What should you buy at the grocery store? Thrillist has put together a list of items that would be better left out of your cart on your next grocery store trip. After conferring with grocery store workers, looking at industry reports, here are seven items they reported you shouldn’t be buying.
Salad dressing
We’re gonna start you out with an easy one, a sort of appetizer before we dive into the truly maddening. That salad dressing in the fridge at the grocery has 12-20 ingredients and adds 100-200 calories to your dinner. And it costs somewhere between three and 10 bucks for a bottle. Make your own at home for way less money and far fewer ingredients.
Pre-shredded or grated cheese
Those bags of easy pre-shredded cheese you buy for Taco Wednesday (because you’re bad at alliteration) are convenient, but did you ever wonder why the cheese doesn’t melt? It’s because the companies that make those bags cut costs by adding non-cheese fillers, including wood pulp. Buy a block of cheese and grate it yourself.
Deli meat packaged in-store
It’s been a few decades since the first report hit the interweb tubes about how package expiration dates mean nothing. A lot of processed food dates are artificially short so grocery stores have to re-order more often. In the meat aisle, plastering a new expiration date on expiring meat is just what you do on a Tuesday morning before tossing it in cellophane. Go to the butcher counter or an actual butcher, and order your cuts fresh instead.
Impulse buys at the checkout lane
When that not-food stuff ends up in the checkout aisles, it’s because it’s been sitting someplace else in the store, and nobody’s bought it for weeks or months. They’re trying to move the old product to minimize losses, thus making their financial problem your financial problem.
Exotic produce
Keep the mangos, papayas, and starfruit out of your cart. That stuff’s exotic, meaning fewer people buy it. Meaning it stays there longer between rotations and go bad but you might not know it.
Bean sprouts
A lot of people pay more attention to meat safety these days, which is good. But apparently the memo never got to Big Bean Sprouts. Thing is, bean sprouts grow best in warm, humid conditions. Bean sprout farms are muggy breeding chambers for bacteria of all kinds, and since E. coli is a disturbingly common bacteria, more cases have come from badly washed bean sprouts than any other source.
Guacamole, hummus, and salsa
What we said about salad dressing applies double to the little tubs of trendy dippables. If you buy manufactured brands, you’re likely getting a heapin’ helpin’ of chemical additives and extra calories you can avoid by spending 10 minutes making your own at home.
