Although we have a huge selection of products in grocery stores, it is not easy to shop. The head can make your head ache from excess. We advise you on what to look for when supplying your home pantry with food. If we choose bread, it is better to buy wholemeal or white, and if yogurt is better fat-free or maybe low-fat?

Store shelves tempt with dozens of products in colorful packaging. It can get dizzy and it's easy to lose your mind duringshopping . Therefore, if you go shopping, think carefully about what you really need, so that you do not come home laden with nets full of unnecessary and low-value food products.

Which bread should you choose?

When buyingbread , make sure that it has a hard, shiny crust on top and that it is sprinkled with flour on the underside. Avoid bread packed in plastic bags. They are often put in them before they cool down, then the pouch collects moisture and molds quickly develop. Toasted bread with added sugar, milk, caramel and seeds molds the fastest. Least bread is sourdough. In addition, it contains lactic acid which helps to maintain the natural intestinal flora. Pay attention to the composition of the bread - the less chemical additives, the better. The long shelf life indicates that they were probably stuffed with preservatives. Bread without preservatives retains its taste for 2 - 3 days, sourdough bread for up to 2 weeks, but it becomes stale faster. Common bread, although it is more difficult to digest, contains more valuable ingredients than white bread. If you are not on a special diet, choose one. Just check if the wholemeal is dark due to dyes or caramel.

Buy butter or margarine, or maybe two in one?

Soft margarines (in cups) and hard margarines for baking are intended for bread spreads. If you do not like margarine, and for he alth reasons you need to limit your consumption of animal fats, a good solution is a mix (mixed fats in which some milk fat has been replaced with hardened fats or oil), preferablybutterand oil - instead of butter and hydrogenated vegetable fat (the softer it is, the more likely it is that there is no hydrogenated margarine in it). Real butter,Regardless of the name (delicatessen, extra, choice), it must contain at least 80% fat and no more than 16 percent. water. Only tableware has no less than 73.5 percent. fat and no more than 24 percent. water. Be careful with the name "whetstone" associated with butter can be confusing! Buy products with information about the content of trans acids should be less than 1%. or 1 g (the lack of such information does not mean that it is not there).

What and how to buy in stores? An answer by Dr. Ania [TOWIDEO]

Which dairy product is better - fat or low-fat?

Completely skim yoghurts or milk do not contain calcium or fat-soluble vitamins, so better choose low-fat foods (0.5-2% milk, low-fat yoghurt, semi-skimmed or low-fat cheeses). Choose natural, sugar-free yoghurts. With fruits or grains, they have more nutritional value, but are more caloric. The taste and composition most closely resembling milk straight to a cow has filtered milk (pasteurized at 72 ° C). UHT milk (sterilized at a very high temperature) contains slightly less valuable ingredients. When buying a probiotic product, make sure that the manufacturer has provided the name of the bacterial strain (on this basis, you can reach scientific publications confirming their pro-he alth effects).

What kind of meat should I buy?

In some cold cuts, meat is only 30-50 percent. mass, the rest are protein substitutes, water, chemicals for improving the appearance and preservatives. The worst sausages are up to 60 percent. fat.

Buy meat and cold cuts in stores with refrigerated counters. Avoid stalls in the bazaar, where even the best products are stored in unsanitary conditions. The safest are hermetically packed and labeled meats. There you will find the ingredients of the product, listed by the one with the most, as well as information on how much sausage was obtained from 100 g of meat.

Remember that the pink color does not mean the freshness of the product, but the fact that it contains a lot of sodium nitrate (cooked or baked meat is gray-brown). The ham that shimmers with the colors of the rainbow contains a lot of curing compound. Choose sausages with large pieces of meat, preferably in natural casings (colored orange, e.g. on sausages, they may hide pieces of fat).

Unfortunately, quality goes hand in hand with price. A good ham will not cost less than PLN 20, and sausages below PLN 15. The guarantee that the sausage is made according to old recipes is the "Traditional product" mark granted by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Which pastas are the best?

The best arepasta made of high-quality durum wheat flour, which contains a lot of gluten (after cooking they are springy and firm). Nutritionists recommend whole grain pasta richer in minerals and fiber. Good pasta has a uniform cream or yellow color (egg noodles) and a natural smell, it is not broken, and the individual noodles are the same size. Choose products without taste and appearance enhancers (suspicious yellow color indicates that a dye has been added). The inscription "homemade pasta" is not a guarantee that it was made according to a traditional recipe.

The advantage of soy noodles is that you do not have to cook it, just pour boiling water over it and set aside for a few minutes. You can also buy rice or buckwheat noodles. Colorful pastas, colored with carrot, beetroot or spinach juice, after cooking, lose their intense color and do not always look aesthetically.

Which oil should I choose?

The more unsaturated fatty acids and the less saturated fatty acids an oil has, the better. Rapeseed oil is unrivaled in this respect, as it can compete with the he althiest oil. In addition to the information on what the oil is made of, the label should contain information on the method of its production and purpose.

Virgin cold pressing oils are the most valuable. Further processing, especially refining, reduces their nutritional value. Sometimes the producers indicate on the packaging that the oil is suitable for everything, and the composition shows that it is not. How do you know?

Oils, which are predominantly monounsaturated fatty acids, are suitable for frying, cooking and eating raw. Those dominated by polyunsaturated acids should be used raw. So you just need to read the ingredients to find out what you can use the oil for.

Good oil is liquid, clear, and has a delicate characteristic smell. Better to choose the ones in dark glass bottles, because they go rancid when exposed to light and heat. It oxidizes quickly when opened, so buy a smaller package if you don't use it in 3 months.

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