When I first came to the US, I was mesmerized with the freedom of choice.
I arrived in September, 2015, in Orlando, FL, and luckily, I lived walking distance to a Walmart — the epitome of American Choice; where all your dreams and desires could be fulfilled if you had enough money and looked at the right aisle.
As I entered the supermarket, I was greeted by a plethora of choice in the fruit department. Red apples, green apples, grapes, bananas. They all looked shiny and beautiful, and coming from a place like Brazil, I was excited to be able to afford and taste that delicious selection of fruits.
To my disappointment, most of the fruits being sold looked perfect, but had minimal taste, although some were very sugary—something I didn’t experience in my home country, where fruits and vegetables have a rich taste, and sometimes too strong (like the case of spinach, which you have to boil before eating it).
I moved on to the middle aisles, where the real American food is. And if you think American food is ‘apple pie, fried chicken, or turkey’, that’s where you’re wrong. There’s no American food more American than Ultra-processed food, as I was about to find out.
I stopped at the cereal aisle. As I browsed trying to look for the best option, I couldn’t help but notice how all of them had a certain way of wanting to sell you something. Either ‘high in vitamins’, ‘low-cholesterol’, ‘heart healthy’, or ‘high in fibers’, besides the ubiquitous design which varied from cartoons for kids 6 and under, to elaborate logos from varied colors.
As a nutritionist with a decade of study behind me, I went straight to the nutrition label, and soon found that most of them had high levels of sugar—something I wasn’t really into, because the amount of sugar usually topped the daily recommendation.
After looking at about three of them, I realized that it would be a daunting task to find a cereal that I liked and was healthy.
So much for the freedom of choice.
After leaving the store perplexed, I realized I was searching for healthy food in the wrong place. Instead of comparing the lesser of two evils in every product I picked off the shelf, I realized I had to change the approach entirely. Although Walmart was a convenient place to buy groceries, it didn’t have my best interest in mind. It was trying to sell foods that I didn’t need, and make me choose between two unhealthy options of the same kind.
Later, I found Publix — a little further, and I had to ride my bike, but definitely worth it, because what Walmart was costing me in time and convenience, Publix was giving me in health — and health you can’t buy back. After leaving Florida, then Massachusetts, and landing in LA, I found my favorite grocery store: Trader Joe’s. But that’s a subject for another story…