Foods that are affordable and healthy

Hello, my friends. I'm going to be sharing the staples that I buy from Whole Foods. A lot of you know that I shop, not primarily but a lot of times at Whole Foods and I often get questions from you guys as well as people on Instagram and in my email, what are the things that I always buy when I'm at Whole Foods versus some of the other grocery stores. I'll be honest, I'm not a big Trader Joe's shopper .The ones here in the city are just way too crazy for me, and I just can't deal with it. Maybe if and when we leave the city I will become a more avid Trader Joe's shopper, but for now I stick to my local around the corner grocery store as well as Whole Foods. So when it comes to Whole Foods there are things that I have found to be really affordable, really high quality, and things that I can't find anywhere else. I think that's one of the beauties of Whole Foods is that they do actually carry products that you honestly can't find other places. A lot of times they have snacks or other specific products that are only at Whole Foods, at least here in the city. So I will include some of those, but I'll also talk a little bit about the just basic staples that I choose to buy at Whole Foods versus my local grocery store. So if you guys have any questions as we go, make sure to drop them down in the comments. Without further ado, let's go ahead and dive in. So this kind of goes along with my staple grocery list video, so if you have not yet watched that I will link it down below for you. But number one for me at Whole Foods is spinach, and their just general greens section. Whole Foods has their own brand, so 365 brands is the Whole Foods branded items, and they're usually quite a bit cheaper than other things that you might find in other stores, or other name brand items. So when it comes to greens I always buy a giant carton. It's two pounds, I think, of spinach. And I use that for my smoothies on a daily basis. They also have just individual bags of things like spinach, but they have a whole variety of different greens, so sometimes I'll get arugula, sometimes I'll get mixed salad greens. Whatever I'm feeling for the week, I will get that. I will also pick up their packets of romaine. They have bags of romaine that have three individual hearts of romaine, and we have those for salads all week long. So the first thing that I do whenever I'm in a Whole Foods, and it's kind of great because it's usually at the entrance of the Whole Foods is the greens section. So I always stock up on greens. From there the next item that I always like to buy at Whole Foods is their bananas, and the reason for that is that they not only have organic bananas, but they also have organic and fair trade bananas. So I try to do as best I can, support fair trade companies or fair trade farmer situations. I really want to make sure that the products that I'm buying here that are imported, the best that I can and the best to my ability are supporting the farmers that are growing them. So that's one of the reasons why I love shopping at Whole Foods is that they do have a lot of fair trade products, their organic bananas being one of them. So I always pick up organic bananas when I'm there, and their bananas are also really affordable, which are great, so I would say that that is probably for produce, those are the two staples that I get at Whole Foods. The next thing that I always buy is, I'm gonna lump these two things together, but frozen fruit and frozen vegetables. So again, their 365 brand is incredibly affordable. They have a whole range of organic fruit, as well as organic vegetables. So for me, big smoothie bowl eater as you guys know from all of my what I eat in the day videos, but I like to stock up on frozen fruit from their organic line of the 365 brand, things like strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, frozen cherries, frozen peaches, frozen pineapple, frozen mango. They honestly have pretty much everything that you could want for smoothies, and I basically just rotate my supply in and out. I usually shop at Whole Foods every other week, just because it's a little bit farther for me, so I'll stock up on fruit, and then I'll just kind of change things out and restock as I go through stuff. Number four on my list is frozen vegetables, and specifically we're talking about frozen cauliflower. I have frozen cauliflower in my smoothie bowls pretty much every single day, and I always like to get the organic frozen cauliflower from Whole Foods It's actually the only one that I will buy, and the reason for that is that it is precooked. And I have not done a ton of testing, I'll be honest, but the brands that I have tested that have frozen cauliflower do not precook them, so basically what happens with the Whole Foods one is that they have cooked it already. I don't know how they cook it, they probably boil it or blanch it, and then they freeze it. So what the benefit of that for us as the consumer is that because it's precooked it's a little bit easier on your digestive system, and it probably won't cause as much bloating and/or gas. The next thing that I like to buy at Whole Foods is Tofu. Again, they have 365 brands tofu, and what's great about is that they have an organic line. They do not have spouted tofu, or at least under the 365 brand. I do sometimes buy the sprouted tofu that they sell there, but if that's not available to me I'm still very happy with their 365 brand of tofu. It's a really great price, again organic, and it's basically everything that I would want in a kind of tofu, so I usually opt for that because it's a very affordable price. Next in the kind of dairy-is section, I'm walking through the store in my head so that's how I've ordered things, but almond milk. They have, again, a huge selection of almond milk. They have their over 365 brand, but they also have a brand that I have not been able to find at other stores here in the city called Malk. And I really like that brand because it is not only a little bit more affordable than their competitor, which is New Barn, but it's also made from 100% nuts and filtered water. So instead of some of the other brands of almond milk that use fillers or they add, fortified with vitamins or things like that, Malk is 100% whatever the nut is, I think they have pecan, cashew, and almond, and the filtered water and maybe a little bit of sea salt or maple if you're getting the maple flavor. So it's really high quality, it tastes really good. It is a little bit on the pricey side, but the reason why I included it here on this list is because A, if I'm buying Malk that's the only place that I can find it, and number two is they also have their own 365 brand so if you don't wanna opt for the Malk brand, the 365 brand is really high quality with a great ingredient list, and it's a little bit more affordable than some of the name brand almond milks. Next on my list are eggs. I do buy eggs on a weekly basis, especially because Matt is an egg eater and I do some baking with eggs. I personally eat eggs sometimes. It's not like an everyday thing for me, but you guys already know that because I talk about it a lot, but anyway, they have a huge, great selection of eggs and they have really high quality standards. But aside from just that they also have different levels of eggs. So I know that when I'm going there, I always buy the brand Vital Farms. I actually don't buy the 365 brand of eggs. The reason why I buy Vital Farms is that they are the highest classified humane practices of the eggs out there. I'm sure some of you who are watching are going to find something wrong with that brand, but it's the one that I have found that is the best. I don't personally have access to get to the farmer's market all the time, so I like to support Vital Farms because I have talked to the brand and I've read a lot about what they do. So that is the brand of eggs that I choose. I go for, honestly, the most expensive variety because those are usually the highest quality of life for the chickens. So I do buy my eggs at Whole Foods just because they have a huge selection and they have a good price point too. Next on my list is beans, and actually a lot of just canned products in general at Whole Foods is really affordable. I'm specifically choosing beans because protein is on my must have weekly grocery list, so beans are one of the things that I swap in, and I like to buy the beans at Whole Foods. Number one is they have a huge organic selection, so I'm always trying to buy organic as much as possible. They're also very affordable. They're only 99 cents for an organic can of beans. And all of their beans are in non-BPA lining cans, so they are trying to do their best to make sure that we're getting quality products in our canned. If you have access to doing instant pot beans I would recommend that, but if you don't, a lot of people don't, buying canned beans is just a way of life if you are mostly plant-based, so I like to buy the ones from Whole Foods because huge selection of organic, also in non-BPA lining cans, and they are a really great price point. And again, the same goes for other things like tomatoes, and broths, and pastas, and things like that, that their own 365 brand is really affordable and really high quality. All right, the second to last thing on my list is nut butters. Again, Whole Foods has their own 365 brand. For the most part I really like the nut butters that they sell. The only thing that you need to be careful of is looking at the ingredient label of the nut butters because some of them do include more than just the nuts themselves. So that is my criteria when I'm shopping for nut butters. It has to only be the nut itself inside of the jar. I don't want to add sugar, I don't want to have palm oil. I don't need it to be spreadable like Skippy. I just want a fully 100% peanut butter, almond butter, whatever it is. So they sell peanut butter, they sell almond butter, they sell cashew butter, and then my favorite thing that they sell is their organic tahini. I've not found a tahini that I like better than the 365 brand tahini. So if you're looking for a good tahini definitely get theirs. I think you can actually also get it on Amazon. It is fabulous. So the final thing on my list is kind of just a general category, and this is an aisle that I go down every single time I'm in Whole Foods because they're always getting new things, and that is the snack aisle. I love shopping the snack aisle at Whole Foods because they always have new products, they always have new brands, and their snacks are also generally on the healthier side. So I always like to pick up pretzels. I love Quinn pretzels; they're really delicious also gluten-free and vegan. They also have this line of cauliflower snacks which I have seen the brand elsewhere, but I haven't seen the entire product line that Whole Foods has in other stores, their vegan nacho cauliflower chips are so good. And then I also love the Sirte chips that they have. They have different Size chips than some of the normal regular grocery stores. They're like the smaller bags, and they're a little bit of a thicker texture which makes them more scoops able. And then they also have the super seed crackers from Simple Mills which are a staple in my pantry always. I'm a big cracker fan. I love dipping them in hummus for a quick snack. And what I like about these super seed crackers from Simple Mills is that they are not almond flour-based. And the reason for that is that while I absolutely adore their almond flour crackers, they are literally crack to me, I could eat a whole box in one sitting no problem, they also are very heavy sometimes and I get a lot of almonds in my diet elsewhere, so I like to change things up by swapping out almond flour products for other things like their super seed crackers or even sometimes Mary's Gone crackers. And that pretty much does it, my friends. Honestly I shop at Whole Foods like I said, almost every other week. Sometimes I'll get it delivered via Amazon Fresh, but I absolutely love shopping there. It's my favorite grocery store. I just feel so Zen when I walk into a Whole Foods. I know that the products are really high quality; I fully can stand behind the produce section. Everything is just looking fresh, and vibrant, and healthy, and they also actually surprisingly have really good deals. I know that people think of Whole Foods as, quote Whole Paycheck, but I actually did a comparison between Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, and they actually have similar pricing on a lot of the staple items. Sometimes Trader Joe's is even more expensive. So, if you're interested in checking out that video I'll drop it down below, but I hope you guys enjoyed this one. If you've any other Whole Foods staples that you buy, I know I didn't mention things like meat and seafood.I honestly don't buy stuff like that there.If Matt wants to buy chicken he can pick it out himself. I'm not really buying that for him, but these are just the staples that I buy on a weekly basis, and they're things that incorporate into my diet and I feel like I can make a lot of different meals with. So I hope you guys enjoyed it. If you have any questions, comments, anything like that make sure to drop those down below.