A Popular North American Supermarket Tactic: Shop the Perimeter, Not the Middle!

– Foodthink Says –

As modern people, we don’t seem to lack food in our daily lives. But eating clean and healthy is not so easy. Shopping for food is a multidisciplinary art—it requires knowledge, an eye for quality, common sense, and lived experience… In an age when supermarkets grow ever larger and their shelves ever more abundant, how do we shop efficiently for a healthy diet? Sun Shan, who lives in Canada, introduces us to the “shop the perimeter” rule that has been popular in North America in recent years. It applies just as well in China’s large chain supermarkets!

– This is Foodthink’s 040th post –

A Popular North American Supermarket Tactic: Shop the Perimeter, Not the Middle!

Foodthink

Author

Sun Shan

Passionate about natural ecology. Has worked over the years in research institutes, environmental organisations, the sustainability sector, and non-profit organisations. Four years ago, she began farming—experiencing the land, agriculture, food, ecology, and self-sufficient (homesteading) living. Now based in Ottawa.

Recently I’ve been talking to several chefs, and they all mention a principle for supermarket shopping: “buy from the perimeter, not the middle”—what’s known as shop the perimeter.

As the diagram shows, “the perimeter” refers to the outermost ring of shelves, starting from the bottom right and going counter-clockwise. The green sections are staples, vegetables, and fruit; the blue areas represent seafood, meat, eggs, and dairy; the orange is yoghurt and cheese. As for “the middle”—apart from a few necessary seasonings—the rows in the centre are dominated by frozen foods, packaged foods, and processed foods. The pale yellow strip near the checkout at the bottom is typically stocked with candy, chocolate, and other “impulse-buy” items, waiting for distracted customers in the queue to fall for them.

It seems supermarket shopping is not as simple as it looks.

Six “Golden Rules” for Supermarket Shopping

So how do we choose food that is clean, affordable, and nutritious? Here are a few “golden rules”:

1. Stick to the Perimeter, Skip the Middle

The counters around the perimeter of a supermarket typically carry fresh produce: fruit and vegetables, fresh meat, seafood, eggs, and dairy. These foods are more nutrient-dense and substantive, with less processing. On a limited budget, supermarket shopping should at least begin with buying from this section before venturing into the middle—shop the perimeter first, buy the outer ring before anything else.

2. For Similar Foods, Choose the Simple (Fresh) Over the Complex (Processed).

For example: choose whole grain foods over refined rice and white flour products; choose beans still in their pods or a whole block of cheese over pre-shelled or pre-sliced. Every step of processing—especially intensive refining—costs the food some of its freshness and micronutrients. Consider a pretty box of carrot biscuits, the box decorated with alluring orange carrots, even labelled “low sugar”, “XXX vitamin”, “high fibre”—tempting words, sure. But think about it: making that box of biscuits requires many ingredients, long-distance transport of all kinds, and considerable labour. Its packaging generates waste too—if it’s a plastic bag or plastic tray, it might not degrade for centuries. Take a closer look at the ingredient list on complexly processed foods: at least ten to twenty items, not to mention questionable oils, but also all manner of additives and preservatives. By contrast, a bunch of carrots, from farm soil to the consumer’s table, goes through far fewer steps. And so more of their nutrients are preserved.

The real problem is: we are not eating real food; we are eating processed products that merely look like food.

3. The Less Packaging, the Better.

You don’t need a plastic bag for a few apples! These plastic bags pollute the environment once when manufactured, then again when discarded, and most are never recycled. Genuinely responsible supermarkets and manufacturers, driven by industry pressure, have been seeking minimal and biodegradable packaging. Producers who stubbornly overpackage food in attractive plastic containers are not worth supporting with our money.

4. Buy Bulk—Good Value and Peace of Mind.

More and more shops are now offering rice, flour, sugar, and salt in bulk—you can even bring your own bottles to fill. Glass bottles are far safer and cleaner than plastic bags! With bulk foods, you buy exactly what you need—no stockpiling, less waste. And you can see, touch, and even taste the quality. Think about it: in this age of excessive food packaging, the phrase “going to buy soy sauce”—the old, simple errand of popping to the shop for a pour of soy sauce—has lost its practical meaning! Sometimes I can’t help hoping for the day when children can help with the family’s soy sauce run again.

The bulk food section in a supermarket. Image source: naturesemporium

Bringing your own containers to buy bulk food avoids waste and reduces environmental pollution. Food in glass bottles looks lovely too! Image source: ctvnews

Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market also encourages customers to bring their own containers to “fill” as much as they need. Image source: Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market

5. Make Fresh Plant Foods the Focus.

By “plant foods” here, I mean not just vegetables but all unprocessed foods of plant origin: nuts, grains, legumes, pumpkin, potato, yam, sweet potato, and so on. In our everyday diet, fast food and convenient meals take up an ever-larger share, while fresh plant foods and fruit are becoming scarcer. Yet the vitamins, trace minerals, prebiotics, and fibre that our bodies need are often found in abundance in exactly these foods.

The image on the left shows the 1970s “pyramid-shaped” food structure, which is gradually being replaced by the newer nutritional guidelines shown on the right. One of the most noticeable differences is the much greater proportion of fresh fruit and vegetables called for in the three daily meals. These foods are rich in prebiotics, which promote gut health and help prevent many chronic, long-term, and often subtle ailments.

6. Go to Farmers’ Markets.

If there’s a regular farmers’ market near your home, congratulations—you’re in luck! In North America, farmers’ markets generally require growers to sell their produce directly. You’ll know which farm your spinach came from, even which farmer grew it and how it was grown… That makes it all the more worth buying—truly the top of the shopping ladder.

The Sunday farmers’ market in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, runs year-round. With a total population of fewer than one million, Ottawa has 1,300 registered farms and more than 25 farmers’ markets across the region. The number and prevalence of farmers’ markets are generally regarded as a key indicator of a city’s quality of life. Many people source almost all of their weekly food from farmers’ markets. The markets are also a draw for visitors, as they offer a wide range of local goods grown by producers. Image source: Ottawa Tourism

“Food Desert” vs “Food Oasis”

I recently learned a term: “food desert”—food desert (Editor’s note: The concept of the “food desert” originated in the 1970s and has been used specifically to describe low-income residential areas in the United States that lack supermarkets, where residents find it difficult to access and afford nutritious fresh food. By contrast, an area with a supermarket or greengrocer’s is called a “food oasis”). In a supermarket, the image below shows a typical “food desert”: shelves stacked with tins, popcorn, and all manner of processed foods. This is the worst choice when supermarket shopping—no matter how pretty the packaging, how premium the brand, or how elaborate the wrapper, best to steer clear. Don’t be swayed by labels and advertising claims: the reason these products sit on shelves for so long is their long shelf life, high additive content, and heat treatment. Almost without exception, they are synonymous with low vitamins, low nutrition, and high chemical content. These “junk foods” are only fit to satisfy a hunger pang on the odd occasion.

The two images below represent the “middle choice” for grocery shopping. This is a classic supermarket fresh produce counter. Fresh vegetables don’t keep long; the gap between them leaving the soil and appearing on the shelf is not much of one—especially for leafy greens.

These are the shelves in a supermarket that are genuinely good for your body.

Finally, the true top choice for grocery shopping—the farmers’ market, or the direct stalls at farm gates. At a market, whether front, back, left, right, or even the middle, you can shop with ease! Here you can not only get fresher produce but also ask the growers how to judge the quality of fresh vegetables. More importantly, supporting conscientious farms and farmers who grow good vegetables honestly may seem like an ordinary shopping errand in the short term, but over the long run, this kind of purchasing—through your participation—will gradually build a more vibrant, more responsible local economy. That is probably the true meaning of what is called impact investment (Editor’s note: impact investment means using the money you spend and invest to support “good deeds and good causes”).

The author of this article, Sun Shan, sells vegetables from her farm, Chi Graden, at a farmers’ market in Canada. The market sits beside Lake Huron, one of Canada’s five Great Lakes, in a small town of only a few thousand people. The Saturday farmers’ market always draws a loyal crowd of regulars. The more a customer lives in a farming area, the better they know the value of fresh, good plant foods.

Here in China, we have our own farmers’ markets! From top to bottom, left to right: Guangzhou Chengxianghui Farmers’ Market, Kunming Caiyun Farmers’ Market, Xi’an Farmers’ Market, Nanning Urban Farmers’ Market, Shenzhen Nongyi Market, Shanghai Nonghao Farmers’ Market, Chengdu Life Market, Beijing Organic Farmers’ Market, and Chongqing Farmers’ Market. Is there a farmers’ market in your city?

Eat the “Real” Stuff!

After all that talk about the rules of “grocery shopping,” let me add a few words at the end about “eating.” One of my favourite writers, Michael Pollan, is an American professor of journalism and bestselling author. In recent years he has published several bestselling books reflecting on how modern people choose their food, and has also made documentaries. At first glance, his works seem to be about the pleasures of food “on the tip of the tongue,” but on closer reading they go much deeper—interspersed with penetrating observations and reflections on the nature of good food, the origins of ingredients, and food and agriculture. His more recent works have been appearing in Chinese translation one after another. In Food Rules: A Classic Guide to Everyday Eating (Food Awakening Series), several of the “food rules” he discusses are very sensible. A few are excerpted below:

Food Rules

Eat real food – what’s sold around the perimeter of the supermarket, as mentioned above, is exactly that;
Don’t eat foods that list sugar (or sweeteners) among the first few ingredients. The most typical example is beverages, such as iced black tea;
Water is the best drink;
Don’t eat foods that claim to have health benefits;
Don’t eat foods whose names include words like “light”, “low-fat” or “fat-free”;
Don’t eat foods you see in television ads;
Don’t eat foods produced in facilities where you’re required to wear a white hat to enter;
Eat food of all colours;
Good food comes from healthy soil;
“The whiter the bread, the faster you die”;
Cherish stone-milled grains and oils;
If you crave junk food, make it yourself;
Chew well and eat slowly;
Think about where your food comes from;
Cook your own meals.

This final point—”cook your own meals”—is the most important of all. Michael Pollan writes books, teaches, and gives talks all over the place, yet he still insists on cooking for himself. Only by doing it yourself, time and again, do you gradually come to appreciate the real benefits of shopping for food and cooking it. Let “cooking for yourself” be your simplest, and most important, New Year’s wish for 2018.

Michael Pollan (6 February 1955 –) is an American writer, columnist, activist, professor of journalism, and director of the Knight Science and Environmental Journalism Program at the University of California, Berkeley. His books The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Food Rules, Defense of Food, and Cooked have all been published in Chinese.