A Better Bag of Groceries

Guest Post: Candy shops at Hy-Vee

Monday, January 18, 2010 at 01:02 PM

My new co-worker Tina, who blogs about her life at Carrots N Cake and about NuVal at Trading Up Downtown, has a lot of fans.  One of them, Candy Tenpas, mother and blog-reader was kind enough to answer Tina’s call for Guest Bloggers.  Here, she tells about her trip to Hy-Vee.

Tina asked me to do a guest post about NuVal.  Since we have a brand-new HyVee a few miles away I decided to do my weekly shopping trip there instead of at my usual grocery store. HyVee is one of the grocery chains that feature NuVal scores right on the price sticker on the shelf. I wanted to see if having the NuVal scores right in front of me would influence my shopping purchases.  In general, I try to make healthy choices but I can always use extra help!

Produce

The first display I came to was naval oranges for 79 cents/pound.  NuVal score = 100.   Perfect score on my first item!  I snatched up 3.  The rest of my produce items scored 90 and above:  Romaine lettuce, bananas, organic apples and a red pepper.  I did notice that the bagged lettuce kits scored much lower than regular lettuce.  I guess that shows how croutons and dressing can drag a score down!  I also bought canned peaches for my kids (packed in juice—no sugar) which scored only a 14.

Dry Goods

I needed to purchase sandwich buns.  I landed on Pepperidge Farm wheat rolls with a score of 29. They were the highest scored bun I could find.  The lowest I could see what a hoagy roll for 8.  I found the NuVal scores particularly helpful in the bread aisle. It can be so overwhelming sometimes to try  to figure out the healthiest option amongst all the choices.  The NuVal score made it easy without having to take the time to read individual labels.

I made my way to the popcorn aisle and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Jolly Time 100 calorie micro popcorn that I usually buy was a high-scorer compared to other microwave popcorns. It came in at 27.  The lowest I found was the HyVee Kettle Corn at a 2.  Yikes!

Next was nuts.  This was where price trumped score.  I ended up with the HyVee unsalted almonds at 47 because I couldn’t bear paying over a dollar more for the can of Planters Nutrition Almonds with a score of 52.

Beans were a surprise.  I like to buy dried beans vs. canned because it’s more economical.  I always keep them on hand and cook a few cups worth at a time to add to recipes and for salads.  The bags of dried beans were all in the 90s compared to canned beans which scored more in the 40/50s.  I also bought canned pork and beans. I didn’t even look at the score because no matter the score, I was still making The Pioneer Woman’s Baked Beans this week.  So good!

Another surprise was canned tuna. I wasn’t planning on buying any but the 66 score changed my mind!

 Frozen Food

I usually don’t buy frozen pizzas—I prefer to make my own –but my husband is going hunting this weekend and frozen pizzas are easy for the guys to make.  My goal was to buy the highest scoring frozen pizza.  I was happy to find that the HyVee brand Supreme Pizza had a score of 15 which seemed to be pretty high for frozen pizza.

Overall, I was glad to see that the store brand foods scored just as high as national brands.  I like to save money where I can but I was worried that I’d have to pay extra for better NuVal scores.  Not the case!   Not every item at HyVee has a NuVal score at this point but Tina says that NuVal is working on it. In most cases, I was able to compare an unscored item with a scored item and make an educated guess. 

Here’s some of what I brought home. 

The total was $65.08 which is about average for our family.  I didn’t need to buy anything in the meat dept so that helped keep my total down.

Note: The fire-roasted canned tomatoes are for Julia’s Almost Instant Tomato Soup.  I hate to buy canned soups with all that sodium.  This soup looks yummy and I can’t wait to give it a try.

Posted by: Melissa 2 comments

Posted in: Guest Bloggers

Tags: Hy-vee