Education on Aisle Nine
Grocery shopping. Some people carefully plan a weekly menu and painstakingly make a list in an attempt to stick to their budget. Others dread the task so much they just show up at the store hungry, throw items in the cart and go home hoping to make a meal of their basket full of random purchases.
Regardless of which category they fit in, several Pantexans recently turned this mundane weekly task into a fun educational event.
The employees and some family members visited two local grocery stores for healthy shopping tours. The tours, hosted by Market Street United and Natural Grocers, were part of the Active for Life Challenge, a 10-week American Cancer Society program to encourage employees to be more active and eat healthier foods.
At Natural Grocers, the store manager and employees provided an aisle-by-aisle overview of many healthy food products and supplements. They talked about food philosophy and standards. The produce manager even cut a blood orange for participants to taste. Attendees also took home a new product sample and some literature from the store’s nutrition library.
Kelly Delgado-Goudschaal, manager of Pantex Supply Chain Management Transformation and Strategic Initiatives, was impressed by the store’s advice to gradually convert to a healthier lifestyle.
“The store manager encouraged us to make small changes instead of jumping off a cliff into health eating,” Delgado-Goudschaal said. “The prices were also not as expensive as I expected.”
She made the tour a family affair by bringing her wife and three daughters along. The kids said the samples offered during the tour were “not as gross as they expected”.
At Market Street United, a certified dietician offered a two-hour Easy Diabetes Shopping store tour designed to help diabetics make healthier shopping decisions.
Pantex Engineer Sharon Smith said, “The tour was fantastic! We learned how to use the special number on the price stickers to help us choose the healthier items”.
Those who couldn’t attend a store tour were encouraged to complete a grocery store scavenger hunt to learn about product placement and labeling.