FOODcents - Supermarket Tour - 043

SPEAKER A Welcome to healthy living. I'm your host, Margot Marshall. Would you like to save a couple of thousands of dollars on your food bill? Today I'll show you how it's done. SPEAKER B Healthy Living is a production of 3ABN Australia television focusing on the health of the whole person, body, mind, and spirit. You'll learn natural lifestyle principles with practical health solutions for overall good health. SPEAKER A There's a myth out there that healthy food is expensive. Today, I'm going to explode that myth, because the fact is, healthy food is the best value for money. Back in 1992, a dietitian at WA Health that's the government health department observed that the healthiest foods were the cheapest foods. And she developed the award winning foodsense program, which has been used extensively in three states of Australia. And I love the slogan. It sums it up so well. Don't tell them it's healthy. Tell them it's cheap. I've been personally involved with Food Sense for over 20 years. WA Health contracted my health promotion business to train more than 500 Food Sense advisors. We'll start with a supermarket tour, a Food Sense supermarket tour. And I've taken a couple of thousand people on these tours, and what you're about to see has motivated 91% of participants to change the way they spend money on food. After the supermarket tour, I'll give you the precise formula for saving a quarter on your food bill, and that's around 2000, $3,000 a year. And let me tell you about a lady who had a food budget of just $27.50 per family member per week. But a year after I mentored her with Food Sense, she joined me on TV, telling viewers she had saved $2,000 while spending twice as much on fruit and veggies. And now for the tour. This will be a virtual tour done in the studio. I have some shoppers with me, and what we do is convert all of the prices to the price per kilogram. Why would we do that? For comparison purposes. And how will we do it? Australia and some other countries has shelf strips showing the price per hundred grams. And to convert it to the kilogram price, it's a simple matter of moving the decimal point one place to the right. Viewers, if your country doesn't have shelf strip pricing, you can download this free shop smart booklet from our website, which contains a table to calculate approximately the price per kilogram. So let's go shopping and prepare to be amazed. Truly. We'll start our tour in the chips aisle. Looks like we've collected shoppers along the way. Thank you for joining us and helping out. Really appreciate that. Let's see what you've got there. Now, Diane, you've got what have you had there? A share pack. All right, now I'm going to tell you the prices per kilo, because I realized you weren't in a real supermarket, so I'm doing that part. You've got a share pack. A kilogram of that would cost $13.30. Helen you've got the thins there, that would cost $14.30 for a kilogram. Ross? SPEAKER C 65. SPEAKER A Sorry. 165 grams. That one's going to cost $27.30 for a kilogram. And 60 grams. 60 grams will be $33.33. And Brad, the small pringles, okay, that'll be $35.80 for a kilogram. Compare those prices to potatoes, which are somewhere around two to $4 a kilo. It costs a lot of money to turn that into that. Now we're going to the next aisle. Very popular items in the next aisle. Chocolates. I hope I'm not tempting you with this exercise. Let's start with diet. You've got two. Why did you get two? I couldn't decide. Oh, you couldn't decide. So what have you got there? I got a snickers and smarties. Snickers and smarties. Well, each of those per kilogram will cost you $40. Right. And Helen, you've got I've got teasers. Okay. Well, they will per kilogram, that will be $57. I'm kidding. You not. And Ross? SPEAKER C A flake. SPEAKER A All right. That would be $66 a kilogram. Lindt, my favorite. Your favorite, okay, well, that will cost you $83 a have you changed favorites. And you've got a little kinder surprise there. Surprise. Okay, well, a kilogram of those would cost you $100. What? No kidding. Yeah, $100 a kilo. And I know you don't buy kilos, but over time you do. So let me just pause there for a moment and ask you this question. Would you and would you pay prices like these for fruit and vegetables? Would you? SPEAKER C No. SPEAKER A A lot of shaking heads there. Well, the fact is, in Australia, more than half the food budget is spent on foods in this category. 58%, to be precise. Not just chips and chocolates, but things like pies, cakes, soft drinks, fast foods, things like that. And just 21% on fruit, vegetables, breads, cereals and legumes. Now we'll take a look at some popular inclusions in packed lunches, musli bars and similar kinds of things. And I think you might get some surprises there, too. I hope you put all those chocolates back on the shelf. All right, now, we've got the musli type bars and other things that get put into lunch boxes. That tends to be where they're mostly used. Let me just ask you something before we start. When you add something to a lunchbox, something usually gets pushed out and not eaten. What might that be? Fruit. Fruit. That's exactly right. Fruit either doesn't get put in or it's put in and comes back home. So we're going to just compare these items here now with fruit, and we'll do it three ways. The first one is we're going to look at the price. So if you can just tell us what you've got, and I'll tell you the kilogram price for that. I've got the roasted nut bar. Okay. From Nice and Natural, and that's $22 a kilo. I've got Weight watches, cereal and nut bars. Okay. $29 a kilo. SPEAKER C This is Uncle Toby's la Snack. SPEAKER A $28 a kilo. Scooby Doo Snacks at $25 a kilo, and Fruit Frogs at $29 a kilo. Well, they didn't compare very well on price, did they? So let's see how they go on nutrition. So what we're going to do with the four that are sweet ones, we will look at the sugar content, and we'll just run through that. And, Ross, we'll keep yours to look at the sodium content. Obviously, that's going to be the issue with that one. So starting with you, Diane, sugar content there is 27 grams per 100 grams. Now, just for comparison, the government recommendation is less than 15 grams per 100 grams. So yours is 27. It's getting up towards double, isn't it? And, Helen, your Weight Watchers one's got 28 grams per 100 grams. Scooby Doo, hold it up there. 59. Whoa. 59 grams per 100 grams. That's four times the recommendation for those cute little things. And the fruit frogs. 60. SPEAKER C Wow. SPEAKER A That is 60% sugar in that. So they didn't do too well on price. They didn't do too well on the sugar. What about the sodium? Now, this is the only savory one that I've noticed on the shelf. And again, we look at the recommendation, which is 300 milligrams per 100 grams. And yours has 875. 875 per 100 grams. So they didn't do well. They struck out on price and they struck out on sugar. And they struck out on sodium. Not a good substitute for fruit. All right, the next aisle we're going to look at is breakfast cereals. I've lined up our shoppers in the order of price per kilogram, starting with the lowest price. Well, for a kilogram of oats, it's going to cost you just $1.50. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Compared to some of the prices we've been hearing. You've got wheat bicks, that would be $3.30 a kilogram. Still pretty good. Uncle Toby's plus, okay, $10.32 a kilogram. Nutrigrain at $15.80. And Fruit Loops, $19.30. What I'm going to do now is we're going to have a look at the sugar content. Start with you again, Diane, with your oats tenders, 1.3, very minimal. That's well under the 15 recommendation. And Helen Wheat picks. Wheat picks, okay. That'll be 3.3. And Ross. SPEAKER C Uncle Toby's. SPEAKER A Plus. Okay, 21.2. Jenny, yours is 26.7. And yours is 38. 38 more than did you notice anything there? Did you notice a trend? Yeah. SPEAKER C Up again. SPEAKER A The higher the price, the more sugar. The higher the sugar. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, really quite interesting. There's a rule of thumb that goes like this. The lower the price, the more likely it is that it will be a healthy product and vice versa. And there are very few exceptions to that rule. Very few. We're going to be looking at sodium now, and you might remember, 300 milligrams per 100 grams is the recommendation. It shouldn't exceed that. So in your CCS there, we've got 472. What about your cornflakes? 525. Higher than corn chips. Now, we'll have a look at packaging. So if we could have the Nutrigrain and the Fun pack. So, in the Nutrigrain we knew was $15.80 for a kilogram, and there's some Nutrigrain in there, along with Fruit Loops and a couple of other things, but that would then be 35. Same product? Exactly the same product. And you think double the price is not a good idea? No. Would you be happy to pay double the price, exactly the same product from the same place? Well, how would you feel about maybe three times the price? Three times. Would you be happy with eight times the price? No. Wow. What about 25 times the price? 25? Yeah. We're going to look at it in a minute. There is a product which you're going to look at now, and it goes up to 25 times the price. Just because of packaging, you need to know this. So if you would pick up your oats, remember they were a dollar 50. And then, Helen, you've got some in a box that's going to be $5. That's three times the price. Now, Ross, what you've got is individual sachets in your box, so they will be $12. And then you've got a little one pack, a single serve, $38. $38 compared to a dollar 50. What expensive breakfast? Well, it starts out being the cheapest cereal on the shelf up to the dearest cereal on the shelf. Wow. Just because of the way it's packaged. So when you're buying a product, doesn't matter what it is, check the packaging options, because it can save you heaps. Besides, you don't get to eat the packaging. And now for some positive news. We're going to check the prices of a category of foods so highly regarded by the United Nations that it declared 2016 as International Year of can you finish that? You'll find out shortly. And the winner is pulses, better known as beans or legumes. There's around 300 different varieties and the United Nations wants to establish beans or pulses as a primary source of protein and other essential nutrients. So show us these international stars. What do you have there? I have chickpeas, that's $5.30 a kilo. That's refreshing, isn't it, Helen? I have pinto beans. Pinto beans, that'll be $4.88 a kilo. Black beans, four eightyAt a kilo. Red kidney beans, one eightyAt a kilo. Wow. Less than $2 a kilo for these international stars. Amazing. SPEAKER C And azuki beans. SPEAKER A Azuki beans, that's $5 a kilogram. Besides being first class protein foods, these last four just hold up the last four, those last four are in the top ten antioxidants. And those little babies, those little azukis you've got there, Brad, they have more antioxidants than blueberries. SPEAKER C Wow. SPEAKER A Isn't that amazing? Absolutely amazing. Just one more reason. Foodsense recommends eating beans daily, and that includes meat eaters. By the way, as you've just noticed, these excellent protein foods cost way below the prices of meat, which ranges around six to $40 a kilogram. Just be aware of this. While most of the shell strips show the 100 grams price, some show the kilogram price. And that's usually the case with legumes. So don't go moving that point one place, or it will look like they're costing ten times what they actually cost. And now we're going to close the tour with a $20 challenge. I sent one group off to spend $20 on chips and chocolates, and the other group spent $20 on fruit and vegetables. We've weighed what they got, and now we're going to compare how much we got for our $20. Ross, would you like to just pass me your basket of chips and chocolate? Thank you. Wow. What was that? 783 grams less than a kilo. And over here, well done, well done. You've got 9 fruit and veg. You wouldn't be able to pass that around on your little finger. In the 20 years I've been teaching food since, this $20 challenge has shown, without exception, that you can buy several times as much weight of fruit and vegetables as chips and chocolate. You know, one time a young boy from a financially disadvantaged family told me that his mum sometimes gave him a packet of potato chips for breakfast, but he was always hungry for the cost of a bag of chips. His mum could have bought him more potatoes than his little tummy could hold. Everyone has things that upset them. You want to know something that upsets me? I'll show you. Headlines like this junk is a lifeline for the poor. Desperate families are being forced to rely on junk food because they can't afford healthy meals. That is a myth. A cruel myth. One in ten Australians rely on food relief and around half of them are children. And as you've seen for yourself, healthy choices go a long way towards alleviating, hunger, dependency and sickness. And now for that simple formula for saving a quarter on your food bill, which is around 2000. $3,000 a year for an average Australian family of four. Noticing that the healthiest foods were the cheapest foods, the dietitian who developed foodsense shifted the focus from food to money. Hence the descriptive name foodsense based on the pyramid model in use at that time. She cut right through the maze of nutrition information by changing eat most to spend most, eat moderately to spend moderately and eat least to spend least. To be precise, spend 60% of the food budget on fruit, vegetables, bread, plain cereals, rice and legumes like baked beans, lentils, et cetera, and spend 30% on lean meats, chicken without skin, fish, eggs, nuts and milk products. And then 10% on things like butter and margarine, oil, sugar, biscuits, cake, tea, chocolate, all of that stuff. An ingenious and simple way to balance our diet by balancing our food budget. Unfortunately, Aussies have turned the pyramid upside down. We spend most on eat least and least on eat most. 58% on eat least and just 21% on Eat Most. And notice this correlation. More than half the Australian food budget is spent on unhealthy food, and more than half the deaths in Australia are diet related. We really do dig our graves with our teeth. Unhealthy diet and a lack of physical activity are leading global risks to health. So to ascertain whether your diet is balanced, use this helpful tool on page six of the shop smart booklet that you can download for free from our website. Do you notice the traffic light colors on the columns and on the pyramid? Green for go, orange for slow down, and red apply the brakes. What you do is you collect all of your receipts for food bought in one week, and that includes food dollars that are spent on meals outside the home, weekday lunches, takeaways, snacks, drinks and so on. You need to do that to get a proper idea. You cross out all the non food items, like cleaning products, pet food shampoo. Then you transfer the food items and the prices to the appropriate columns. And the clues are all above there, so it's not hard to do. Any foods that don't seem to fit go into the Eat Least column and then you add up the total for each column. And ideally, for every $10 spent on food, you will have spent $6 on each Eat Most, $3 on Eat Moderately, and $1 on Eat Least Foods. Look, if your diet's not perfect, don't be discouraged, just work towards it. Ruth Foley, the dietitian who developed foodsense, had to work on her diet and she gave permission to tell you that, look, there's a few foods that people have trouble allocating, and I actually haven't warned the shoppers about this little test, but let's just see exactly where they would place the following items. Some foods are very easy to position, all the fruits and the vegetables and so on. It's very clear they go in the Eat Most in the green. Sometimes there's foods that people aren't very clear about it. So let's start with the chicken. Who would like to suggest where that ought to go on the Food Sense pyramid? SPEAKER C In the yellow. SPEAKER A In the yellow. Does everyone agree with that? Yes. Okay, well, you're all wrong. It goes up the top because you might have missed this and people do. And that's why I particularly chose it. Don't feel bad about that. Please don't feel bad about that because they miss the point. Chicken without skin, only lean meats go in that yellow part or the orange part, only lean meats. So fatty meats, your sausages and all those things, and chicken with skin goes up the top. But look, if you don't eat the skin, you can put it for your allocation, you can put it in the middle. All right, now we've got you a bit nervous. Let's try olive oil, I think it is. We'll take that as being extra virgin. The purest olive oil you can get. All right. Where will you put that? Yellow? Yellow. Why would you put it there? SPEAKER C That's what I would have said. SPEAKER A Because it's healthy, as in it's virgin. It's olive oil, but too much of any oil was okay. Not good. All right, any other thoughts? Would anyone place it differently or the same? I would place it in the red. You would place it in the red? Well, all oils go up the top. Okay. And it doesn't matter how pure it is, it's 100% fat and we really don't need to be having too much fat. But that's the whole reason that I chose these ones, because people are a little bit unclear about it. Now, we've got some fruit juice here. Okay. And it's good fruit juice. It's not cordial. It's a fruit juice. Where would you put fruit juice? SPEAKER C Green. SPEAKER A You'd put it in green? Why would you it's healthy. All right. No, you're shaking your head, Ross. SPEAKER C Because it's not the whole fruit. SPEAKER A It's not the whole fruit. Where would you put it? SPEAKER C I'd put it I'd put it in yellow. SPEAKER A Okay. Well, it does go up the top in the eat. Why? That's exactly why we're doing this. Why? Look, when you have fruit juice, if you've ever squeezed oranges or whatever, it'll take two and a half, three oranges to make one glass, and it's quite nice. And it's easy to have more than one glass. And most of the fiber has been removed. So do we have enough fiber in this country? SPEAKER C Nowhere near. SPEAKER A Around about half as much as we should. So that's not a good way to go. And the other thing that happens is it concentrates the sugars. To do that, the natural sugars are concentrated. That adds to the calories. Do we have a weight problem in Australia? Okay, so for those reasons, it's a sometimes food. It doesn't mean to say you never have it better to eat the whole fruit. And I think you said that, Ross. So go to the top of the class and take your books. All right. Now that might look like beer, but it's actually meant to be tea. Probably the mint gives it away. So we've got here tea. Where would you put that? Including green tea, any tea. Red. You read red. I'm going to say red because everything else is in red. Okay. That's not how I want you to work it out. Okay. No, it does go in red. It actually dehydrates, doesn't even hydrate. This will make it easier for you. The only food, the only drinks that go in most is water. Does that make it easy? SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A So you really don't have to think about it too much. All of the others go up there. Incidentally, I just happened to pick up a pack of pure green tea. Just interested. I don't actually drink it, but would you like to know how much that costs? A kilo. Just for the fun of it? SPEAKER C Oh, why not? SPEAKER A Why not? $180. Now, not all teas are that much. They start about 15, which is still pretty high and range all the way up to and you know what? You can get antioxidants from beans at about $5 a kilo. Top antioxidants. And just out of interest, this little coffee was $120 a kilo. Again, they're not all as dear as that, but they're quite a lot of money. So the eat lease foods do tend to be very expensive. The Pyramid model has been replaced by the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating, but it's the same message, just a different shape. And I like the plate model because it gives a very clear picture of the proportions that should be on our plates. That's 60% plant foods, 30% animal foods, plus nuts, and 10% sometimes foods. But what about people who choose not to eat animal foods? Well, there are plant options in every wedge of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating, giving the option of increasing plant foods from 60% to 100%, in which case vitamin B twelve supplementation is recommended. As you can see, those amazing beans now join nuts in the protein wedge as well as being in the vegetable wedge, the only food to appear twice. And the dairy wedge now includes calcium fortified soy milk. The World Health Organization also endorses a totally plant based diet. In fact, plant foods are the only foods listed in its Healthy Diet fact sheet fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and whole unprocessed grains, which just happen to be the foods the Creator recommended to our first parents. And Australians certainly need to be eating more of them. Look, whether savings are your goal or health or both, food Sense is the simplest, the most definitive and effective tool I know of. I started this program with a story of a family on a food budget of just $27.50 per family member per week, who saved $2,000 in a year while spending twice as much on fruit and veggies by implementing Food Sense. And I'm going to close now with another story. A dietitian at WA Health who was studying for her master's at the time told me her auntie had had a heart attack and had asked her niece to teach her about nutrition, saying, I never want this to happen again. What advice would you give to someone you loved? From her years of training, she could have told her auntie many valuable things about nutrition, but she told me, I am just going to teach her foodsense, because she was as confident as the dietitian who developed foodsense. That all her auntie needed to know to balance her diet. Was that simple, award winning Food Sense formula we've just looked at. Is your diet balanced? Find out by downloading free from our website that simple test in the Shop smart booklet and to support you on your journey towards saving thousands of dollars while enjoying a balanced diet. We've created a cooking series where healthy gets delicious. Be sure to join us and may God bless your efforts. SPEAKER B You’ve been listening to a production of 3ABN Australia Television.