• Ever thought it'd be cool to have your art, writing, or challenge runs featured on PokéCommunity? Click here for info - we'd love to spotlight your work!
  • Dawn, Gloria, Juliana, or Summer - which Pokémon protagonist is your favorite? Let us know by voting in our poll!
  • Welcome to PokéCommunity! Register now and join one of the best fan communities on the 'net to talk Pokémon and more! We are not affiliated with The Pokémon Company or Nintendo.

Do you check ingredients when grocery shopping?

For new things, yes. Vets everything. Some of the more common things:
- Garlic and onion. Pops up in vegetarian foods often.
- Fructose, high fructose corn syrup, and sugar alcohols. Tolerates some sugar alcohols in small enough amounts. (Spotted mannitol in Claritin, for example.) Would not trust the sorbitol in many sugar-free foods. (Never tested that much, though.)
- Whole wheat. Includes wheat flour that is not enriched.
- Inulin (and/or maybe fructooligosaccharides?). Cannot tell which is bad. Probably both. Consumed too few things with them.
 
Definitely. I'll get carried away if I don't lol. Nick and I always have a list going for shopping for meals mostly preplanned the week before, and the only real variable is how fresh the fruits and veggies look.

If they have like, a certain kind of cereal in stock we'll be sure to pick that up, and we always need milk since we all drink tea, but otherwise we're pretty tame.

..Unless we go to the Asian market.. then things can get a little out of hand. Our latest obsession is this hot/sweet Korean rice chip and we'd buy them out if physically capable.
 
No. I check the best by dates though since some stores tend to sneakily change them.
But otherwise, I just get what I need and that's that.
 
Nowadays I usually just check the calories and best by dates, and nothing much else. I pretty much just get the same exact stuff I always get when I go for my monthly grocery shopping.
 
For me personally:

1) Realized recently I don't seem to tolerate foods that have sorbitol in them, so I try to stay away from anything that uses those types of things as ingredients (green beans, apples, peaches, and a lot more). More testing still needs to be done to see which ones I might be able to tolerate and in what quantities, but I will be avoiding this unless testing. Once I have a definitive answer I will either avoid them entirely or eat very, very little!
2) Added sugar (sucrose) amounts, though it's usually not a deciding factor if I buy something or not. I try to control myself and almost never go beyond 25g of added sugar a day, so I don't decide whether to buy something based on that alone since I will almost always make sure I get below that amount regardless of how much is in that specific food. Even if it means separating it/eating half one day and half another or something.
3) The absolute biggest thing for me - artificial trans fats. x_x These are extremely bad for health and are slowly being banned or severely limited across the world. Not cool with the increased risk of cardiovascular issues. I will avoid anything that has them. Sadly in Australia most companies don't even list them since they're not required to, and in the US if a product has less than .5 they can list it as having 0. So I go through the ingredients to check for partially hydrogenated oils and other things that may raise red flags.
 
Religiously. Reading the label is hugely important when you have dietary restrictions. I have been vegan since late 2020, and was vegetarian for many years before that, so I am accustomed to checking all of the ingredients in what I buy, to make sure that it is appropriate for my diet. If I am buying bread then I will look to see what the baker used to give the bread structure and help it stay moist. If it was butter, then I would avoid it, but if it's vegetable oil then that would be fine.

I also have family members with some health problems, and I try to reduce salt intake, fat and eliminate food high in cholesterol and certain allergens when cooking for loved ones, because my mom has a number of allergies and high blood pressure, while my dad lives with a heart condition.
 
I check the nutritional values and I'll go for anything that has less saturated fat and/or sugar. I don't tend to buy a lot of super-processed stuff and Europe allows less weird and shady stuff in recipes than the US does, anyway.
 
Back
Top