Who Does The Foodshopping

My husband knows about this blog and also knows I try to be conscious of what I eat. I don't necessarily eat healthy. But, I do take the time - alot of time- to read product labels while I'm shopping in the grocery store. If my list has 20 items on it, it will take me up to an hour to finish food shopping because I take so long in the store trying to make the best health and cost-related decisions.

My husband and I differ on food choices.

I don't like processed foods. He relies on them for easy cooking. Sometimes I do, too. Afterall, I work alot, too, and it's not always easy to prepare dinner every night for a family. But I'd prefer to avoid the reliance on processed foods.

Some examples of what he would buy that I never used to buy or eat:
chicken nuggets (I was against this at first until I read the nutrition label of Tyson chicken - not bad - although I'm not sure if it's 7 g of fat per serving is on the high end of chicken; I'd have to check up on that),
CheezIts (it's orange, enough said),
Chef Boyardee (again, too high in fat for what I'd like to feed my children; in fact, it makes me very upset to know my kids would be eating that stuff),
white rice (although I do use white sugar sometimes, so I can't be too hard on him for that),
Frosted Flakes (8 g of sugar per cup, only 1 g of protein = a breakfast that won't stick with you for long and you'll get hungry sooner)

I try to avoid cereals with more than 5 g of sugar a serving unless it has a high amount of protein to "make up" for it. For example, Kashi GoLean Crunch cereal has 12 g of sugar a serving, but it also has 9 g of protein a serving.

The problem is that when he goes food shopping and buys things I don't think are neccessarily healthy, I still eat it. So, I'm being a bad example to him and to the kids. Part of it is that I don't want to waste the money he spent buying the food. The other part is, I don't want to go out and spend more money on foods that I would buy. It would be alot easier if I could cook every meal from scratch and be the one to go food shopping every single time, but the reality is I need his help once in awhile and also, he's not very open minded about eating meals I cook from scratch that are "good for you" (examples in the past: black bean burgers, tuna steaks, refried beans).

So, my husband went food shopping the other day. I was glad he did, it saved me time. We're on a tight budget now that I'm a student again. Earlier I joked that we'll save money and lose even more weight when we eat meals of Ramen noodles.

When he got home I noticed he bought "Cup Noodles" soup. I was elated that he thought of me because he knows I eat alot of soup in the winter since it's not bad health-wise and it fills me up. So, I decided to have that soup for lunch the next day. Then I read the label: 13 g of fact in one container. My eyes nearly popped out of my head. I was about to eat 13 g of fat in 2.25 oz (dry) of soup! But I didn't want to throw it away so I ate it. Needless to say, I took a 20 minute walk with my daughter in the stroller that afternoon and pushed her up and down steep hills.