If you’re trying to make healthier food choices for yourself and your family, it all starts at the grocery store. What are you putting into your cart? There are so many choices, so here are some simple tips to help you choose the right ingredients so you can cook up truly healthy meals!

1. Do Some Prep Work

Plan out meals ahead of time and organize your ingredients by category. Then stick to it! This will help you stay away from impulse buys and you can avoid that aimless walk through the aisles where you’re more likely to pick up those yummy looking cookies!

2. Choose Real Foods Whenever Possible

Don’t be so quick to grab something just because it says “natural”, “free” or “light”. Read the ingredients - the fewer the better. And try to Stick to foods with as little processing and as few additives as possible. If you want more salt or sugar, you can always add it yourself.

3. Look for the Right Labels

Take just a few extra seconds to read your labels . It makes all the difference in the quality of food you’re buying. For example, let’s talk about an all around kitchen staple - extra virgin olive oil. It’s light and fresh and delicious in so many ways. It makes a great marinade, salad dressing, or do what I do and simply add it to a bowl with spices for dipping!

More of us than ever are using Extra Virgin Olive Oil as part of a healthy diet. But, is yours truly extra virgin, 100% pure providing the benefits it claims? Well if you’re not sure, you can look for this the USDA Quality Monitoring Program Seal and that let’s you know your EVOO is pure.

This seal is not an easy thing to come by! Capatriti Extra Virgin Olive Oil is proud to carry that USDA QMP Seal. This seal verifies the vendor and their product is continuously and randomly tested to meet the stringent government requirements. So when I’m using these I know I’m getting purity and quality.

Pure and simple! Pure Extra Virgin Olive Oil, the taste, the aroma and the color, like these from Capatriti are super easy to identify once you can spot the difference. Just look for that Capatriti EVOO USDA QMP Seal at the store.

4. Remember variety is the spice of life!

The more variety you can add to your diet, the more nutrition you’re bound to take in. Most of us tend to eat the same things and make the same few recipes all the time, so try some simple swaps. If you eat lots of white potatoes, next time try sweet or red. Or have some fun letting the kids pick out a new fruit or veggie every week. Then you can learn how to prep and cook them together. Call it: adventures in grocery shopping! But, make sure when picking up those new ingredients to look for a government seal on the product like Capatriti EVOO to make sure you know what you’re buying.

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