience. The decor and design feels more like a warm and inviting restaurant vibe than a brightly-lit store packed with people racing around with their carts. The produce is stocked in eye-catching ways, making you want to buy a fruit or vegetable from each collection of tables or vertical-stacked shelves. As you continue through the store, you pass the fish counter, packed with beautiful seafood options, then the butcher area, which makes you want to fire up your grill when you get home, and so on. Their cheese selection alone will have you inspired to create a mouthwatering charcuterie board every time! They also have tiny kids’ carts, so Brooks gets to join in on the grocery shopping fun! Talk about a great way to help your children enjoy grocery shopping with you and learn to love the process of making delicious homemade meals!
As far as our actual grocery shopping-strategy at Whole Foods, the store can’t be beat for most produce options. The produce is always fantastically fresh and most items are at great prices.
Our top tip for shopping at Whole Foods is to watch for and plan around sales. We do this by using two apps. The first is the Whole Foods app. This is a must if you’re an Amazon Prime member, because the app gives you a barcode to scan at checkout, which gives you an additional 10% discount on sale items, plus access to exclusive sales only for Prime members! When you’re in the app, click on Savings at the top to see the current week’s sales. You’ll notice that some sales say “in-store only,” which means you won’t be able to purchase those items at the sale price if you do a delivery or pickup order through the Amazon app.
Which leads us to the second app we use for our Whole Foods shopping and sales watching: the Amazon app. When you open the app, click on Whole Foods in the upper left-hand corner of the homepage. From there, you can scroll down and click on “This week’s best deals” to see more sales that might not have been mentioned in the Whole Foods app. The Whole Foods section of the Amazon app is also where you can place an online order for groceries that you can choose to pick up or have delivered to your house! Pickup and delivery are both free when you spend $35 or more (although we do recommend a tip for the nice worker who prepared and delivered your order). This option is another reason we love Whole Foods. If running to the store isn’t in the cards for some reason, we can quickly place an online order and have it delivered to our doorstep in a few hours.
You’ll often find us buying these products when they go on sale:
- 80/20 Grass-fed Ground Beef – ends up around $3.50 per pound when it’s on sale! (although we also buy this at full price as needed)
- Nature’s Rancher Paleo Sugar-Free Uncured Bacon – around $5 per package
- Grass-fed Chuck Roast – around $4.50 per pound
- Bonafide Provisions Frozen Bone Broth – around $7 per package
- King Salmon, Halibut and other types of wild fish or shellfish – prices vary, but typically very good deals when on sale!
- Luke’s Lobster Roll Kits – around $14
- Organic strawberries – prices vary depending on the sale, but usually around $3 a carton
- Good Culture Cottage Cheese – around $4.50 a container (the double cream cottage cheese is the BEST!!!)
- Alexia brand onion rings and potato puffs – we don’t eat out at restaurants very often. Instead, we like to replicate some items we enjoy at restaurants from home, and with ingredients we can control. The onion rings are Irene’s personal favorite and simply need to be baked (no frying in seed oil necessary!). The tots are Brianna’s favorite. Toss them in a little melted butter or olive oil, bake until crispy and then top with truffle oil, Parmesan cheese and chopped parsley for some healthier truffle tots!
- Gourmet cheeses – they often have great sales at their cheese counter, allowing you to craft a very nice cheese board on a budget
Of course, we buy other products that aren’t on sale, but those are some of the best deals that we watch for. Two examples of items we purchase regardless of being on sale or not include:
- Frozen veggies – we usually keep bags of frozen organic riced cauliflower, bell pepper strips, chopped mushrooms, chopped spinach and chopped kale in our freezers at home. This makes it easy to throw together a meal even if you forgot to purchase a certain veggie fresh from the store. The mushrooms are delicious browned and caramelized in butter and eaten with eggs or steak. We also incorporate them into soups or curries (same with the bell pepper strips, spinach and kale). We’ll add a handful of spinach and kale to our smoothies for a nutrient boost as well. Riced cauliflower is a wonderful substitute for traditional rice in meals.
- Brillat-Savarin cheese – we had to include Brianna’s all-time favorite cheese here. There’s much more to the story behind this cheese, but that’s for a future day! 🙂 If you enjoy brie-style cheeses, be sure to pick this one up if you see it. You want the small whole wheel version (around 3.5” in diameter), not a cut chunk from a bigger wheel.
Costco
You might normally think of Costco as the place to stock up on toilet paper and bulk amounts of shelf-stable foods, but it’s actually a great source for many healthy items that we purchase. Here’s what we buy on a regular basis from Costco at great prices:
- Red wine – a great selection at lower prices than you can usually find (they also have great prices on various types of hard alcohol as well)
- Organic produce – especially the brussels sprouts, broccoli florets, mushrooms, berries
- Nonorganic produce – avocados, limes, watermelon
- Sauerkraut – you can purchase a HUGE 42oz container of Wildbrine sauerkraut for around $7 (the much smaller 18oz containers from Whole Foods cost the same amount!)
- Kerrygold Grass-fed butter – the BEST butter EVER and way cheaper at Costco than anywhere else!
- Organic Horizon Heavy Whipping Cream (for coffee and recipes) – much cheaper than in other grocery stores
- Cheese – Costco has a great selection of gourmet and not-so-gourmet cheeses at fantastic prices. You’ll find gems like raw sheep’s milk cheese from Sardinia as well as delicious Parmigiano Reggiano. They also carry the tastiest feta cheese from Greece (Dodoni)!
- Eggs – We love our local farm-fresh eggs, but this is a great option when we’re in a pinch. You can get two dozen organic eggs for about $6. They are certified humane, which means the chickens have had a higher quality of life and had more access to outdoor grasses and bugs (resulting in a more nutritious egg).
- Fresh and frozen fish – on weekends, Costco usually has a wonderful selection of wild fish like Chilean sea bass and halibut, at amazing prices. Sometimes we cook it that same day or in the next couple days, or else we cut it into smaller pieces and place in the freezer for future use. Costco also has great frozen options that are individually wrapped. We like to keep bags of frozen filets (wild sockeye salmon and Mahi Mahi usually), as well as wild-caught scallops and shrimp in our freezer for easy meal prep.
- Frozen vegetables – we don’t eat a ton of frozen veggies, but we do like to keep bags of frozen organic mixed berries and broccoli on hand for the occasional smoothie. We also like to keep the riced cauliflower on-hand for various meals (Although we do not recommend microwaving the cauliflower as instructed because of the potential toxins from the plastic. We prefer to cook it on the stovetop.)
- Organic coffee – Costco has a variety of fantastic coffee brands that are organic and Fair Trade certified, all at great prices
- Sardines – you can purchase a 10-pack of boneless, skinless Season brand sardines for $9.99. That’s our kind of dollar menu item!!
- Snack items – Whisps, nuts, dried sausages and jerky all at great prices
Bakers
This is the store Irene goes to when the longer trek to Whole Foods doesn’t work, or just a few items are needed. Bakers has a pretty good selection of organic foods, and even some grass-fed meats and pasture-raised eggs.
Plum Creek Farms
We often talk about PCF and their delicious products. We purchase all of our chicken and eggs from PCF. They also have other locally-produced items that we sometimes purchase as well.
Wohlner’s
Whenever we need a pork shoulder roast, Wohlner’s is where we go! Their pork shoulders are better than any other option we’ve tried from other stores. Wohlner’s is a great option for purchasing local meats and eggs if you’re in the Omaha area.
Walmart
We don’t shop at Walmart very often. That being said, their produce selection has greatly improved in recent years and they even have a small number of organic options as well. They also have grass-fed beef options and carry the Bonafide Provisions chicken and beef broths at a great regular price (around $8), too.
We hope sharing a little about where we buy our groceries helps you in your own grocery shopping effort.
Consider the stores available to you in your area. We know some people love their local Aldi, City Market, Safeway, Trader Joe’s and others, too. The stores listed here are simply what work best for us out of all of our local options available.
A quick internet search of “grass-fed meat [Insert Location]” or “organic produce [Insert Location]” may help you uncover nearby stores you didn’t know about and can go check out. This website is also a great resource for learning about farmers and producers in your area who focus on pasture-raised meats.
Another great option in the summer months is your local farmers market.
Farmers markets are a great source of locally grown produce and locally raised meats and farm fresh eggs. You’re supporting your local farmers, small businesses and economy. The food you buy will have traveled less to get to you, meaning it is fresher and more nutrient-dense. Plus, you can feel good knowing where your food came from. There’s something extra special about meeting the people who grew your food for you and creating relationships with them. It makes you feel so much more connected to your food and your community, too. In addition, going to the farmers market can be an enjoyable experience and a great way to spend time outdoors.
Kudos to you for placing a priority on your nutrition and health! As always, reach out to us with any questions or comments.
Active-ists for your health,
Irene & Brianna
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