Are you a Healthy Shopper?

Does where you buy your food determine how healthy you are? A recent study suggests that there may be a link between the type of store where you do most of your food shopping and your weight and the health of your diet overall.

Which stores were better?
Some of the results were what you might expect. People who shopped often at convenience stores ate fewer fruits and vegetables. Convenience stores don’t tend to have large produce departments, so this makes sense. Fruits and vegetables were a bigger part of the diets of people who frequented supermarkets and specialty stores. Overall diet quality was highest in those who shopped at food co-ops. From a weight perspective, people who shopped at specialty stores and farmers markets tended to weigh less and people who shopped at food co-ops had smaller waists.

Which comes first?
Now the question is, do healthy people tend to shop at certain stores or do certain shopping habits make you healthier? This recent study isn’t able to say for sure, but it seems that it could be both. Someone who eats more fruits and vegetables is likely to seek out stores with more variety of high quality produce. On the other hand, in store marketing and promotions can influence the types of foods shoppers buy regardless of the reason they ended up at the store in the first place.

Bottom Line
Shifting your shopping habits may offer a way to improve your health. If you find yourself coming up short on fruits and vegetables, consider spending more of your shopping time and money at stores with better produce sections or at farmers’ markets. If stops at the local convenience store are a regular part of your routine, try giving a little more time to planning your big shopping trips to stock up on a variety of healthful foods. Having the right foods on hand is a great way to make better food choices the easy choices.

REFERENCES:
1. Leia M Minaker, Dana L Olstad, Mary E Thompson, Kim D Raine, Pat Fisher and Lawrence D Frank. Associations between frequency of food shopping at different store types and diet and weight outcomes: findings from the NEWPATH study. Public Health Nutrition, available on CJO2016. doi:10.1017/S1368980016000355.

Written by Jennifer M. Roberts, MS, RD
May 2016

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An Apple A Day?

We’ve all heard the saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away,” but a recent study suggests that apples may keep the scale from tipping too.

Can apples really help with weight management?
A recent study found that children ages 2-18 who ate apples were less likely to be obese and had better diets overall than children who didn’t eat apples. The relationship between having a healthier weight was seen with whole apples and total apple products, but not with apple sauce or apple juice individually. The researchers suggest that this may be because whole apples tend to be more filling than apple juice or sauce. It is important to note that while eating fruit overall has been associated with being healthier, this single study doesn’t necessarily mean that an apple a day is the key to weight loss or management. It may in fact be that children who eat apples tend to have other healthy habits too.

Is it just apples? How about other fruit?
Fruit overall offers a lot of beneficial nutrients for relatively few calories. While this specific study looked just at apples, many previous studies looked at the impact of eating fruit. While the results for weight management are not conclusive, the health benefits of eating fruit are pretty clear. People who eat the recommended amounts of fruit (and vegetables) tend to be healthier than those who don’t. So, if you don’t like apples, don’t worry. Including a variety of other fruit, especially whole fruit, into your day is likely to offer benefits too.

Bottom Line
With almost no downside, adding an apple a day, especially if it replaces something higher in calories, may be a good way to start improving your eating habits and health overall. A lot of advice for being healthy or losing weight focuses on foods we shouldn’t eat when it may actually be more beneficial to focus on the foods that we should eat.

REFERENCES:1. O’Neil CE, Nicklas TA, Fulgoni VL 3rd. Consumption of apples is associated with a better diet quality and reduced risk of obesity in children: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2003-2010. Nutr J. 2015 May 14;14(1):48.

Written by Jennifer M. Ignacio, MS, RD.
September 2015

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