I often grocery shop from home. Yeah, that’s right, I have my needs from a local grocery store delivered directly to my door. It’s a timesaver(mostly) and saves me the inconvenience of maneuvering up and down crowded aisles and the. standing in line for 10-15 minutes checking out.

I’ve become used to this and it has become a good thing. For me. Why? I end up spending time online comparison shopping. Something I never really did before. I mean, really, who has time to compare brands and prices while pushing a cart and wanting nothing more than to get the heck outta there as soon as possible? Now, I can take my time, even fill my virtual cart the night before, schedule a delivery time that’s convenient for me and think no more about that previously dreaded task.

Some stores show nutrition information for products. That’s good, for me, because I’ve been working on eating better, getting away from junk and ultra-processed food as much as possible. Believe it or not, there are more choices than I can really count.One grocery in particular even rates the nutrition of products on a scale of 1-10, with 1 as poorest. Recently, I was looking up snacks, specifically low carb, crunchy stuff. Yes, we all like crunchy things don’t we? I’ve been eating, on occasion, pork rinds, but like anything else I eat, I like to have variety. So, going through this one site, it comes up with pork rinds. Again. These people that write this software really need t learn how to parse a query. I looked anyway at the value given for nutrition and it was a 2. Really? Low calorie, 0 carbohydrates, and some (8 grams) of protein per serving places this at a 2? What does it take to be a 10? Manna from heaven?

When I looked up the explanation as to this particular rating, it was because it was viewed as “ultra-processed”. So I looked at the bag closer. It was fried in pork fat and had added salt. That’s it. No weird unpronounceable (probably poisonous) chemicals added. Just pork fat and salt. Maybe it was the bag it was packaged in or the shelf it sat, because this is not in any way ultra-processed. To compare, look at any packaged food in your pantry to compare. Potato chips, which also have 3 ingredients and are fried as well, have a 5 for a nutrition score. No kidding! To be fair, some other pork rinds offerings had other ingredients, like yeast(?) and the ever present additive in almost everything processed we eat: monosodium glutamate. One more example, peanuts. A major brand of “Dry Roasted” peanuts contain not just peanuts and salt, but “Natural Flavors”(?). Tourla Yeast, Gelatin, and Maltodextrin(?), among a few other things like onion, garlic, and paprika. For peanuts. But those are nutritionally rated 7. Almost heavenly.

Oh, I forgot, Maltodextrin grows in my garden. Maybe I should start going back to shopping in person and not worrying or feeling guilty about what I buy and consume. Life was better, I think. Well, maybe not, but no worse.