Nowadays, shopping for food can be a real struggle, both in terms of choice and money. Indeed, whether you are interested in ecology, healthy food, natural alternatives or your wallet, shopping today also requires a deeper reflection of our choices and our way of consuming. While 20 years ago we simply went to the supermarket to fill our shopping cart to simply feed our family, today we have an inner ecology that pushes us to something else.

What are our choices?

Focus on 3 main possibilities

1. Les grandes surfaces traditionnelles :

They offer us a wide selection of products and allow us to do quick shopping almost every day of the week. Today, the big stores are losing popularity with a large category of the population.

Indeed, supermarkets work primarily with the objective of selling and therefore making a profit. From then on, for most of them, these structures push to mass consumption quite often excessive. We are then easily tempted by products that do not suit us and that are not good for our health on a daily basis.

Indeed,big box stores very often invite us to consume hyper industrialized foods harmful to our body, our health and our well-being.

Also, while organic is starting to find its place on some shelves in some departments, ethical choices are not always the most appropriate: non-European organic, insufficient labels, greenwashing (marketing process that aims to give an ecological image), etc. ...

2. Les boutiques bio :

In this type of store, you will find healthy alternatives for your health: organic products with different labels, fruits and vegetables from organic farming, ethical, ecological and natural cosmetics, daily objects of the "zero waste" type, etc. At this level, we are moving deeper into the spheres of ethical trade. Nevertheless, understanding the ingredients and reading the labels is more than essential to consume properly in this type of structure. Indeed, "organic" does not necessarily mean healthy or "local".

You should also know that the standards in the specifications of organic agriculture differ from one country to another. Therefore, we find so-called organic foods that are only partially organic.

Also, depending on your shopping goals, learning to consume organic or healthy is a different struggle. In this case, evolution really pushes us to understand what we buy and consume by reading labels and understanding ingredients. The in-depth knowledge of the organic, natural and European or world ecology world is important in a personal learning.

3. Les fermes :

The farms offer us to date a whole panel of products from their personal culture : Eggs, cheeses, dairy, fruits, vegetables, cereals, drinks, etc. We are then in a short circuit which allows a real contact from the producer to the consumer. We then completely erase the ecological and carbon footprint because we go directly to the source of the product.

Nevertheless, are these products processed by of pesticides ? Are they approved by any organic label? Do our local producers also work with the awareness of creating a healthy product for our environment but also for our health?

So many questions that we should ask ourselves in order to consume in accordance with our values and our precise and personal needs.

To this day, is it possible to shop perfectly? What are our personal values? What are our life and consumption choices? Taking care of oneself, one's health, one's inner and outer ecology, one's planet, one's wallet but also one's agenda are so many parameters to take into consideration.

While the ideal would be to consume local and organic, life does not always allow us to do so. Let's try to do our best to feel aligned with ourselves and our deepest values, it will already be a big step for our well-being.