Thursday, December 30, 2010

Extreme Coupons

Tom and I were watching some show last night. Well, in all honesty Tom was kind of watching it off and on and I was in the kitchen cooking dinner simply listening to it. I'm not even sure what the name of the show was but they were talking about these super crazy shoppers who use coupons to the extreme. Seriously, this guy bought like $5,000 worth of items at the grocery store and only paid $200 for it. Pure craziness.

A woman on there that does the extreme coupon shopping said something that perked my interest. She was talking about being able to eat healthier while going with these coupons. She even said to "call the company and tell them you want to eat healthier and ask for coupons." I thinks she ended up buying about $250 worth of food and only paying $6 for it.

Now hold on here. As far as I know coupons are really only available for processed food. Sure stores will have in-store deals on whole foods like produce and meat, but that's not coupons. She was talking about coupons.

I find it sad that Americans have been taught over the years (by the food companies, mind you) that processed food is "healthy" food. Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, South Beach Diet products being the more obvious culprits. They trick people into thinking they are healthy, when in fact they are not all they're cracked up to be.

4 comments:

  1. I agree with you totally, Rachel, the food companies/industries have gotten ahold of the general public so deep that no one even bats an eye at all of the deception and deceptive pratices they pull on the public.
    The other "healthy" eating commercials I hate is the diet centers, or the ones that you have to order pre-packaged pre-serving food that looks like plastic food and then they deliver it to your front door. I tried a sample of that food, if you want to call it that, and it was the most disgusting food I have ever eaten, and it had an aftertaste that I cannot even discribe. And with an average cost of around $400 for a month of food, I wouldn't waste my time or money on it.
    I read your post the other day about since eating more clean food, how your taste buds and body have cleaned up so to speak so the real food taste and flavors come out and shine. And I am so very glad you have given up on diet pop, it is the worst with the sugar substitutes in them, and they are true cancer and other terrible illness contributors. And when you tried it, your body truly rebelled.
    I was also thinking that if this coupon talk is mentioned to the food companies enough times, they will take interest in this and try to corner the market with so called "healthy organic" produce with their labels on it, proclaiming the health of "their" food as the only thing to purchase...just a thought.

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  2. I was just thinking about this subject today before I even read your post. No point in even looking for coupons as they don't have them for cruelty free, grass fed livestock, organic free range eggs, fresh veggies etc. I look in Sundays' paper and the coupons are for crap crap and more crap. As I'm out trimming my tomatoes (yes, its 72 degrees today) I realize I am gong to have to get more serious about growing as our taste buds change and we eliminate more and more grocery store buying.

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  3. I watched that show as well and was a bit disgusted by it. Sure, you could survive off of your "stash" for a year, but who wants to live on soda pop and processed noodle dishes? Not me!

    That being said, I do use coupons for "healthy" foods, but the availability is limited. We had a dismal growing year up here in Seattle and I got a grand total of 5 tomatoes. Yep, 5. So, Muir Glen organic tomatoes on sale with a coupon is often my only option.

    Now if only they would give out coupons for the 4 lbs of lentils I buy from the farmer's market... ;-D

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  4. I still think it's intresting to see how much food you can buy for very little money, but I'm with the rest of you. Once I started eating healthy, those coupons didn't apply to me. I used to be able to spend only about 40.00/week and feed my family of four, but we were so unhealthy!

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