• Active-ist Program
  • About Us
  • Blog
    • Lifestyle
    • Movement
    • Mealtime
      • Nutrition
      • Recipes
    • Pregnancy & Motherhood
  • GLAMamas
  • Subscribe/Contact
  • Love Notes
  • Policies and Disclaimers

Supporting healthy & happy families through all generations.

thrive@goliveabundance.com
Subscribe
Go Live AbundanceGo Live Abundance
Go Live AbundanceGo Live Abundance
  • Active-ist Program
  • Blog
    • Lifestyle
    • Mealtime
      • Nutrition
      • Recipes
    • Movement
    • Pregnancy & Motherhood
  • GLAMamas
  • About Us
    • Love Notes
Where We Shop for Healthy Groceries

Where We Shop for Healthy Groceries

August 4, 2021 Lifestyle, Mealtime, Nutrition

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

This post contains affiliate links and we may earn a small commission when you click on the links, at no additional cost to you. As an Amazon Affiliate, we earn from qualifying purchases. Each of these items we’ve recommended are products we use and love, and want to share them with you!

You also might be interested in

Creating Your Morning Ritual

Creating Your Morning Ritual

Jun 18, 2020

“Every morning I …” How would you finish that sentence?[...]

Pregnancy Mocktails To Try

Pregnancy Mocktails To Try

Nov 23, 2020

Oh how I look forward to sipping on a glass[...]

Shaping America One “But” at a Time – Part 1

Shaping America One “But” at a Time – Part 1

Apr 12, 2019

“But, I don’t feel like it.” This is the first in[...]

Read Posts by Category

  • Lifestyle
  • Mealtime
  • Motherhood
  • Movement
  • Nutrition
  • Pregnancy
  • Recipes

Connect With Us On Facebook

Connect With Us On Instagram

goliveabundance

Mother-daughter duo living a life of abundance within our Five Pillars of Wellness:
🧠Prime
🥩Nourish
🥾Move
💤Restore
👥Connect
Other account: @GLAMamas

Go Live Abundance
This corn salad makes a wonderful side for your di This corn salad makes a wonderful side for your dinner, or a dish to bring to a potluck. It uses the best of summer’s ingredients so make it soon! Get the recipe at goliveabundance.com.

#easyrecipes #healthyrecipes #cookingtips
That feeling you get when your client leaves this That feeling you get when your client leaves this memo on their payment 🥰 It’s always my goal to help you challenge yourself physically and mentally, while also having FUN!

#personaltrainer #healthcoach #wellnesscoach
Getting off-road with your exercise isn’t just g Getting off-road with your exercise isn’t just good for your body, it’s good for your brain, too! 🧠 

#exercisemotivation #getoutside #healthcoach
Happy #nationalgrandparentsday! Grandparents play Happy #nationalgrandparentsday! Grandparents play such an important role in their families and in society. ❤️

#longevity #healthcoach #familymatters
So great to see you! Thanks for stopping by and sa So great to see you! Thanks for stopping by and saying hello!! #hummingbird #outdoors #sundayvibes #happylife
We are starting to hear lots of news about Covid a We are starting to hear lots of news about Covid again. Here’s something we’ve been saying all along. Start thinking about exercise as medicine! 

#exercisemotivation #healthcoach #personaltrainer
If we could capture in a pill, all of the benefits If we could capture in a pill, all of the benefits that exercise has for our bodies as well as our minds, it would be the most prescribed medicine out there. The beauty of exercise is that it’s available to you, without a prescription at any time you want, anywhere. That means there truly are no excuses for not moving your body. How are you moving your body today?
#exercisemotivation #healthcoach #wellnesscoach #virtualtrainer
Love watching these adorable hummingbirds! I’m r Love watching these adorable hummingbirds! I’m ready for the cooler temps but not ready to see these guys go!! #hummingbird #nature #outdoors
Thank you for such kind words, Sheryl! 💗 YOU we Thank you for such kind words, Sheryl! 💗 YOU were fully in and committed and you made no excuses! You decided to make a change and you did it. You invested in yourself and you rocked it! 

Are you ready to change your life like Sheryl did? Learn more about our Active-ist program at goliveabundance.com

#healthcoach #wellnesscoach #healthjourney
Are you falling into the pit of comfort or are you Are you falling into the pit of comfort or are you actively choosing ways to get uncomfortable? Don’t succumb to today’s goal of making everything easier - challenging yourself and doing the work is what humans were made for. You will feel so much better, physically and mentally, by focusing on getting uncomfortable. Read the full blog, “Choose the Path Less Comfortable”, on our website: https://goliveabundance.com/choose-the-path-less-comfortable/

#mindset #goalgetter #workhard
It’s grilling season which means a delicious BBQ It’s grilling season which means a delicious BBQ sauce is critical! The problem we’ve encountered over the years is that most store-bought sauces have huge amounts of sugar. Many even use high fructose corn syrup, which is worse for our health than table sugar.

That’s why I decided to try making my own. After experimenting with different recipes, I’ve finally found a winner that my family and I love, and have shared that below with you! Yes, there’s still sugar, but it’s less than what you’ll find in most premade versions. If you follow us, you know that we don’t entirely cut out foods that we love, we just find ways to make them ourselves, which ends up making them healthier for us!

Try this sauce out for yourself and see what you think! Recipe linked in our profile bio. 

#homemade #easyrecipes #bbq #barbecue #yummy
A little cuteness for your Friday! Who knew that t A little cuteness for your Friday! Who knew that turtles like their shells scratched?! #cute #adorable #fridayfun
Start being like a baby! You might learn a thing o Start being like a baby! You might learn a thing or two 😉 #mindset #goalgetter #attitudematters
Tuscan chicken was the request from the birthday b Tuscan chicken was the request from the birthday boy for our family dinner this weekend! This time was the best version yet, so we made a little tweak to our online recipe. You can eat this savory, saucy chicken dish by itself, or serve it with some pasta and/or garlic bread. We served it with both for the birthday meal, plus a fresh salad with a delicious vinaigrette that we’ll share soon, too! Find the updated recipe here (clickable link in our profile bio): https://goliveabundance.com/tuscan-chicken/

#healthyrecipes #healthyfood #easyrecipes
This is golden! Check out how gelatinous it is - I This is golden! Check out how gelatinous it is - I can cut it into shapes🤣😂! Homemade beef bone broth….rich and super nutrish! This was simmered for 48+ hours on low in the slow cooker. #healthyfood #healthygut #microbiome #guthealth
You asked for it, so here it is! Get Irene’s jal You asked for it, so here it is! Get Irene’s jalapeño beef recipe at our website (clickable link in our profile bio): goliveabundance.com.
#easyrecipes #healthyrecipes #keto #lowcarb #carnivore
Time to get to work! After six weeks of focusing o Time to get to work! After six weeks of focusing on rest and only light movement (walking, babywearing, playing with my preschooler, home chores, etc), I am so ready to begin toning up and building strength and endurance. It’s challenging to find the time for a dedicated workout in this season of life, but I also know that it gives me more energy and mental clarity, makes me feel good and allows me to do more physical activities, all of which make me a better mama.

I’m excited to see where I can take this new mom (of two) bod! And yes, I know I am super lucky that my mom, personal trainer and Mytė of my babies are all the same person 🤣. Shoutout to the other postpartum ladies getting back on the workout train, too! #postpartum #mombod #fitmom
This workout was an extra fun one, but wait! There This workout was an extra fun one, but wait! There’s a practical, functional element here. Your ability to do everyday “simple” tasks like carrying your groceries (or watermelon!), playing with a child or grandchild, or moving an outdoor planter full of soil and flowers is determined by your strength. Maintain your strength —> maintain your independence. No weights at home? There are countless household items you could use in place of dumbbells. And, even doing only bodyweight exercises is great, if needed. There’s no bad time to start, other than not starting at all. Take control of your health and start feeling amazing! 🍉💪

#longevity #womenshealth #aging #aginggracefully #agingbackwards
Morning walk views! These little bitty pretty ones Morning walk views! These little bitty pretty ones are so fun to see ! 😍❤️ #walk #fawns #morningroutine #morningwalk #outdoors
Better-than-restaurant wings right here! Try them Better-than-restaurant wings right here! Try them yourself. You won’t be disappointed!

#easyrecipes #simplerecipes #healthyrecipes
Load More... Follow on Instagram

About     Subscribe / Contact     
Love Notes     Policies / Disclaimers

© 2023 · Sveikata Group LLC

Prev Next