"grocery shopping" news and stories

I'm not exactly sure how much time or energy this web technology saves, but apparently, Grocist allows you to scan products to create an electronic grocery list.

You keep a barcode scanner in your kitchen and when you run out of a product, you scan the barcode from the package before you throw it away. The web application searches a UPC database to determine the product and keeps a running grocery list for you.

While the idea of this sounds pretty cool, I can't see how scanning a barcode is any faster or easier than jotting something down on a list that's taped to your refrigerator door. I also can't really see people running out to buy a barcode scanner. Additionally, using Grocist assumes that a lot of your groceries are packaged goods that would be found in the UPC database. I don't know this for sure, but the last time I went to the grocery store, there weren't any barcodes on garlic and lettuce.

However, if the Grocist were to actually send that information at the end of every week via email to the grocery store who could deliver the groceries to my front door, then I'd pay attention!

[via: Lifehacker]

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Obesity in Britain, as it is in the US, is often referred to as an epidemic due to the quickly expanding waistlines of so many in the country. The Department of Health puts the number of overweight or obese people in Britain at 24.6 million, or around 40% of the total population, and they expect to see numbers increase over the next decade. People in the US are slightly healthier than they were lest year, in part because of trends towards healthier eating (even though we are still seeing a tremendous amount of very unhealthy food out there), but this same trend is not noticeable in the UK, according to a new study.

This study, which surveyed more than 12 million consumers about their shopping habits over the past four years, found that only 8% of Britons made an effort to buy healthier, more nutritious foods, such as organic products and "food with labels such as fresh, lite or low fat." 44% of British shoppers had made no effort to buy healthier foods, sticking with "value or extra-value lines" of products." Interestingly, there wasn't much difference in price between the baskets of the healthy shoppers and those who opted for cheaper, less nutritious foods. The healthy baskets cost an "average of £71.78compared with £71.18 for an unhealthy one," which means that most shoppers were buying what they perceived as value at a cost to their health and without saving anything in their wallets.

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Perhaps they are responding to Wal-Mart's increased offering of organic products. Perhaps they are extending their business philosophy of organic growth into their actual products. Whatever the reason, Minneapolis-based Target will be putting more organic products on their grocery shelves.

Target already offers orgaic option in their SuperTarget stores around the country. Their produce departments are certified organic, and they offer hundreds of national-brand organic products. However, Target plans to add their own products under a private-label, Archer Farms. The line of foods will include pizzas, pastas, frozen dinners and dairy products.

Now that Amazon.com is selling groceries online, a whole world of opportunities has opened. Obviously, your day opens up since you don't have to spend time driving to the grocery store, pushing a cart around the store, waiting in line at the register, and perhaps even fighting with your kids about what flavor Pop-tart to get.

But an interesting thing has popped up with the Amazon.com grocery store. Customers are rating grocery products,just as customers rate books, CDs, and movies. This gallon of Tuscan Whole Milk has over 350 customer "reviews," also shows what other customers bought when they bought the milk. Hey, if they can tell you that customers who bought the DVD V is for Vendetta also bought Ultraviolet, Amazon can tell you that fellow customers who bought the Tuscan gallon milk also bought bananas, grapes and fresh vine-ripe tomatoes. Good to know.

No gift-wrapping on the milk, though.

I was shopping at an Asian grocery store the other day looking for some slightly unusual ingredients. I could have gone all the way to Koreatown to one of the big mega-markets like Kaju (California Market) or Assi, where they do volume business so the prices are dirt cheap.

Instead, I chose to stay closer to my neighborhood and went to one of the smaller grocery stores. It's about the size of a convenience store, so it doesn't carry volume, but it does have a little bit of almost everything. Plus, it's about twice as expensive.

One of the things I noticed was an ice chest next to the freezer section, where it looked like people were gathered around waiting - for a free sample perhaps? On the weekends, the markets usually set up small tables at the end of aisles giving out samples of new products.

When I walked over, hoping it might be something sweet and cold to battle the heat, I saw the sign. "Free Ice." The chest was full of ice and had small plastic bags next to it. Customers could scoop ice into a bag, tie it off in a knot, and place it on their freezer and refrigerator items to keep them cold until they got home to put their groceries away.

Kind of makes you appreciate the little guy.