Phil Lempert, "The Supermarket Guru," is an expert on consumer behavior and food-industry trends. He appears frequently on national television, and his Web site supermarketguru.com for 15 years has offered shopping tips, product reviews, food news and nutrition advice. He hits a grocery store 10 to 15 times a week.
Lempert, based in the Los Angeles area, says saving money on groceries shouldn't be an exercise in deprivation. Eating well should still be the top priority. And if we're excited about shopping for food (and eating it), we'll make better decisions, eat healthier and save money, too.
Excerpts from an interview:
Q: You say that we need to make more and smaller grocery-shopping trips. Why's that?
A: Well, we want to go shopping for a week, and we just load up. And when you take a look at that process, we buy things that we don't need.
But if we shop every day or every other day, and just think about one or two or three meal occasions, we're going to be smarter. We're going to think about the right portion size, the right nutrition, the right taste. We're just going to buy what we need.
I just did a TV segment where I followed a woman around as she shopped and then (at the end), I redid her shopping list. About halfway through, she said, "I get tired and then I just throw anything in the cart that comes to mind that I know my kids are going to eat." We've got to understand ourselves. We get tired. We get emotionally tired and physically tired. But if we're on our best game, that's not going to happen.
Q: But who can fit in all those trips to the store? And isn't that inefficient?
A: Of course it depends on where you live. If it's a long way to the store, that's not going to be practical. But if you've got stores nearby, on your way home, I guarantee that if you shop every other day, you're going to save money, you're going to eat better and you're going to enjoy your food more.
One of our recent surveys found 72 percent of people said they're bored with food. And I think that's part of the problem -- that food is not satisfying. As a result of that, we overbuy. You take a bite and you're not very happy with it, so you buy something else. If we can celebrate food and where food comes from, if we can be satisfied with the taste of food, I think everybody wins. Value is not just about a cheap price. Value is about buying something that you're going to consume, that you're going to be happy with. And then it works.
Q: Does saving money on food mean that we end up shifting to cheaper calories that are less healthy?
A: Absolutely not. You can eat healthy and save money. The best way to do this is to look at your receipts for the past month. Really look at what you bought. And then also look at your cupboards, in your refrigerator and your freezer. You really need to take inventory of what you have.
Then, you need to think about what you or your family wants from a health and nutrition standpoint. ... And then be able to put together a shopping list that's focused on that.
Q: You talk about celebrating food and the importance of knowing where what we eat comes from, but you're also a fan of frozen foods and microwave dinners. Isn't that a contradiction?
A: If you take a look at our lives, we have to be realistic. I think part of the problem is that we don't understand what living in America means these days, where it's working 40, 50, 60 hours a week. You're exhausted. Microwave is a good technology. But until recently, the technology (to take advantage of it) from the food companies has been mediocre.
Now, finally, we're seeing great microwaveable foods.
So many people say, "Just shop the perimeter of the store," (where produce, meats and other perishables are displayed). Well, I could shop the perimeter of any store, and I could get more sodium, nitrates, nitrites, red-dye-number-whatever than I can in the center. So we need to be reading labels, looking at nutrition information, regardless of what part of the store it's in.
Q: What's changed about your shopping strategy in the last 10 or 15 years? What changes are you noticing in supermarkets now?
A: I think the strategy for shopping for me has been absolutely the same. But I think that there's a lot of new, exciting things going on in foods. There's more to differentiate one product on the shelf from another.
Pretty soon, we're not going to have room (for all the products that are carried in a conventional supermarket). About a third of the products that are in stores now are still going to be there. And two-thirds will be gone. So all these companies are really working hard, adding value, adding quality. Because they know that in just a few years, if they don't have a consumer base, they're gone.
(Jim Downing can be reached at jdowning(at)sacbee.com)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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