Almost every experince I have with food is different. Today I learned a considerable amount what shopping at the grocery store is like for a Chilean.
If you are like me at all, you might think that there is no difference when you go to the grocery store in a foreign country to purchase cereals, breads, milk, produce, and other essentials on the list. As someone who has been to Germany (and now am in Chile), I can reasonably say that grocery shopping is somewhat different for every area. I am going to walk you through a Chilean grocery store, explaining some of the key differences that can relate back to health, nutrition, and preventing disease.
Produce. There is not a huge difference in this area of a grocery store. The produce section always has a lot of people and many of the same fruits and vegetables. Some of the exceptions would be that there are less berries available and they have a wider variety of tomatoes and a MUCH larger section for avocados (as they are a very popular food here). The produce section also has plantains. The most noteworthy difference of Chilean grocery store produce sections is that you weigh your own produce and place a printed label from the weigh table on the bag to be used during checkout. This is seen in the picture above on the bananas. Doing this in the produce section makes the checkout process much easier. The produce section is where I get about half of my groceries because fruit and vegetables provide me with essential vitamins and minerals.
Dairy. Similar to produce, there are only small differences and it really depends on the store you shop at in Chile. I have not seen any shredded cheese in grocery stores since I have been here, only sliced. The sliced cheese here is great and there is usually a fairly decent selection, so if you enjoy cheese you will be able to at least find something that satisfies you. There is a more limited selection of milk and milk substitutes (like almond and soy milk) and less yogurt. I have also had a hard time finding plain yogurt in larger containers, but I am not sure if that is because it is not available or I am just really bad at guessing what some labels mean in Spanish. Today I think I found some, but I guess I will find out in the morning when I actually open the yogurt. Like any grocery store in Ohio, the selection depends on how big the store is.
Meat.
Eggs are not refrigerated. That is the first biggest difference I noticed. When I opened the egg cartoon to see if any eggs were cracked, there was still some dirt and feathers around the eggs. The eggs had not been processed and since I have had fresh eggs like this before that don't need to be refrigerated, I knew they would be fine to purchase and put in the fridge when I got home. Besides eggs, much of the meat section was similar. There was not as much chicken and more beef was available. A deli sold nice cuts of meat and homemade foods, like empanadas, and there was an area where you could buy lunchmeat as well. It was relatively typical.
Grains. There is a huge difference here. Every grocery store has fresh bread because bread is a huge part of the Chilean diet. What this means is that the selection of breads is much more intense and the pasta selection is reduced. It is also much more tempting because the bread is fresh and smells delicious as you walk by. As far as other grains, beans are more prevalent in Chile and so are rice and potatoes because they are a larger part of the diet. Those are the main differences.
Processed Foods. Most of the food purchased at grocery stores in Chile has labels (with the exception of fresh bread in baskets, fresh cuts of meat, and produce). This is similar to what I would find back home. However, the labels and way packaged foods are presented in Chile is much different. There are no cartoon characters, toys, games, or celebrities on packages of processed foods. Instead, the packaging of grains and processed foods contains stop signs that inform consumers when a product is high in calories, salts, sugars, or fats.
So what about health? In our cultural class today we learned from a Registered Dietician named Sophie, who also has a Masters Degree in Society and Health, about what more of these stop signs mean. She began her presentation about explaining the nutrition transition happening in Chile, which is leading to more chronic illnesses in the population. Much of this is similar to the United States because the nutrition transition threatens cardiovascular health and increases the risks for chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and cancer. In order to educate consumers, a nutrition law was passed about a year ago in Chile to help inform consumers of products that contain ingredients that increase the risks for some of these chronic diseases. Thus, many processed foods and packaged foods have as little as one or up to four stop signs on them that help disclose calories, salts, sugars, and fat. Looking at the stops signs has become important to my Chilean grocery store shopping experiences. The picture of peanut butter shows what these stop signs look like. As a consumer who can sometimes see the nutrition labels as confusing, this information is very helpful when I am deciding what to buy. The stop signs allow me to really take charge of what kind of foods I really want to put in my body.
I know this has been a dense post compared to my other ones, but I hope you find some value in understanding how nutrition education can be applied in simple ways at Chilean grocery stores. There is much more than this short paragraph, so if you would like to know more details I would be more than happy if you left a comment or sent me a message here.
I know that when I go home I will be wondering where all the stop signs are at the grocery store!