Pandemic food causalities — low- and no-salt products continue to disappear from store shelves

The Pandemic, and how supermarkets and other food sellers have reacted, has certainly made it more difficult to eat healthy. Last Thanksgiving, for example, I wasn’t able to find fresh, low-salt turkeys at Costco for the first time in years.

*A recent buy from Healthy Heart Market*.

Readers also keep writring me to tell me low-salt products I’ve written about in the past are no longer aavilable at Trader Joes, so I’ve created the hastag #ShameonTraderJoes.

Here’s a list of items I was able to buy pre-pandemic which are no longer available on store shelves in my area:

Trader’s Joe’s salt-free shrimp sauce.
Trader Joe’s salt-free marinara sauce
Mrs. Dash salt-free teriyaki sauce
Salt-free fresh turkeys at Costco
Low-fat frozen yogurt at Costco (chocolate was dropped pre-Pandemic, but vanilla is gone now too, replaced by ice cream)
Low-salt canned olives at several retailers (others still have them)
Trader Joes salt-free wheat bread (this disappeared before the pandemic, but its worth mentioning for #ShameonTraderJoes)

Stores are stocking the highest volumes products they sell now, and dropping others to simplify thier supply chain problems. And tjhose of us wanting to eat healthy are suffering as a result.

eI’ve turned to more stocking up when I do find items that can be stored. I’ve also done more shopping online at Amazon and Healthy Heart Market, despite the higher prices and shipping costs involved. I’m willing to pay those prices now, I want to survive this Pandemic and that means not letting the virus, or salt kill me.

October 25, 2021 6

Looking for a low-sodium Thanksgiving turkey during the Pandemic — shop early, buy big

Time to eat all those turkeys! Happy Thanksgiving! — *Finder smaller, fresh turkeys under 16 pounds could be a challenge this year, shop early, and buy bigger.*

Shortages, and talk of soon-to-happen shortages, have become a regular feature of the Covid Pandemic over the past two years. Already, stories are emerging about turkey shortages for Thanksgiving.

Doing some research, I found some of those stories overblown. The shortages are likely to be for fresh, smaller turkeys, those under 16 pounds. Of course, fresh turkeys also are low-sodium turkeys. They haven’t been injected with high-salt solutions like many frozen ones. I wrote about salt differences in turkeys back in 2014, read details by clicking here.

So, if like me, you’re planning to buy a fresh turkey, shop earlier than usual and freeze it until Thanksgiving. And think about buying a larger turkey than you otherwise might to get a better selection. I did that last year after a long quest for a fresh turkey, grabbing a 19-pound bird at a local Whole Foods for our small Thanksgiving gathering in the first year of the Pandemic.

You can easily freeze leftovers for a variety of future uses like your own homemade low-sodium soup or turkey fajitas which I made after last Thanksgiving.

Good hunting, and an early Happy Thanksgiving to you!

October 24, 2021 5

Walden Farms’ reformulated Ranch Dressing Tastes Good, But Note the Salt Content

Walden Farms recently announced a rebranding of its salad dressings to feature more natural ingredients.

Walden touts the dressings by saying they are “proudly free from artificial flavors and dyes, made with real vegetables, fruit fibers and ingredients. Offering a full line of specialty condiments and food enhancers with zero calories, zero net carbs, zero sugar and zero fat, Walden Farms uniquely provides consumers with unmatched attributes vs. other brands in the marketplace.”

While I applaud the no fat, no sugar message, I also would like to see some salt-free varieties offered. In e-mailing with a Walden representative, I requested a sample of the lowest salt dressing in the line, the Ranch dressing.

Continue reading →

October 20, 2021 0

Healthy Emmie sees good eating habits coming as we emerge from the pandemic

It’s always fun to speak with someone who is passionate about food. Online nutritionist Healthy Emmie certainly fits in that category. We recently spoke about her expectations for American eating habits post-pandemic, as well as about her philosophy of healthy eating.

“This pandemic is changing everything, it’s making people look twice at taking health into their own hands, ” says Emmie, who began her healthy eating quest at age 19.

Healthy Emmie

Now 26, Emmie, a vegan, offers a program called the Slim on Starch Weight Loss Program. She developed her eating philosophy as she helped her parents become healthier. Seeing it work on them, she now promotes it to the world.

She believes in whole-food, plant-based eating and includes starchy items like potatoes and white rice — which some nutritionists shun — in her diet.

Her theory — eating only greens (as I did after my first heart surgery) will leave you hungry and likely send you back to unhealthy eating habits. Including healthy starches can fill you up and keep you plant-based.

“Starch is to satiety as water is to thirst,” she says.

You can download her sample one-day eating plan from her website by clicking here. Scroll to the bottom of the page to get it.

Plant-based, whole-food eating for her doesn’t include all the imitation meat products coming to market in recent days. I agree, so many of those are high in salt and fat, they really are no better for you than real meat.

I’ve written in the past that I’m not ready to go completely plant-based (my daughter has, she’s leading the family on that front). But I see world eating habits moving in that direction, especially among Millennials and Gen Zers.

As the Pandemic has progressed, Emmie has seen two types of people — those who used the pandemic early on to get a better grip on their health; and those who binged, gained pandemic pounds, and now need to address being heavier than they want or should be. Her business doubled during the Pandemic, says Emmie, who in based in Boston.

“No matter what has happened during the Pandemic, it’s never too late to get started with a healthy diet, start today,” she advises.

I couldn’t agree more.

October 18, 2021 0

Grocery shopping tips from Nicolette Pace

You may have seen Nicolette M. Pace on TV, her demo reel shows her making the rounds of the TV talk shows, discussing food and healthy eating. Her PR people recently reached out to me with her list of healthy grocery shopping and I’ve decided to share them with you here, just click the continue reading button if you’re seeing this on my home page. Enjoy and let me know what you think of them.

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October 7, 2021 0

Here’s how American eating habits will change post-pandemic

Two-thirds of Americans are re-evaluating their life priorities because of the Pandemic and that spells a change in American eating habits ahead, according to research from British market research firm Mintel.

“In food and drink, US adults say the pandemic caused the most change in where they eat, how they grocery shop and how they approach their diets. Many of these new habits and attitudes will be routine when “the next normal” arrives in the US. Consumers will have more flexible meal needs, a reliance on ecommerce and a proactive approach to health,” writes Jenny Zegler, associate director of food and drink at Mintel.

(A brief disclosure here. I worked at Mintel from 2012 through the end of 2013, heading it’s food and beverage research group. Jenny worked briefly for me before moving on to bigger and better things at Mintel.)

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October 6, 2021 0

Have you heard about allulose? I’m going to try it

Sugar is one of the big three ingredients we try to avoid but it is the hardest to walk away from. Who doesn’t love sugary things? So the quest goes on for a sugar-substitute that doesn’t carry the harmful side-effects of sugar. I recently read about one such alternative, allulose.

***My test products with allulose instead of sugar.***

Allulose is made from natural sources. It “is found naturally in very small amounts in foods like wheat, figs, corn, and raisins. It looks like sugar and tastes like sugar — really — but it doesn’t cause your blood sugar to spike and it contains just .4 calories per gram. That’s about 90 percent less than sugar, a stat that has contributed to its buzz.

“You’ll find it, like sugar, in most grocery stores, health food stores, and online. It doesn’t come cheap, though: A 12-ounce bag will cost around $10 dollars,” reports Cleanplates.com.

Supposedly, it has no adverse side effects. What I’m most interested in is if it causes gas and bloating like some of the substitutes used now in sugar-free products.

Continue reading →

October 5, 2021 2

The Pandemic isn’t done, and neither are the food shortages that have come with it

The pandemic has meant shortages of various products at mainline supermarkets for the past two years, from the absence of many low-salt products, to even such items as propane for backyard grills becoming difficult to find.

***Expect Pandemic-induced food shortages to continue into the fall for a variety of items.***

Expect shortages to persist into this fall, reports Today.com, “Rodney Holcomb, a food economist at Oklahoma State University, told TODAY in an email that we can expect to see a shortage of canned foods, but that this has to do more with the container than the actual food,” Today reports. Apparently even aluminum supplies are being impacted b the pandemic.

Also, “Meat and poultry products will still be tight supplies this fall, not necessarily because of a shortage of livestock or poultry but because COVID has processing plants working at less than full capacity,” Holcomb told Today.

A fine line exists between hoarding and stocking up when you see something you use regularly. I have a small basement freezer where I can store meat, poultry and fish items I find on sale.

Hopefully that stockpile will help me ride out shortages this fall and winter.

October 3, 2021 0

Month: October 2021

Pandemic food causalities — low- and no-salt products continue to disappear from store shelves

Looking for a low-sodium Thanksgiving turkey during the Pandemic — shop early, buy big

Walden Farms’ reformulated Ranch Dressing Tastes Good, But Note the Salt Content

Healthy Emmie sees good eating habits coming as we emerge from the pandemic

Grocery shopping tips from Nicolette Pace

Here’s how American eating habits will change post-pandemic

Have you heard about allulose? I’m going to try it

The Pandemic isn’t done, and neither are the food shortages that have come with it

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