Raising Maine

By ANN MURRAY PAIGE, Raising Maine Contributor

I used to enjoy grocery shopping and the easy pace at which I could swing down the aisle, looking at juice boxes, rice cakes and hot dogs and just pick one. Now I walk into a grocery store and stare, wondering who I am going to be when I shop.

I read the signs and labels on all the products and it seems that I could be at least three different shoppers – a dieter, an all-naturalist or a cost-counter.

I remember when "low fat" made itself apparent to me in the '80s. I was a young woman no longer growing taller and my food intake was showing around my middle. It was the '90s when I realized, as a starving journalist, that sale items made my tiny paycheck go much further. In the last 10 years, shopping has gone more natural, with ingredients I can easily pronounce – sugar and oil instead of high fructose corn syrup or partially hydrogenated whatever.

Now when I walk into the grocery store, I wonder about cost, choice and the chance that I'll find what I'm looking for when I approach my grocery list from, say, the low-fat option? Or natural ingredients? Or lowest price?

So I head to a nearby market armed with what is a short grocery list for me and my family of four: Milk, bread, peanut butter, hot dogs, tuna, salad dressing, juice boxes and soup. 

HOT DOGS. The first thing I come across is hot dogs and right away I feel stumped. When I was little, my mother chose either regular or red. Now 33 different brands and kinds of hot dogs grace the shelf. There are bun-sized, cured, uncured, beef, turkey, cheese, chicken, low-fat and fat-free, to name a few. I focus on my three modes of choosing and come up with a wide variety in price.
Low-fat: $3.99
All-natural: $4.29 (no nitrates, pork and salt)  
Least expensive: $2.79

PEANUT BUTTER. I love peanut butter, and happily there are not too many brands to surf through here. These are my easiest picks of the day.
Low-fat: $2.59
All-natural: $2.49
Least expensive: $1.99

TUNA FISH. I count 17 brands and kinds of tuna on the shelf – and I may have missed a few. Choices include: in oil, in water, light, dark, in a pouch, a can, with lemon, snackable, lunchbox. There really was nothing low-fat, though I suppose tuna packed in oil could count as high-fat.
Low-fat: $1.47 (Packed in water and chunk light, not white)
All-natural: $2.19 (This brand promises to "promote a healthy heart.")
Least expensive: 99 cents
All I can say is, 17 choices of tuna? Seriously?

SALAD DRESSING. I count more than 100 brands and kinds. Even when I focus on a flavor (balsamic vinaigrette), I have about a dozen to choose from. There's only one “light” to choose from.
Low-fat: $3.29
All-natural: $2.99
Least expensive: 99 cents

BREAD. There is another huge assortment, and in this aisle trying to find an all-natural version costs me 15 extra minutes of reading labels (and realizing how much high-fructose corn syrup goes into bread).
Low-fat: $3.59
All-natural: $2.79
Least expensive: $1.59
I actually wasn't sure about the all-natural category, but I did find a non-high fructose version.

SOUP. There are dozens of kinds of soup on the shelves, including less sodium, half the sodium, fat-free and now the latest craze for dieters, the “70 calorie” soup. 
Low-fat: $1.58 (Billed as the "healthy" soup)
All-natural: 78 cents for the one with the least amount of junk in it
Least expensive: 60 cents

MILK. My family buys skim, which is milk's low-fat version, so I don't have much of a decision to make here.
Low-fat: $2.20
All-natural: $3.39 (organic)
Least expensive: $1.85
I had wanted to get a few juice boxes (full of sugar, I know, but for an occasional treat). As a kid I remember juice as being grape or apple.

Now you can buy cranberry-raspberry, strawberry-apple, lemonade, kiwi-lime and drinks that are the color blue, and therefore not real juice. And then there's flavored water, zero calorie, low-calorie or non-caloric, as well as with fluoride, with Splenda, with a coupon or with a spout. I get so overwhelmed I skip the whole thing. For now, my kids are getting filtered water from the tap.

I figure out that as a dieter I would spend $18.71, as a naturalist I would have spent $18.92 and as a cost-counter I would have spent $10.80.

It takes me about an hour, give or take, to comparison-shop as I become engrossed in reading labels, ingredients and prices. It is easier to find the sale shelf items and, after that, the low-calorie ones, because of the large print/advertising that adorns them. The all-natural products are harder for me to find because there are fewer of them, and every time a label says “natural” I find I have to read the ingredient list to make sure it is really natural and not just an advertising ploy. (In one case I found caramel color as a natural ingredient. If you add color, that doesn't make it natural to me.)

One of the biggest mind-numbers of this experiment is the plethora of choices we shoppers now face, like more than 30 hot dog offerings and 100 salad dressing brands. Either we really like our hot dogs and salads in this country or something in the food marketing industry has gone awry. With the memory of the 17 different kinds of tuna still fresh in my head, I look down at my receipt and realize there's a free coupon accompanying it – another brand offering me its “new” line of tuna. This option is premium, light and in a pouch, too. And it's cheaper than the one I bought.

Make that tuna choice No. 18.