It must be where I live, but women are constantly commenting on my purchases as I unload them onto the belt... I am a veggie fanatic, and I love variety, so my cart is loaded with at least 6-10 different types of veggies, whatever meat I need that week (I buy larger packages when they're on sale, so I don't always need it), fruit, cheese (of course), yogurt, Diet Coke and then whatever random things I need, like chicken stock, cream, Splenda, nuts, spices, etc.

More often than not I get "it all looks so healthy, if only you'd get rid of the cream (or bacon or whatever)." And then they laugh. This may be totally bitchy of me, but I usually just glare at them (because every time this happens to me it's an overweight woman, usually with 1-3 children), glare down at their cart (full of sugar, cereal, tv dinners, and maybe some iceberg lettuce), and then glare back up at them again. Then I turn around and don't say a word. I figure I'm being perfectly clear with my eye movements.

To answer the actual question, though... Yes, I do glance in peoples carts as I walk past. Normally, like others, I am saddened by the families buying frozen pizza, frozen fried foods, tv dinners, chips, pop, cookies, etc. I feel blessed to have grown up in a home with real food cooked almost every night. Rarely did we get fast food or processed food items. I hate what is happening to us because of food. The answer is so simple, and yet no one will listen.

i'm jealous of the frozen pizzas, chips, and sodas myself.... heck, i'm jealous of my own basket! cuz it takes an enormous amount of self discipline not to eat all the junk food i buy my hubby.

i have a thought though, instead of glaring at the women who make comments about the bacon and cream while they laugh, maybe you should look at them and say "well ya know, i've lost 30 lbs eating bacon and using cream, maybe you should try it!" chances are they'll start asking you questions and then you can convince them to go shopping for some stuff that isn't so full of carbs!

ok, so chances are you won't convince them of anything... but i bet a lot of them will ask, anyway.

If some fat woman did that to me, I'd just look at her with a blank face..dunno if I would be mean enough to look at their shopping cart and back at them with a hateful face..

But, I'm usually not the one who does the shopping, so, whatever..

I don't judge people on what they have in their carts. Nor do I judge them on what they eat. Everyone is different - who am I to judge?

I do marvel at the grocery store when I see 99% of the items are pretty much useless to me as a low-carber on a day to day basis. Even when it was trendy a couple years back to be on a low carb diet, and there were many more LC options on the shelves, everywhere I looked I saw carbs, sugars, starch.... It just blew my mind that people were (are) still eating all that stuff - and I am thankful I found a way of living and eating that doesn't depend on compound/processed/fake foods.*** Most everything I eat is pretty pure, and high in protien, high in fat, high in flavor, low and/or void of carbs!


***OK - an occasional diet soda, low carb ice cream, or sugar free chocolate being the exceptions...

Very seldom do I have bad food of any kind in my cart, very seldom am I actually even in the grocery store, I make a list and my DH goes shopping. But when I do go it’s normally because it’s a special occasion and I want to choose the items myself. Some of these special occasions involve entertaining and yes then my cart is LOADED with things that would cause people to wonder, if they thought that was what my regular shopping consisted of. I’m always a little embarrassed standing at the checkout, wondering what people are thinking about what’s in my cart.

^^You should have seen the cash registers' faces when I put 2 lbs. of beef fat trimmings that were free from the butcher on the checkout counter..

..embarassed? Heck no! I laughed to myself and smiled at them. They probably wondered how I looked so skinny eating all that fat, or what I did with all that fat.

I heard one poster once say: "Eh, I feel like telling them I get naked and rub the lard all over my body. It's a fetish." lol, that would be the ultimate shock factor. ha ha.. :/ Though it would be kind of weird..

ok, i gotta ask.... what DO you do with all those fat trimmings? the only thing i can think of is maybe you melt them down to use when cooking, like i do with bacon grease?

I cut them into little pieces, simmer them to get some tallow out of them, fry them up until they're crispy, and use the tallow to cook my meat/ whatever with ,and eat the crispy fat with the meat. It adds good calories, which is good when I'm IFing and need a lot of calories in one meal.

the fat gets crispy? hmmm, by any chance, if you sprinkle salt on it, would it make a good substitute for chips?

I do the same thing with beef suet, but I should warn you that if you have a black stove, it's hell to clean afterward.

Kay

Two thoughts occur to me as I read through this thread ........

I remember how amazed I was (and still am) about the dead zones in the grocery stores - those areas I don't need to visit. Pretty much we LCers find ourselves circling the camp .....and avoiding the processed center aisles.

Secondly - I might watch what other folks are buying, but that is only if there is a huge line that moves at a snail's pace. However, I am not too much of a judge. Back when I was a much maligned smoker, I learned what shunning felt like. Now that I am a FORMER smoker, I retain my empathy for those who are still addicted. I don't make speeches and I don't shun.

That same empathy goes to those who are buying whatever they are buying - is it a hook, line, and sinker world???? I think so.

Hmm, probably, but you'd want to get the fat nice and crispy all the way through so that the liquid fat on the inside of the fat pieces doesn't get all into whatever you're dipping the fat into, if you're dipping it into a salsa or cheese dip or something.

And I like the fat best when it's fresh, because when it gets old, it doesn't taste quite right, but it's still usable old to fry into tallow, just don't eat the old fat crisps or they might taste kind of old.

But tallow is a really stable fat, especially for frying at high temperatures. Just watch that you don't get burnt with sputtering oil, or you will regret using it. If that happens, I usually put on a sweater and oven mittens to fry with so I don't get burnt.

ok i am really kinda going into this blind.... because i always thought that when you fried the fat, it would all melt into oil that would solidify when cooled. so i'm not exactly sure what to do.

can you humour me and give me step-by-step instructions and details as to what i should expect to see as i'm doing this?

sure.
1. cut the fat trimmings into little squares
2. put the frying pan on a medium heat setting
3. put the fat trimmings in the pan, and have tongs ready to turn the fat pieces when they're crispy (but not burnt/brown) to the other side.
4. periodically check the fat pieces and see if they're crispy/medium brown, and if they are, flip them over to get the other side.
5. When each fat pieces is crispy on both sides, take them out of the pan and put them on your plate, and you should have some, if not a lot, of liquid tallow in the frying pan.
6. The tallow will harden at room temp, but if you want to refrigerate it to use later, put it in a bowl or something you can scoop it out easily with, and refrigerate it. I don't think you need to freeze it, because it'd be near to impossible to scoop the hard tallow out of.
voila..it's pretty nice using fat trimmings, because they're free at my butchers, and the fat from them tastes really good (much better than coconut oil), and has some vitamin D in it, which is good.

"it is none of my business what other people eat"

It becomes my business when I have to listen to extremely loud whining or screaming kids, and the trolley proves that they are given plenty of candy and sugary drinks to help with their temper tantrums! Not that I would say anything, but I feel quite justified in believing the parents are not helping the kids with their WOE.