Illustration by Kat Frick Miller
Welcome to The Globe’s series What’s In My Cart?, where we ask Canadians how they stock their kitchens. Have your own personal grocery story? Share it here.
Deli-meat sandwiches had become such a regular meal for Kathleen Michels’s husband that she dubbed his daily lunch Doug’s nitrate sandwich.
“If I explained to him how bad they were for his health he’d say, ‘Well, everybody eats them,’” she says.
Besides the statins her husband had been prescribed decades earlier (which evened out his cholesterol levels), the couple was in-shape, did not have diabetes, did not smoke and did not drink except for an occasional glass of wine at dinner. But their diet was heavy in meats such as beef, pork, moose and the occasional seal flipper pie (a dish popular around Easter time in St. John’s, where they live), dairy and other products high in cholesterol such as chips.
Then in 2021 her husband suffered a heart attack and subsequently had open-heart surgery.
It was in researching how to heal her husband that Michels came across information about a plant-based diet, which some research has found can reduce risk of cardiovascular disease, lower blood sugar and lower LDL – the bad cholesterol.
To learn how to cook plant-based meals, the couple took courses on the Gift of Health website, a non-profit run by doctors Arjun and Shobha Rayapudi, a surgeon and physician couple in Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula.
Now Michels’s husband eats a completely plant-based diet. The couple make stews with plant-based beef and vegetables or chili with pinto, navy and romano beans for dinner instead of the meat, potatoes and gravy they often ate before. For lunch, Michels’s husband usually eats leftovers of his healthy dinner instead of the nitrate sandwich he used to enjoy. They paired this diet change with more exercise, which Michels says helps a lot.
For the most part, Michels changed her diet along with her husband – though she still enjoys ground moose or sausage that friends or neighbours will gift her – and she says eating this way has given her a new appreciation for cooking.
“There’s something calming about cutting vegetables and cooking from scratch. Part of it is knowing that every bit of that food is going to make me a healthier person,” she says.
- How I save money on groceries: I go to Walmart because the prices are lowest compared with the other grocery stores. They have a mark-down bin where I can get a lot of 50-per-cent off produce and vegetables. I only buy my groceries there and am mindful that I’m supporting Canadian brands.
- How I splurge on groceries: We go to a vegetarian restaurant once in a while called the Sprout in St. John’s. We go once every couple of months.
- The hardest shopping habit to keep up: Remembering to always look at the label to check where our food comes from, and remembering to buy local.
- How I’ve changed my eating habits recently: The change to a plant-based diet has been a big one for us. My husband and I love the taste of meat, but we don’t want my husband to suffer another heart attack.
Five items always in my cart:
Turnips – $5.50 for five pounds: Turnips are very popular in Newfoundland. Root vegetables reign supreme here. The five-pound bag lasts me about a month. I make a mash of potatoes, carrots, parsnips and turnips with plant-based butter and black pepper, without salt, and it comes out delicious.
Mexican-flavoured plant-based ground beef – Yves – $4.97: This tastes great in tacos or a lasagna. It’s very tasty, not too high in sodium and is high in protein, iron and B12. I also buy the plain-flavoured or Italian-seasoned one. It’s a Canadian brand, which is great.
Soy milk – Silk Protein – $3.97: I now drink this with my coffee instead of the cream that I used to drink with it.
Plant-based broth – President’s Choice beefless – $3: I use this to make soup or gravy or as a base for the spaghetti sauce that I make.
Unsalted plant butter – Becel – $2 a pound: Some grocers will put these on sale from $5.99, especially Loblaws and NoFrills. When I find them on sale I buy 10 and put them in my freezer.
