Week 3: From Supermarket to Dinner Table to School
Week 3: From Supermarket to Dinner Table to School
“Tricks for navigating the supermarket and shop for vegetables. Why the family meal is about more than just food; how to pack a quick, healthy lunch for a child and why this is so important; how to shop for fruits and vegetables (and teach children to love them); making over our children’s favorite foods, and more healthy treats.”
Supermarket is designed to make consumers buy more than they intended to buy.
Perishable items like eggs and milk are usually located at the back of the store so that consumers often have to walk through the store to find them.
Most direct routes to those items are usually stocked with heavily processed foods like cereals, chips, and sodas.
Heavily processed version of a food will be placed at an eye level, hence easier for us to reach.
Example on a baking aisle: cake mixes and ready-made frostings are easier to reach than less processed baking goods, which are also less expensive.
Food specifically marketed to young children will be placed at two levels – low down at the level of a typical three year old and another is at the level of a child who is sitting in a shopping cart.
Evidence suggested that instrumental music with a slow tempo actually slows down the flow of traffic in the store, and this increases the daily sales volume of the supermarket.
Some stores even use artificial aromas that are released by machines designed to deliver a constant smell of things like freshly baked bread in the bakery section because these scents make customers hungrier, and in this way, they increase sales.
General rule of thumb when shopping in a supermarket: try to stick to the periphery of the store where fresh whole foods are usually displayed.
Some people think that parents are to be blamed having kids that are picky eaters because they don’t expose their kids to a wide enough variety of food as babies.
Another theory is that some children have a heightened sensitivity to the flavors and textures of certain foods.
Children may also have different nutrient needs at different stages of growth, so they may crave a certain type of food and reject another during those periods.
Eating should be stress free, whenever possible.
The more children feel that they are involved in either choosing or helping to cook a meal, the more likely they’ll be to eat it.
Try to involve your children in the cooking process as much as possible.
This gives them a sense of control that can help them to be more adventurous eaters.
Another helpful step is to surround picky eaters with good role models as much as possible.
Week 3: From Supermarket to Dinner Table to School