The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal
Creating healthier food choices
I’ve written before about the challenges of eating local. How much locally grown food is available to us is often a function of geography. A new study shows the truth in that, with a few surprising exceptions.
A firm called Lawn Starter looked at the 150 largest U.S, cities and came up with the following rankings of the best cities for eating (and drinking) local:
Continue reading “Love eating local? Then here’s where you should live, according to a new study”Did you know Dec. 4 this year was National Cookie Day? Me either, but it’s ok because it seems like during this pandemic, every day is cookie day for many. many Americans. U.S. cookie demand is up 25% in the pandemic while global cookie demand (crisps in Britain) is up 31.6%, found integrated marketing network Top Global LLC.
And almost all Americans, 95%, eat at least one cookie per month, Top Global found in its research. Roughly four in 10 of us eat many more than that (see the table here, provided by Top Global).
Top Global also has a map of the United States showing cookie consumption by state, along with data on which cookies are most popular where; just click here to see all that…and then have a cookie to celebrate 2020 being almost over!
With Covid cases, as well as hospitalizations and deaths, rising across the country, Americans turned increasingly to online grocery shopping in November, according to new data from firms Brick Meets Click and Mercatus Grocery Shopping.
“U.S. grocery delivery and pickup sales for November 2020 totaled $5.9 billion, up 3.6% from August’s $5.7 billion, in a market where the customer and sales mix are shifting toward delivery and pickup services,” states a release from Brick Meets Click, a supermarket industry consulting firm.
More poeple are buying groceries online and they’re doing it more frequently, apparently.
“The number of active online grocery shoppers placing at least one delivery or pickup order during the past month increased to 38.7 million, up 3.6% from 37.5 million in August 2020, and they placed an average of 1.62 orders per month, up 2% compared to 1.59 orders per month in August 2020,” the firm found.
Roughly 39 million people ordered online in November, below the peak of about 46 million in June.
Brick Meets Click conducted this online survey Nov. 11-14, 2020 with 2,067 adults, 18 years and older, who participated in the household’s grocery shopping.
While talk of vaccines is everywhere these days, those in the know seem to agree we’ll be well into 2021 before a large part of the country has access to vaccines, let alone has gotten the two shots of one to protect themselves. So how will that impact food shopping trends as 2021 begins?
Florida-based sales and marketing firm Acosta has put together the following predictions.
“Many of the changes we saw implemented in 2020 due to the pandemic will carry over into 2021,” said Colin Stewart, executive vice president of Business Intelligence at Acosta, ina press release. “Health and safety will continue to be paramount for retailers and consumers, and e-commerce growth will continue on its accelerated path. Grocery shopping was not fun this year, and post-COVID, stores will need to make it a more enjoyable experience with unique offerings, better prices and stocked shelves.”
The Covid-019 pandemic has certainly changed American eating and food-shopping habits. People are cooking at home and emptying store shelves of many staple items as a result. Just trying buying some yeast to find out what I mean.
Many people ahve turned to bulk buying, which is jsut a step short of hoarding in that hopefully they have need of the large quantities of foodstuffs they’re buying for large families.
But buying in bulk can have its pitfalls, which is why I was attracted to this piece, 7 Life-Changing Tips from a Bulk Shopping Expert. While the headline is a bit melodramatic, the piece makes a few good points. Chief among those:
As the article states, “Buying in bulk is a shockingly great way to save money and to reduce the frequency of shopping trips for staples.” With food prices rising in the pandemic, stocking up may be the best way to stretch your food dollars.
Looks like Costco let me down again (just like when it dumped chocolate frozen yogurt) and this time, only two weeks before Thanksgiving.
I journeyed out for a major shopping trip last week, knowing our locality would soon be telling us to stay home because of worsening Covid infection rates in our area.
I’ve written about how Costco normally has fresh, low-sodium turkeys this time of year — turkeys without any high-sodium liquids injecting into them for self-basting.
But when I arrived last Thursday, there were no turkeys to be found at my local Costco in Glenview, Il. I asked a butcher who told me it was too soon for them. Too soon, two weeks before Thanksgiving and a day before we were told not to go out?
I know I’ve bought them earlier than that in the past because I’ve had to freeze them to keep them from spoiling before I cook them.
I looked at the home delivery option Costco offers through Instacart and did not find a fresh turkey last week either. I did find one this week, but at this point, I’ve found another source.
California-based grower Tanimura & Antle has announced a romaine lettuce recall that impacts product it shipped to 20 states.
The company is recalling packages of its single-head romaine lettuce with a packed on date of 10/15/2020 or 10/16/2020 and a UPC number of 0-27918-20314-9. The culprit — E. coli again.
The recall is effective in the following states plus Peurto Rico:
Illinois, Alaska, California, Oregon, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Nebraska, Missouri, Tennessee, Wisconsin, New Mexico, South Carolina, Washington, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Massachusetts.
No lettuce-linked illnesses have been reported yet but for safety, if you ahve it, throw it out.
The recall doesn’t seem to ahve spread to other romaine lettuce so far. I was just at Costco today and saw its usual two brands of romaine hearts (regular and organic) on the shelves.
This year promises a Thanksgiving unlike our usual holidays thanks to the ongoing toll the Covid pandemic is taking. But hopefully people will still gather, albeit in smaller groups, to give thanks. And thos eon low-sodium diets will wonder what they can eat of the traditional Thanksgiving fare. I’d suggest starting our with one of our most popular posts, Here’s your low-sodium Thanksgiving menu!!!
Not enough there to suite your taste? Here are some other sites and recipes to look into:
Low-Sodium Herb-Rubbed Turkey (Tasteofhome.com)
Low Sodium Thanksgiving (epicurious)
COMPLETE LOW SODIUM THANKSGIVING GUIDE (Hackingsalt.com)
50 Low Sodium Recipes for Thanksgiving! (The Daily Dish)
10 Low-sodium Thanksgiving recipes (Migraine Relief Recipes)
I’m a big believer in buying what’s on sale each week and creating meals around those items. Recently, frozen flounder fillets were on sale at my local store, so I bought some and went recipe hunting.
The recipe I found to make them, Garlic Parmesan Flounder, was delicious and didn’t use fatty butter as did so many of the other flounder recipes I came across after a quick search. The cheese does have salt, so go light on it.
Making it was fairly simple too. Let’s start with:
INGREDIENTS
1/4 c. extra-virgin olive oil
4 fillets flounder
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 c. freshly grated Parmesan
1/4 c. bread crumbs (I use panko crumbs, they’re lower in salt)
4 cloves garlic, minced
Juice and zest of 1 lemon (I used bottled lemon juice to taste)
Then the steops:
Preheat oven to 425°.
Drizzle 2 tablespoons oil on a large baking sheet. Season flounder with salt and pepper.
Combine Parmesan, bread crumbs, garlic, and lemon zest. Season with pepper.
Dredge fish in bread crumb mixture, pressing to coat. (I first coated the fillets with egg whites to hold the crumbs on)
Place fish on prepared baking sheet and drizzle with remaining two tablespoons oil and lemon juice.
Bake until golden and fish flakes easily with a fork, 20 minutes.
We had them with a side of steamed green beans for a wonderfully tasty fall meal.
I’ve long been a fan of Mrs. Dash’s salt-free marinades and salt-free taco seasoning. I recently also tried Mrs. Dash’s salt-free Sloppy Joe mix and found it a great substitute for the salt-ladened Manwich Sloppy Joe in a can I used to buy when my children were young.
The Mrs. Dash product did taste different, I think primarily because of the lack of salt. Manwich Sloppy Joe has 310 mgs of sodium a serving and claims one can is 10 servings!. If you’ve ever made it, you know that’s really not the case. I’d say a can is about three real-people servings, so each person would get about 1,000 mgs of sodium, half a day’s worth.
The Mrs Dash mix includes:
Sugar, Dried Onion, Brown Sugar, Spices (Black Pepper, Celery Seed, Chili Pepper, Cinnamon, Cumin, Nutmeg), Cornstarch, Maltodextrin, Potassium Chloride, Yeast Extract, Tomato Powder, Dried Red and Green Bell Pepper, Dried Garlic, Citric Acid, Glucose, Natural Flavors, Vinegar.
We tried the Mrs. Dash seasoning with ground turkey instead of ground beef to hold the fat down as well. The combination worked well. I might modify the recipe on the package a bit and add more tomato paste than called for to give it a bit more tomato zwing.
One note, my local food stores don’t carry this product, so I bought it online at the Healthy Heart Market.
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