Grocery Shopping on a Special Diet: The Baking Aisle + Milk and Cheese

Welcome back to my autism-aware shopping trip through the grocery store.  Week by week, I'm showing you what the store sells, prune down the selection to what's safe for me to eat (because autistic people can have very sensitive systems) and point out various "gotchas" the store tries to make you buy- stuff you didn't come for and don't need.  

As a reminder, I shop with the following conditions in mind:

• dairy-free
• low sugar
• avoid ultraprocessed junk
• avoid food coloring
• conditional vegetarianism
• avoid high histamine foods
• awareness of gluten-free options and sugar-free options

Last week was the impulse purchases on the way into the store, the yogurt, and the juice, coffee, and tea sections.  We learned that fruit juice and yogurt are a trap (check the sugar levels!), snack foods tend to sneak into every section in the store, and that the PH of bottled water varies quite widely.

This week: the rest of the dairy aisle, and then the baking aisle and friends!  Canned fruit, sugar, flour, PB&J.

It's now time for milk and its friends.  

The milk section.  All of this is moo juice.  Seriously.  I don't know how many kinds of milk a person really needs, but I once heard a guy from Europe make jokes about exactly this.  We have skim, 1% milkfat, 2% milkfat, whole milk, high protein milk, buttermilk, milk laced with omega 3 fatty acids, and "humane" (questionable) milk.  We have most of these varieties in 4-5 brands, including a store brand.  Who on Earth needs that much decision paralysis?  

By the way, I can't drink any of this or I'll have a massive mood crash.  Moving on!

Flavored milks!  Remember how I was showing you stealth sugar bombs in yogurt last week?  Yeah, here they are again.  Strawberry milk and chocolate milk are laced with sugar in order to make them craveable or whatever the word marketing firms are using these days.  

And here's the only section of use to me: the nondairy milks (part 1).  This is the refrigerated section, so everything is cold and ready to drink.  Note the variety: coconut, almond, soy, cashew, oat, and lactose-free moo juice varieties here.  There will actually be even more later, but suffice to say, no single variety has won the war for the hearts of conscientious USians.  

I personally tend to drink almond milk, mostly because I find the flavor the least objectionable.  I also like that it lasts about twice as long as moo juice.  I don't drink milk every day, or even on a regular basis, so having something that lasts longer in the fridge is worth extra money to me.  

Coffee creamer.  Yes, all four of those doors.  Once again, I don't drink coffee.  But keep in mind the sugar content of those flavored things.  Because yeah.  Sugar bomb!  (There are some dairy-free options in there if I ever decided to start making lattes and such though.)

Sour cream, cottage cheese, snacks related to both those things, and flavored varieties.  I sulked a little bit when I saw the cottage cheese.  I used to love cottage cheese.  I still do, but it hates me (dairy!), so I basically never buy it any more.  It's a dratted shame, because there's a really good waffle recipe that uses it and I miss that too.

Hey, remember the milk section and choice paralysis?  Welcome to the egg section!  We have several brands of eggs, but we also have confusing labels!  "Cage free" is supposed to mean the birds are never caged, but there's no regulation for the label, so it effectively means nothing!  Hooray...  

Please note, that doesn't mean the chickens in question aren't cage-free.  It just means I have literally no way of knowing if that's true.  And I'm not inclined to trust a major corporation with my morality.  At the moment I'm getting all my eggs from a local farm, but in times past I've bought the some of the packages on the far left.  The reason being that they have the Certified Humane label on them.

If that label is there, the animals involved with the product were fed appropriate food (chickens are omnivores fyi), had appropriate space, and were treated like living creatures rather than objects to produce profit.  I love finding this label on animal products, but it's fairly rare unfortunately.  The Certified Humane website has their standards transparently available on their website for anyone that cares to read them.  You don't need a degree in Animal Sciences to understand it, either.  I don't know exactly what a bell drinker is (some kind of water container for chickens), but I don't particularly need to.  

If this seems very small for the block cheese section, it's because this is the "regular" block cheese.  If you want the fancy block cheese you gotta go to a different part of the store, specifically the far side of the fruits and vegetables section.

Directly after the block cheese is... snacks.  Yeah.  String cheese, cheese bites, dips, cheese spread (part 1).  While the cheese itself is only bad for you because it's dairy, the stuff they package with the cheese is often a convenient hiding place for sugar or ultraprocessed garbage.  For example, crackers and pretzels are devoid of nutritional content (but boy they're cheap).  Cream cheese is often laden with sugar, never mind the bagel chips.  And of course cheese spreads often have a higher sugar content because, once again, sugar gets everywhere.

After the snacks (part 1) we get into a truly staggering number of shredded cheese options.  I had to stand a good ways down an aisle to get this picture.  You'll notice that for how big this section is, it's really only two brands offered plus a smattering of smaller ones at the right end.  The US loves its cheese, though, clearly.  

We then move to the conveniently sliced cheese, in case you wanted perfectly square thin slices of cheese.  Also for if you're too lazy to buy a block and slice your own.  I'm pretty sure most USians fall into the latter camp.  Again, I can't eat any of this because it will tank my mood faster than you can say, "But why would we eat this much dairy if it's so bad for us?"

Remember how we had snacks already?  Yeah, well.  Now it's more snacks time.  This is where the cheese section meets the meats section, so these snacks have both.  Shoutout to Lunchables, which I never buy anymore for obvious reasons but miss having sometimes.  Also?  The vast majority of USian humans do not lack for protein in our diets, so these snacks are pretty superfluous.  Moreso than most snacks, I mean.  I guess as snacks go they're at least somewhat healthier than other snacks?  At any rate, they're both loaded with dairy and the meat is likely inhumanely produced, so I just keep walking...  

Notable mention to a tiny, tiny corner between the shredded cheese and the pre-sliced squares of cheese.  This is the dairy-free section, and this is all you get.  One brand, two shredded cheese flavors, two sliced cheese flavors, and no blocks of cheese at all.  

Suffice it to say I typically shop for cheese substitutes elsewhere.

And now, the baking aisle!  Lucky number 13.  Maybe it's only lucky for me and my spouse, but I'll take it.  

I'm not sure why PB&J is a baking need, but whatever, I guess.  

Sugar and sweeteners are a special kind of hell for people who have to be careful with their bodies. There's a million non-sugar sweeteners and almost all of them are awful for you. 

So there's the classic: cane sugar.  My mother is allergic to it, which makes most of this aisle useless when keeping her needs in mind.  Mine, personally, simply revolve around not putting too much of this stuff into my system.  That's actually easier to do when you're making your own stuff, because then you literally control how much sugar goes into the recipe.  

Other options available here include your typical brown sugar (which is just cane sugar coated in molasses), corn syrups (eww...), various Stevia options (okay healthwise but not great for baking due to it not being a 1-to-1 substitute with sugar), agave syrups (fine, but only when liquid sweetener is an option), and sweetener blends.  

For the lattermost, the blends vary in their usefulness based on what's in them.  Most artificial sweeteners are bad news for the sensitive guts and leaky blood-brain-barriers of autistic people, so stuff like aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose are off the table.  

When I shop for sugar substitutes, I tend to buy sugar alcohols, like xylitol and erythritol, or better yet, a natural option like monk fruit sweetener.  When baking a recipe I'm willing to experiment with, I'll typically substitute half the sugar for monk fruit or a mix of these natural sweeteners.  

Notably missing here is my mother's go-to for sugar: beet sugar.  Michigan grows a crop of sugar beets, and these can be turned into granulated sugar just like sugar cane can be.  For reasons unknown, beet sugar doesn't harm my mother.  So I'll cook with that sometimes.  

PB&J. Jam and jelly are basically just flavored sugar spreads, so I avoid them.  The only exception this year was my homemade black raspberry pulp, which I used as jam.  I figured that was pretty safe since they're packed full of fiber and nutrients.

The peanut butter is almost inevitably full of chemicals and sugar, never mind peanuts being a major allergy for many people. I use sunflower seed butter when I eat this kind of food, so this entire section is pretty much ignored.  

Honey. It's delicious and I love it, but obviously it's a high sugar product. Use sparingly. Also, ideally you want to buy local (within a couple miles) honey, because that's made with local pollen and can help end your allergies by teaching your white blood cells that the pollen isn't trying to kill you.  I'll sometimes pick up a semi-local variety from here, but mostly I try to buy from neighboring farms.  

Baking supplies.  It's 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, so they're out of yeast. Again. Thankfully I have some at home.

They're also out of the largest packages of flour.  Most of the flour here is your typical bleached-to-death, glutinous white flour, bereft of nutrition.  This is the first way food goes badly wrong.  Most commercial processes use white flour when making their products, which means the results lack the nutrition and fiber that they could otherwise offer. There are some packages of whole wheat flour, at least.

It's not all wheat offerings, thankfully.  Quinoa flour, almond flour, flaxseed meal, cornmeal, hemp hearts, and coconut flour are also available here. Also, fortunately, a gluten-free option flour mix from a major company.  Oddly enough, this isn't my go-to spot for baking gluten-free (there's a different spot elsewhere), but it's at least an option.  

Canned fruit. Typically used for pie fillings and that's about it now. The industrial canning process for these destroys much of their nutrition. I had canned fruit on occasion growing up, but as I make my pie fillings fresh, there's little point in buying any.  Moving on!

Dried fruit, chopped nuts, and candy for adding to cookies and baked goods. The dried fruit is basically candy with fiber and some vitamins. The chopped tree nuts are common allergens, and also high in histamines, so best avoided. The chocolate chips and other candy, obviously, is just sugar bombs.

Marshmallows and jello. Both ultra-refined foods. Sugar and more sugar, too. Jello has been off my consumption list for years because of the gelatin, most commonly made from cow hoof or bone.  Marshmallows as well, but if you look in the lower left, there's some packages of a brand called Dandies.  Those are gelatin-free, so when I feel like a marshmallow-y treat, those are what I turn to.  

Cooking oils. More selection than you'd expect, with various kinds of coconut oil, seed and nut oils, ghee, and a truly absurd number of olive oil options. Fun fact: US regulations for olive oil are more stringent than ones in Europe, so if you want good quality oil that's sure to be actual olive oil and not flavored whatever-other-oil-was-lying-around, buy extra-virgin olive oil from California.

Premade pie fillings and crusts. In all honesty, pie filling is really easy to make, so I'm not really sure why these are sold save for the specific flavor, I guess?  At any rate, it's all sugar bombs, so we just keep walking...

Evaporated and powdered cow milks, and also milk alternatives (part 2).  Even more options!  Remember the almond milk, soy milk, and cashew milk?  You may also buy hemp milk, oat milk, flax milk, macademia milk... and even goat milk.  

Also, see those handy-grab healthy milk drinks at the top? 

Sugar bombs. Surprise!  Definitely don't give these to your kids unless you want them to have diabetes.  

Spices. There's eleventy billion of them, but at least most of them are safe. The spice mixes aren't as safe, as they may contain powdered chicken or beef or pork.  That's fine for most autistic people, but not for me. Regardless, making your own spice mixes is an adventure and cheaper to boot.

It's a bit dizzying to try to sort through this section looking for powdered thyme or what have you, but here at least, there's no sugar bombs hiding in wait.  

Unlike here:  baking mixes. Almost entirely laden in gluten, and highly processed too.  Biscuits, cornbread, pancakes, muffins, cookies, brownies, and cakes. The sugar content on the desserts is obvious, but the cornbread, pancakes, and biscuits might depress you.

Cake fixings.  Otherwise known as, "Oh look, more sugar!" Also artificial colors, which are often Very Bad News for autistic people. 

One parent of an autistic kid noticed specifically that her son reacted very poorly to the color red.  If red food coloring was in his food, it was going to be bad times after he'd eaten it.  I try to avoid them myself, just in case.  

And that's those done!  Next time it'll be the pasta and "world foods" aisle, and we'll see what a US corporation thinks represents the world...