Expert Profile: No Frills

In past installments of our PN Expert Profiles, we’ve peeked inside the daily routine of folks who make their living by helping others achieve optimum health and wellness, good nutrition, and athletic performance.

We’ve looked at some of the challenges they face, and the strategies they use to manage those challenges. We’ve asked the tough questions: What do they eat? What do they do all day? How do they find time to go to the gym? We’ve even given you a literal look inside their fridges, or inside their Tupperware.

Over the last few weeks we got to thinking that “experts” aren’t just people — they’re also groups, agencies, institutions, and organizations. Experts help organize our lives, provide information, assistance, and/or support. We look to “experts” to help us answer questions like “What should I eat?”

Grocery stores are powerful “experts” in most people’s lives. The food industry devotes a lot of time and energy to helping us make decisions about what to buy and eat, and how. This includes what products are produced, how they’re marketed, and even the little things like where they’re placed in the store, or how much they cost. Grocery stores are particularly important for folks following PN — after all, it’s where PNers spend quality time, and where they make a lot of major decisions. But many other people have also had food on the brain lately too: Food prices are going up. Food safety is a concern. And lots of people want to know how to eat environmentally.

So we asked: How do food stores act like “experts”, and how do they use their power for good… or otherwise?

Today’s profile focuses on a discount supermarket familiar to most Canadians: No Frills.

No Frills: Spare a Dollar, Spoil the Diet?

I’ve always been a sucker for a good sale or bargain buy. Whether it’s finding cheap off-season clothes for the kids, a limited-time sale price on protein powder, or a real steal on a 40-pack of toilet paper, saving money on a sweet deal feels good. With the recent precarious economic climate, stocking up on sale items is not only a smart, satisfying way to shop. To many people, it’s a necessity. Financial stress is hitting each of us in different ways. Some people face major changes to jobs and homes. Others are trying to cope with and budget for higher prices on gasoline, food, and other common goods. No matter how we’re individually affected, everyone’s watching their pennies a little more closely.

In the case of toilet paper and clothing, going for the sale items to cut back on costs is pretty low risk. The savings far outweigh any negatives associated with choosing 2-ply over a quilted 3-ply brand, or a $5 bathing suit that might only last one season at the beach. Unfortunately, when it comes to food, people fall into the bargain trap and somehow justify putting cheap, crappy foods in their cart to save a few dollars.

Regardless of the economic climate, you know you live in a small town when a big sale at a grocery store has locals spending their Friday evening fighting for parking and crowding the aisles. One Friday night, I just happened to need a few things for the weekend. I didn’t realize that the No Frills $1 Sale was on. My quick stop ended up being a sad reminder of how easy it is for people to put money over health, and to forget that what looks like a “good deal”… ain’t necessarily so.

Grabbing a flyer on the way in, I could see that there was a pretty good variety of sale items in this small store.

Lots of fruit on sale

There were definitely plenty of items that would not be making it into my cart but I was excited to see a good variety of fruit and vegetables on sale, milk for the kids, as well as some staple items that are good to keep in stock: toothpaste, soap, and bottled water for emergencies.

Not even a full day into the sale, the store was packed and store employees were restocking hot items as quickly as they were being grabbed from the shelves. I was hoping that I hadn’t missed out on all the deals.

It wasn’t long before I realized that my luck in finding all the bargain foods I wanted came only because most shoppers were getting their savings by filling their carts with non-foods. While I happily browsed for the best picks in the well-stocked fruit and vegetable section, residents were wrestling for last boxes of Hot Stuff and bags of Cheetos.

Okay, there wasn’t any wrestling but these items were flying off the shelves and into carts. On my first pass of the store, the display of chips was down to one row and by the time I came back around, it was completely restocked and ready for the next rush. And when the store has to put a 4 item limit on a product like Lunch Mate Stackers to prevent an instantaneous shelf-emptying, that gives you a pretty good idea of what was going fast.

I have a hard time understanding how anyone actually enjoys these foods.

Many parents claim that it’s hard to manage food costs with a family, especially if kids are picky eaters. Well, my kids are some of the pickiest kids I know. It’s definitely a challenge! But as a parent, I just get craftier about getting them to eat well — I don’t abandon the project altogether.

Lunch Mates, thankfully rejected by three out of three Weiss-Trainor children

The one time I succumbed to their pleading to try Lunch Mates, I was relieved to find that they wouldn’t even eat it. But there I was in the store, running into people I knew who worked out in the gym, whose kids played sports, and who claimed to be concerned about their children’s nutrition, maxing out on the limits of the crappiest stuff in the store.

Do they really believe this is the only way to save money?

For one dollar each, you could get a pound of grapes, peaches, apples mushrooms, peppers, and eggplant, as well as a bag of spinach and a 3 lb bag of onions. Looking past the bold displays of junk food, there were other savings to be found: canned beans, whole wheat pastas, and even some lean cuts of lunch meat, all for under a dollar.

Even when you can’t rely on $1 sales, choosing your grocery store’s weekly sale items is both a great way to save money and ensure that you get plenty of variety in your meals. It’s also often a good indication of what foods are in season or local to where you live. You can often find a few non-sale items marked down too, because the store wants to make room for fresher produce or because they are close to the expiry date.

Food doesn’t normally stick around long enough in our house to worry about it going bad but for those where that may not be the case, there’s always the option of planning your meals to make sure these foods get eaten first. You can use overly ripe vegetables in soups, stews or chillis, and freeze fruit to add to SuperShakes or yogurt.

Despite all the ways to save money on nutritious foods, many folks seem to be stuck in the mindset that it’s too expensive to eat healthy. This seems to fall in line with the latest trend in advertising by fast food companies, such as Wendy’s 3conomics Plan that focus in on all the savings to be had by eating fast food.

Is this a joke? Do people really think that they are saving anything by eating processed foods? Whatever you think you save financially, you more than pay for with your physical health. Also, in many cases, it isn’t cheaper to eat processed foods. If you shop smart, for example, you could easily make a nutritious whole grain pasta dinner with vegetables and lean ground beef for less than you’d pay for a frozen version that’s full of trans fats, sodium, and other junk.

Just because something is only a dollar out of your pocket, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to cost you later. With a little thrifty shopping and sticking with whole foods, it’s easy to both save money at the grocery store and do good things for your health.

Check out THESE discounts instead!

A fridge full of stuff that's cheap... AND healthy