Someone once said to me that an easy step to feeding your family more healthy food is to only shop on the perimeter of the grocery store. That is because the perimeter consists of meat, produce, dairy, and refrigerated perishable items, while the inner aisles consist of processed, preserved and frozen foods. However, when I read articles or see stories about these “uber”coupon clippers”I have to wonder how someone can possibly accomplish such amazing savings if you DON’T shop in those inner aisles?
For one thing, health foods (and when I say health foods I mean real health foods, not “whole grain goldfish”) never offer coupons. I don’t pretend to be a big coupon clipper, but I am a big coupon looker, and I NEVER see coupons for “real”health foods.
Secondly, markets will have price cuts on meats and produce, but rarely do they offer them on organic products. I suppose you could go non-organic to save a few bucks, but do you want to buy fish that’s on sale? Pass! If a store is wanting to dump meat or fish, I’m suspect. Produce wears it’s age on it’s skin, but with meat you don’t know it’s bad until you the next day when your stomach muscles are sore from throwing up and your butt hurts from…well…you know!
When the New York Times did a feature story on the women who run FabulesslyFrugal.com , I couldn’t help but notice that all of the products pictured in the woman’s kitchen were processed big brand names foods which I know have mile long ingredients lists.
That brings me to the other old adage about eating better. Besides the shopping the perimeter rule, the other health rule is never to buy packaged food with more than 5 ingredients. The longer the list of ingredients, the more preservatives, salt, chemicals, and artificial things are contained within.
So what are those of us to do if we want to feed our kids healthy foods, but want to save money? It seems the only way to feed your family organic on a budget is to grow it yourself. There are a lot of things green in my house, but my thumbs are not one of them!
And if you want to take this even further into Ridiculand, considering how we are all sharing the healthcare costs of each other via insurance rates and healthcare reform, I’ll be paying for the medical bills of those coupon clipping, aisle shopping, money saving folks, regardless!
Okay! I know! I’m going on a bit of a rant. I’m actually quite in awe of those people who can shop for free. It’s sort of like they’ve figured out how to win at the lottery. For me this is really about the quandary between coupons vs. healthy eating. I wish that somewhere out there a marketing executive for a health food company is reading this and realizing that they are under serving their health seeking consumers by not jumping deeper into coupon world. Maybe if they did,they’d see that it has just as much to do with promoting their brand as it does with passing on savings to consumers. In the meantime, I can at least save on laundry soap,unless of course you want to talk about coupons for those wanting to go green!!
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