Fooducation

I thought I would share some more of my "fooducation" with you. If you have no idea what I'm talking about - see my first post here.

Back to Walmart today (I know, I know) and I am actually paying more attention to the foods I'm buying. I'll never be perfect (i.e. baked oven tacos for dinner tonight? That CAN'T be good for us) but I can change some things.

Walmart brand taco shells - Rated a B. These are 100% whole grain. I'm impressed! Not too shabby. If I had gone with Ortega whole grain shells that would have been better (more fiber in those) but I'm satisfied with my purchase. (And just $1.00 for 12 shells!)

Walmart brand fruit cocktail - Rated a B. Apparently if I buy the frozen bag of fruit cocktail (still Walmart brand) it would rate an A- just because there are no added sweeteners. I'll need to look for that, because I don't normally buy frozen fruit. I'm still happy with this because there is no sugar added and it's packed in water instead of heavy syrup, which is good news. I was buying a bigger can of these to save money but realized today there isn't an option to buy that size packed in water, only heavy syrup. So I'm back down to a smaller size, which is fine - it's still less than a dollar for 15 ounces.

Dannon yogurt - Rated a B. There's a lot of sugar in this, but it's still one of the best on the market, because that's really the only problem with it. I might be crazy, but I didn't see any "bulk" sizes of organic yogurt at our Walmart. Is this true?? I only buy the huge sizes because my kids eat yogurt so quickly, those tiny little containers don't last more than a day.

Borden string cheese - Rated a B+. This is the second time in my life I've bought string cheese for my kids, and the first time I've bought it that it wasn't clearanced. I figure, it's a good snack. I should be buying more snacks like that over than some of the things I could be buying for them. Anyway, string cheese only goes up to the B+ rating, so this is one of the top rated products in this category (and one of the cheapest!). This snack is naturally high in calcium and there are no artificial colorings added (like yellow cheese; I bought mozzarella). At Walmart, you pay about $0.26 per string cheese which really isn't too bad.

Walmart brand tomato sauce - Rated an A-. Top product in this category! It's minimally processed and low sodium. And for $0.33?? Can't beat it.

The rest of the items I bought kind of speak for themselves: Lettuce (A - and naturally high in vitamin A!), tomatoes (A - and naturally high in iron and vitamin C!), grapes (A - and naturally high in iron and vitamin C!), bananas (A - and naturally high in vitamin C!), apples (A - and naturally high in fiber and vitamin C!), and fresh pineapple (A - and naturally high in iron and vitamin C!)

So, I ended up spending about $35 which seems like a lot to me, but hopefully we're stocked for the next 10 days or so on some healthy snacks. Unless I keep munching on these string cheese snacks... YUM!