New here? If you'd like to be notified of new content, simply subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up for email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
Not necessarily advice aimed soley at the single shopper, but if there is never anyone around to question or regulate our potentially unhealthy choices, this may indeed have additional relevance to us.
We’ve all read advice which says, “Make a list and stick to it,” so you’re less likely to be tempted by all those naughty things in the supermarket, but this report seems to suggest that the converse may be true.
According to the researchers, when consumers decide what to purchase at the grocery store, the decision is “stimulus-based,” that is, it is based on what is directly in front of us. On the other hand, writing out a grocery list at home before going to the store to pick up the items requires “memory-based” decisions. The consumer must attempt to recall the items available at the store before planning out meals for the rest of the week.
“We find that consumers who must generate options from memory are more likely to select fun, hedonistic, and sinful options over sensible options or “appropriate” options,” write Yuval Rottenstreich (Duke University), Sanjay Sood (UCLA), and Lyle Brenner (University of Florida).
I don’t know. I do always make a shopping list, so that I don’t forget essential items, but whist I would certainly never write “fattening little pastries with too much sugar, confectioners’ custard and cherry on top” on my list, a packet always seems to come home with me, which seems to suggest that my decision for picking it up was “stimulus-based”. 
My way of reducing the temptation is simply to stay away from it and to shop less often. No more than once a month, if possible and then, as I’m strong enough to limit myself to only one bad treat at a time, it’s hardly going to make a great impact on my otherwise healthy eating habits.
One thing they did confirm was that consumers who had to recall what items were available (i.e. make lists) “opted for lower-priced items, while consumers who had the options in front of them chose higher priced goods”. So I guess the moral is, if you need to stick to a budget, make a list, but be careful that your choices are also healthy ones.
Interesting thought to follow on from that, is I wonder how much better (or worse) we perform if we order our groceries online?
We aren’t then required to recall as much, as the choices are presented by the online store. However, these are not as tempting as having the actual goods in front of us and, we can see the real cost of those temptations adding up on the total in our shopping cart, which might help to temper the overspending as well as the over-indulgence.
Do Shopping Lists Promote Or Prevent Healthy Choices? Via: zaadz
Sponzurz
I’m almost more intrigued about how you can limit your shopping trips to one a month. Do you go back to get fresh items, like produce and dairy? Do you plan out specific menu items for the whole month?
I love online grocery shopping, I really need to do it again, for several reasons!
First, it was SUPER easy to find the things on sale. I mean, I just clicked the “sale” tab and it listed them by category. No wandering around the isles, exposing me to the “extras” mentioned in this post.
Second, which probably depends on the store/service you use, my produce seemed exceedingly fresh. Either they don’t put the good stuff out when I seem to go, or I’ve just got a lousy eye.
Last, I’m lazy. Yes, it gets you out. Yes, you get a mediocre amount of exercise walking around the store… but what takes me 25-45 minutes of shopping (excluding travel to/from house/store/car) takes 15 online, and the delivery person brings everything to the door (a plus for a single person who lives on a 9th story building!)
I saved time, money, and got excellent, healthy food out of the deal. I think it’s time to order me some food…
Nicole: Yes, I do occasionally pop to a local store, or our Sunday Farmers’ Market for fresh fruit and veg in between. Actually, I don’t use much dairy, other than milk, which necessarily here comes in bricks and keeps, so I buy that in bulk. Planning a menu here is not that easy, because you don’t necessarily ever see the same thing twice. So, I list all the basics, then have in my mind that I need X number of meals and grab ingredients, based on memory. Increasingly difficult with the advancement of age.
After that, what I manage to forget, I simply go without. Fortunately, as far as temptations go, I live in an area so rural (I’m really the classic “single female, above childbearing age, on the outskirts of the village, who keeps cats” - in the 15th Century I’d have been burned at the stake! 
that popping to the shops is too much trouble to make it worthwhile for just a couple of items.
Jess: Yes, I only have to “lug” my shopping up a small slope, across the patio and into the house, but that’s enough to make me want to have some strapping delivery men do it for me!
My most local shop delivers: they even bring you home with your shopping, if you time it right! I’ve recently discovered another that delivers and, finally, here one supermarket does online ordering. I’ve yet to try them, but I know someone who already uses them. Excellent point about the fresh produce and, I shall have to see how this one fairs in that area, because I don’t think it’s you: I’ve noticed the same thing here where veg on display has been looking rather tired lately. Up to a point, I see that as a good thing: it hopefully means that it wasn’t sprayed and tampered with to make it look artificially nice, but there’s a limit.