Have You Been Fooled By These 6 “Healthy” Rules For Grocery Shopping?

These 6 “healthy” grocery shopping tips sound like smart advice. But they’re myths based on poorly explained science. Ditch them today!

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Have you ever been certain you were correct, only to discover you’ve been propagating a myth?

It happened to me.

For years, I scolded my girls for cracking their knuckles. “You’ll get arthritis,” I argued. “Your knuckles will get big and ugly,” I droned on and on.

“STOP CRACKING YOUR KNUCKLES RIGHT NOW,” I shouted in a mean mom voice on more than one occasion.

I knew I was right. I had learned it from my mother and grandmother. And my friends said the same thing to their kids. Didn’t I read about it too? I’m sure I did.

But then, the unthinkable …

When my daughter was in high school, she was done with my admonishing her knuckle cracking. She set out to prove I was wrong. And she did.

I was wrong. I was wrong about something I knew I couldn’t be wrong about. Schooled by a glowing teenager, I squeaked out an apology and admitted I had fallen for a health myth.

Maybe not so unthinkable …

It’s human nature to believe repeatedly heard statements, especially when they sound logical. And being human, I succumbed to human nature.

What myths do you repeat?

Maybe you’ve fallen for some of the “healthy” eating rules I see on social media and just recently in The Washington Post, one of my favorite publications. Let me save you the trouble of being schooled by a smartypant teenager. Today, I’m focusing on what sounds like healthy grocery shopping tips. But they’re logical-sounding, oft-repeated nutrition myths.

6 healthy grocery shopping tips we must ignore

Silly grocery shopping tip #1:

Skip anything with more than 5 ingredients

Of all the silly eating rules, this one may make the least sense.

The number of ingredients in a food does not determine its nutritional value. Quality of ingredients does. For example, doesn’t my packaged soup with over ten ingredients, including beans, lentils, vegetables, herbs, spices, and olive oil deserve a bigger nutrition halo than a three-ingredient corn chip?

What you should do:

Read the ingredients label to assess the quality – not quantity – of ingredients. Never fall for the tired line that lots of ingredients mean that a food is bad for you.

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Silly Eating Rule #2:

Avoid processed foods

This sound bite is also too broad to be useful. Even “avoid ultra-processed food” is too general.

I don’t recommend making a meal of toaster pastries or regularly packing sandwiches of salami and ketchup on white bread. (A favorite when I was a kid. Cream cheese and jelly on white bread was also a favorite combo.) Yet, I do enjoy plenty of processed  – and even ultra-processed – foods because they help me eat nutritiously while saving time

Some processed foods in my kitchen:

• canned beans
• tuna
• vegetable broth
• vegetable juice
• microwaveable quinoa and brown rice
• canned and boxed tomatoes
• roasted peanuts
• toasted almonds
• whole-wheat crackers

And these fall into the ultra-processed category:

• tofu
• tempeh
• sparkling water

Make sure you’ve got the important facts about processed and ultra-processed foods, check out 3 tips when considering processed foods.

By the way, some processing boosts nutrition. For example, tomato sauce has more available lycopene than fresh tomatoes.

What you should do:

• Know that every type of food categorization has limitations.
• Eat mostly whole and minimally processed foods.
• Plan ahead to avoid unhealthful convenience foods.
• Do the best you can and stop feeling guilty.

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Silly Eating Rule #3

Shop only the perimeter of the store

What do you miss when you skip the inside aisles?

You’ll miss a slew of wholesome foods like canned black beans, tomatoes, peaches, and tuna. You’ll bypass whole grains like farro and steel-cut oats, tea bags, walnuts, and peanut butter.

And what happens if you grab any ole thing from the perimeter of the store?

You could fill your cart with plenty of not-so-healthful choices including donuts, hot dogs, and ice cream.

What you should do:

Fill your cart like you want to fill your plate.

• Veggies: Buy tons. Aim for all colors and types.
• And: Choose fruit, whole grains, lowfat dairy, beans, lentils, nuts, fish, and other protein-rich foods.

Silly Eating Rule #4:

Choose only natural or organic foods

Neither natural nor organic indicate diddleysquat about the healthfulness of a food.

An organic cookie – regardless of the type of sugar – remains a cookie. More concerning is the high cost of foods labeled organic or natural. If the price of organic produce, for example, prevents you from eating ample fruits and vegetables, your diet is much worse than if you ate the less expensive conventional fruits and vegetables.

Here’s a great discussion on this topic: Why the Dirty Dozen Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Means.

What you should do:

• Focus on wholesomeness and nutrient-dense foods
• Ignore claims of being natural or organic.

Silly Eating Rule #5:

Don’t eat white food

Too many people have taken this silly soundbite literally and given up milk, cauliflower, tofu, white beans, and other nutritious white foods.

Even pale produce is nutritious.

White potatoes are an inexpensive source of potassium, which is too rare in the diet and important for healthy blood pressure levels.

People often forgo white, brown, and pale-colored fruits and vegetables, but they too are loaded with nutrients. All fruits and vegetables give us nutrients and disease-fighting phytonutrients.

Even white bread and refined grains have something to offer.

White bread and white pasta offer something unique. Because they’re fortified with the B vitamin folic acid, they help prevent serious birth defects. Researchers found that since mandatory folic acid fortification, about 1,300 babies are born each year without neural tube defects who would have likely been affected otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, most of our grains should be whole grains, but there is a place for some fortified grains. “Don’t eat white foods” really irks me because it’s much too general, doesn’t consider individual nutrient needs, and doesn’t identify nutrient-dense foods.

Remember: The color of a food does not dictate its nutrient value.

What you should do:

• Eat a variety of foods and food groups.
• When it comes to fruits and vegetables, aim to eat all the colors, including white and brown.

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Silly Eating Rule #6:

Don’t eat it if you can’t pronounce the ingredients

This doesn’t make sense.

Cobalamin, alpha-tocopherol, thiamine mononitrate? These are essential nutrients: vitamin B12, vitamin E, and vitamin B1, actually. Yet coconut oil and brown sugar worry me more because one provides a lot of saturated fat, and the other gives us a lot of added sugars. It’s okay to have coconut oil and brown sugar in small amounts, but don’t feel virtuous about them – no matter how easy they are to pronounce.

Likewise, don’t fear something because the word is unfamiliar.

What you should do:

If you’re confused by an ingredient, check out the FDA resource for general information or reach out to a registered dietitian nutritionist.

Silly “healthy” grocery shopping tips often come about through good intentions. In an attempt to make the science of nutrition easier to understand, nutrition gurus give us sound bites that are only partly accurate or based on misunderstood science.

By the way, I still cringe when I hear knuckles cracking. But I turn away and keep my mouth shut.