Natural and Organic Grocery Shopping Made Simple

Your natural and organic grocery shopping experience doesn’t have to be complicated. I’m sharing some simple tips and Fresh Thyme Finds to get you started. 

Hello hello, friends! I’m super excited to be partnering with Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets for today’s post.

It should come as no surprise to you that I love me a good grocery store experience. Don’t most healthy living fanatics? What makes me love a grocery store even more is when they offer a wide variety of healthier products, with a focus on natural and organic goods. Oh, and also at really reasonable prices. 

But if you’re NOT a big fan of grocery shopping, it can be a challenge navigating the stores and figuring out what products are actually better for us. Especially if…

A) The grocery store is a big box store carrying everything under the sun

B) You’re just getting started on your healthy living journey

C) You’re new to the whole grocery shopping experience and don’t know where to start. 

What’s awesome is when retailers like Fresh Thyme Farmers Markets come to town. It makes shopping for a healthy lifestyle so much easier. Fresh Thyme focuses on making natural and organic products available to everyone – i.e. awesome prices and amazing values. I’m a personal fan of their BOGO deals – If you follow me on Instagram you know I am always scoping out their flyers to see what items are “buy one, get one”, often sharing the deals with you guys via the ‘gram.

Fresh Thyme has become one of my go-to grocers for a variety of reasons. It helps that they’re an easy pit-stop on my way home from the gym, but I love the place so much I have a feeling I’d find myself heading there regardless. The ease of walking through the store, their affordable prices, great produce section, bulk bins, organic selection and awesome sales keeps me coming back week after week (somedays day after day). The convenience factor is just a nice added bonus 😉 

Of course I understand not everyone is going to have a Fresh Thyme where they’re at, so here are some things to think about when starting to shop for more natural and organic products.

Simple practices for natural and organic grocery shopping (no matter where you shop)

Get familiar with the grocery store

Now for those of you that like to get in an get out, you might need to slow your roll here. Find some time in your schedule where you have an extra 30 minutes or so to walk around the grocery store and take note of where everything is. Familiarize yourself with where your go-to items are, as well as your specialty items like world cuisine foods or special dietary packaged products, etc. Once you get a better idea of the layout of the grocery store, it will make it that much easier to find what you’re looking for.

Read your labels

When walking down the aisles with all of the packaged foods, read your labels. This was one of the biggest changes I made when I started figuring out healthy eating. At the time I was a little obsessive about it but it did get me to buy healthier products with less ingredients and avoid artificial flavors and colorings. Check your salsas, dips, dressings, boxed rice, etc. for any words that look questionable. And if you’re unsure what an ingredient is, educate yourself. Some ingredients are completely safe and natural, even if they’re hard to pronounce. Google will be your new best friend (but be mindful of the fear-mongering articles).

Buy more fruit and vegetables

It goes without saying that buying more fresh fruits and vegetables is a great way to start your healthy living journey. Buying local produce when possible is also great.

But while buying fruits and vegetables is obviously natural, what about buying organic? Is it always necessary to buy organic?

You can read more here, on how the USDA defines “organic”.  

That’s definitely a personal preference. I’m not going to sit here and preach everything organic to you. I often refer to the “dirty dozen” list, as well as research different items when I’m uncertain myself. And I personally make the choice to buy most of my produce and meats (humane-certified) from the organic section.

Fresh Thyme has a great selection of organic products and I find their prices are both reasonable and not that much of a difference when comparing to their non-organic products.

Here are some organic Fresh Thyme Finds that I personally love!

Fresh Thyme is also having an organics sale with 25% off all organic produce and organic meats, now January 10th through the 17th! So if you have one in your area, be sure to check it out.

Natural and organic grocery shopping doesn’t have to be intimidating or hard. You just have to go into it with an open mind educate yourself a little bit and make little changes slowly over time. Nothing happens overnight, but just getting started is the biggest step.

And if 2018 is your year to get on that healthy living train, simply buying more natural and organic food and products is a great way to start.

And as always, let me know if you have any questions or comments!!

Fresh Thyme sponsored this post but I am huge fan regardless! As always, all opinions expressed are my own.