Healthier food options have definitely been casualties of the Covid-19 pandemic. With demand up because people are eating at home more, food processors have stepped up production of their most popular offerings — normally the least healthy ones — and dropped healthier ones. The same is true for mainstream supermarkets which are having trouble keeping their shelves stocked, still today.
The latest healthier product that’s become impossible to find in stores near me — Mrs. Dash sweet teriyaki sauce.
Mrs. Dash teriyaki is salt-free, a miracle when it comes to anything with an Asian flavor to it. I use it constantly on fish and in stir fry veggie, chicken and shrimp dishes I create.
In normal times, I could buy it locally at Food 4 Less, a Kroger store in my area.
But the pandemic has wiped it from the shelves here. Checking the store website, it’s not even listed for shipment.
I checked the Mrs. Dash website to see where else I might buy it, but any place listed there, like local Walgreens, did not have it either. I was forced to order it on Amazon at a considerably higher price than I had bought it locally in the past — roughly $5 a bottle compared to around $2 in-store.
Another healthier food I’ve lost — Kraft fat-free shredded mozzarella. While every major supermarket carries Kraft, only a few would carry the fat-free variety I bought, namely the local Mariano’s chain, also now owned by Kroger.
I would make special trips to Mariano’s just to buy this product, but on my last trip there, it was gone from the cheese section. So sad.
Another Kraft product, reduced-fat parmesan grated cheese, also has been largely absent from store shelves. I found some this week and grabbed it.
It’s really a shame that instead of offering people more healthier choices in these dark days,m the food retailing system is doing the opposite.
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