{"id":1207,"date":"2010-01-04T21:12:01","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T03:12:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/?p=1207"},"modified":"2010-01-04T21:12:01","modified_gmt":"2010-01-05T03:12:01","slug":"grocery-shopping-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20100104-1207.htm","title":{"rendered":"Grocery Shopping Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Never shop on an empty stomach.&#8221;  Or so the saying goes.<\/p>\n<p>Penny-pinchers say you&#8217;ll spend more than you want to.  Dietitians warn that your food choices might be less than stellar.  I would add that you might spend more time in the store than intended.<\/p>\n<p>It was supposed to be a quick trip to the store.  I&#8217;d been running errands all afternoon&#8211;and then I popped in to the gym for a (relatively) quick bike ride (Yay for starting to train for the big ride!)  By now I was tired and hungry and just wanted to get home&#8211;but I had my little list that I really wanted to get taken care of while I was out and about.<\/p>\n<p>My list?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Fresh fruit<\/li>\n<li>Lettuce<\/li>\n<li>Celery<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My purchases?<\/p>\n<p>See for yourself.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Grocery store purchases\" src=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/images\/20100104-1.jpg\" title=\"Grocery store purchases\" class=\"alignnone\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bananas<\/li>\n<li>Apples<\/li>\n<li>Oranges<\/li>\n<li>Celery<\/li>\n<li>Lettuce<br \/>\n<b>AND<\/b><\/li>\n<li>Green onions<\/li>\n<li>Acorn squash<\/li>\n<li>Avocados<\/li>\n<li>2 bags of cheddar cheese (on sale)<\/li>\n<li>2 bags of mozzarella cheese (ditto)<\/li>\n<li>A bag of tortilla chips<\/li>\n<li>A bag of Fritos<\/li>\n<li>A tin of sardines in mustard sauce<\/li>\n<li>A can of salmon<\/li>\n<li>A bottle of Tabasco sauce<\/li>\n<li>A bottle of ketchup<\/li>\n<li>A box of mozzarella cheese stick snacks<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The results of this little experiment?<\/p>\n<p><b>Cost of shopping trip<\/b><br \/>\nItems on list cost  $4.93<br \/>\nItems not on list cost $21.12<br \/>\nI quintupled the cost of my shopping trip by shopping on a empty stomach!  Yikes!<\/p>\n<p><b>Food choices<\/b><br \/>\nA number of my impulse purchases were of high nutritional quality (but then again, I&#8217;m a dietitian who happens to <i>adore<\/i> food).  But then I still did make some purchases that I <i>never<\/i> make when I&#8217;m exercising self-control and wise shopping practices.  Case in point?  Frozen mozzarella stick snacks.  I never even VISIT the processed freezer food section of the store.  But today I thought, &#8220;You know, I would love to have some mozzarella sticks&#8221;&#8211;and since I was in the store, I just went ahead and got them.  Then there&#8217;s the Fritos&#8211;which ostensibly were for with the chili I was going to warm up when I got home.  But I opened the Fritos and started digging in before I was even out of the grocery store parking lot.  Um, yeah.<\/p>\n<p><b>Time<\/b><br \/>\nI didn&#8217;t calculate this exactly, but I&#8217;m pretty sure I picked up the items on my list in less than 5 minutes.  My overall shopping trip took over 20.  And, if it hadn&#8217;t have been for all those extra impulse purchases, I could have paid with the cash in my purse (instead of having to run out to the car to get my bank card, which I&#8217;d left in my gym bag.)<\/p>\n<p>Based on my experiment, I have decided that &#8220;they&#8221; are right.  It&#8217;s best to not go grocery shopping on an empty stomach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Never shop on an empty stomach.&#8221; Or so the saying goes. Penny-pinchers say you&#8217;ll spend more than you want to. Dietitians warn that your food choices might be less than stellar. I would add that you might spend more time in the store than intended. It was supposed to be a quick trip to the &#8230; <a title=\"Grocery Shopping Experiment\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/2010\/20100104-1207.htm\">Read more <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Grocery Shopping Experiment<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bekahcubed.menterz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}