We would all like to know how to save at the grocery store. Record high fuel prices are forcing groceries to reach higher and higher prices. It is a vicious cycle, from the cost of producing food to the high cost of getting it to the shelves. What we need is a new way to shop. Power shopping for groceries may be the answer.

One type of power shopping is to be on the prowl for bargains. Scan all the mailers and newspaper flyers for items that are on sale. Clip any grocery coupons to take full advantage of discounts offered.

You may need to plan ahead to get the full benefit of of this type of power shopping, but the added planning could result in significant savings. For example, canned goods will keep for quite a long period. If you see a sale on canned green beans, for example, and you know you will use them within a few months, stock up! Buy the maximum allowed from the coupons or specials offered at the store.

I remember my grandmother clipping coupons from newspapers and magazines while she watched her favorite soap operas on tv. I often thought she was wasting her time, but I now believe she was a prophet. She actually was forewarning me of an energy crisis that I could not imagine twenty years ago. Well, it is here now and we are feeling the crunch in several areas. Any means we can use to create a little savings here and there will surely be a benefit to the old bank account.

Power shopping for groceries can be fun. Make coupon hunting and clipping a family affair. Young children will enjoy clipping coupons, even if they do not comprehend the reason behind their efforts.

Some websites offer coupons, too. If you have a printer you can easily print them for some nice savings.

A little planning and minimal effort is all that is required to learn how to save at the grocery store. With grocery prices expected to continue their uphill march, it is time we mount at least some semblance of defense.

Learn the real secret of power shopping for groceries. Here is a way to save at least $100 per week on your grocery bill. Click over to Power Grocery Shopping and start saving today! Grocery prices are only getting higher. Start saving now!

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Do you read the labels when you choose your food? Do you think you understand what they really mean? You may have to change your thinking. Here are some of the grocery shopping secrets you need to know.

Grocery Shopping Secrets – Lying Labels

Read labels much and you’ll notice that almost all packaged products have hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oil in them. This is the stuff scientists give to mice to cause heart disease when they want to study that disease! The good news is that, due to consumer demand, some brands have stopped using it in some of their products. The bad news is that it is still in well over half of all packaged grocery products.

Look at those labels when you’re grocery shopping, and you’ll also see that sugar is showing up in almost everything. It is even added to most brands of kidney beans, which used to be packed in just water and salt. Why add sugar? Two reasons. The first is simply that our taste buds have come to crave sweetness. This, however, doesn’t explain why it is in things like kidney beans. That is a bigger secret.

Sugar is added to kidney beans, peanut butter and many other products that don’t need it for taste because these are convenient places to dump it. You see, sugar is cheap – cheaper than the other ingredients. Government subsidies have helped produce so much cheap sugar that growers need to dump it into as many products as they can. This works well for the makers of food products. More sugar and less of the more expensive peanuts in that peanut butter means more profit.

Here an even nastier secret: Manufacturers are lying about the amount of sugar they put in their products. You may be aware that they have to list the ingredients on the label in order, according to how much of each their is. What if they have a product that has more sugar than anything else? They don’t want it at the top of the list where everyone can see that it is the primary ingredient, right?

This is how they hide it: They put three types of sugar into the product, so that no one of them is a larger amount than whatever “healthy” ingredient they want to appear at the top of the list. For example, suppose you read on that juice bottle label, “cranberry juice, corn syrup, sugar, high fructose corn syrup and vitamin C.”

It looks like the primary ingredient is just natural juice. Perhaps the real story is: 27% juice, 25% corn syrup, 24% sugar, 23 % high fructose corn syrup, 1% Vitamin C. The three types of sugar add up to 72% of the entire bottle’s contents! This little trick is becoming depressingly common.

Think you are buying whole wheat products? Whole wheat bread is only whole wheat if it says 100% whole wheat. In fact, even then you should look closer. It might actually say, “Contains 100% whole wheat,” which just means they at least threw one wheat grain in there.

“Wheat bread,” “wheat flour,” “unbleached wheat flour,” and “wheat,” all just mean some variety of processed white flour that originated from wheat grain. “Wheat” bread is usually nothing more than white bread with enough whole grain thrown in to color it. “Wheat blend” pasta is the latest trick to make you think you’re buying whole wheat. It is again just white flour (always the first ingredient, if you look on the label) with enough whole wheat “blended” in to let you feel you are buying a healthier food, so they can charge more.

Here is one more grocery shopping secret or those who want healthier fruits and vegetables. Most frozen fruits and vegetables, when tested against “fresh” fruits and vegetables, have more vitamin content. Why? The flash-freezing that is done shortly after they are picked, preserves the vitamins. “Fresh” fruits and vegetables are in trucks for days, exposed to heat and air, then sit at the grocery store for days,and finally in your refrigerator for days. They lose much of their vitamin content as a result of this treatment. Frozen fruits and veggies can be healthier, and they are even cheaper at times, like when the particular fruit or vegetable isn’t in season.

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The Feds have a neat way of playing with the statistics to try and convince us that the cost of goods is going up a little bit instead of a lot when they release their Consumer Price Index figures WITHOUT the cost of food and energy! Huh? For all of us living in the real world, we know just how much prices are going up, and unlike the government, we can’t just exclude food and energy from our budgets. Since we can’t eliminate food costs simply by moving it to another column, it is imperative to try and save money on this necessary expense, and this article looks at several easy ways to help reduce our food costs.

One of the easiest ways to save money on food is by simply being organized. When making up a list of items to be purchased, I always go through the ads to see who has what on sale, and when. You’ll be amazed at how much you can save just by spending a little time looking at the Sunday ads, and seeing who has the best prices on items that you need. After making your list of stores to visit, set up a route and hit all of the stores in an orderly fashion purchasing the items on sale at each store. Don’t just look at the food stores either, but look at places like drug stores who often discount many food items as ‘loss leaders’ to draw people into their store. After a while, you’ll get a good feel for which stores have great deals on certain items, and when the items tend to go on sale. Another benefit of hitting several stores at a time is that you’ll spend less time running to the stores, and use less gas in the process, saving you more money.

Another easy way to save lots of money is by belonging to one of the Wholesale clubs like Costco or B.J.’s. Don’t let the idea of a membership fee keep you from belonging to at least one of these places because you’ll more than make up for it in savings. The problem many people have with these type of stores is the fact that you have to buy everything in such large quantities. While this may be an issue for items like meat and other perishable foods, you can definitely save lots of money by buying non-perishables like canned goods, paper items, and many other things that have a long shelf life. If you do a co-op with a family member or friend, you can even split the purchases and the cost.

Like many people, I used to have an aversion to clipping coupons. However, my attitude about coupon clipping changed one day when I watched a woman in front of me purchase a cart full of groceries for about $17. She was an expert at using coupons to save money. If you really want to get serious about saving money with coupons, you have to be organized and only clip coupons that you’re going to use. With the advent of the Internet, you can even print a lot of coupons online. A couple of sites that allow you to do this are coolsavings.com and coupons.com. Many stores also match manufacturers coupons, saving you twice as much on an item. While using coupons can save you a great deal of money, be aware of the prices of the items you’re purchasing and compare them with the other brands. Although large name brand manufacturers offer coupon discounts more often than local brands, the name brand prices can be much higher, negating much of your savings. Be smart and compare.

There are some other things you can do to save money while in the store. First, avoid impulse buying. Stores place certain higher profit items at strategic places in the store, increasing the likelihood of your purchasing them. Be aware of this, and keep your hands in your pockets. Also, leaving the kids at home while shopping for food will likely decrease your impulse purchases since few parents can long resist the screaming of children wanting everything they see. Also you’ll save a good bit of money by avoiding the junk or processed foods. These foods offer the most profit for stores and therefore are pushed at advertised overloaded consumers. Avoid the aisles that offer all of these ‘goodies’ and you’ll save lots of money and your waistline.

While there are few absolutes in life, the need for food and the likelihood of this commodity continuing to increase are about as certain as death and taxes. Since none of us live in the make believe world of government statistics, it’s a good idea to try and save a bit of money on this necessity whenever possible. Try implementing some of the tips mentioned here, and use your imagination to come up with some of your own.

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Grocery coupons are easy to use. Just take them with you to the store, put the items in your cart, and give the coupon to the cashier. It’s that easy! Obtaining those little money savers is just as easy as using them. You can get the whole family to help with clipping the grocery coupons out of the Sunday paper. Don’t forget to check your mail, many stores send out periodicals with money saving grocery coupons. You can even find money saving grocery coupons on-line. If you know where to look for those cash saving grocery coupons, there is no limit to how much you can save.

Some people don’t like to look silly using grocery coupons at the check out. With rising gas prices, it would be silly not to be using grocery coupons. The money you save at the register can be put into your gas tank. You could even use your grocery coupon savings to pay off your credit card debt! Take your extra savings and put it away for that vacation the family always wanted. With grocery coupons, the savings never end!

Of course you can save money on groceries by using coupons. Below is an explanation of how to best do that. Don’t want to clip coupons? Me neither, and there are other ways to save. Those can be found here as well.

Coupons usually only save you money if you use them on things you normally buy or things that can replace what you normally buy. In other words, if you use a coupon to buy a new sugary “fruit” snack that you don’t normally eat anyhow, you didn’t save money, but spent more. Getting a different brand of orange juice for less with a coupon, or getting the same brand you normally buy for fifty cents less – that makes sense.

Coupons become especially valuable if you have stores in your area that offer “double coupon” days. They limit the doubling to coupons of fifty cents or less, though, and you need to use them the right way to get the most out of them. The “right way” is to buy the smallest size you can find of the coupon item.

Why? It is a matter of getting the lowest per-unit cost. For example, a doubled 50 cent coupon saves you $1 off a $4, 12-roll package of toilet paper, meaning it cost you $3, or 25 cents per roll. Use that coupon to save a dollar on the $1.39 4-roll package, though, and it costs you just 39 cents, or less than 10 cents per roll. Find dollar-size products that you have fifty-cent coupons for, and they are free.

Is it all worth it though? Clipping coupons and analyzing per-unit costs? Maybe, maybe not. There are simpler ways to save money on groceries, though.

Five More Ways To Save Money On Groceries

1. Never shop hungry. That’s all there is to this tip, and you can figure out why this will save you money.

2. Try store brands. Some are as good as name brands and some aren’t, but usually all are cheaper, so why not at least try them, but maybe without telling the kids.

3. Stock up during sales. We bought 20 or 30 cans of tomato paste when it was on sale for 10 cents per can. Stock up when things that are 30 to 80% off and you’ll be eating cheap. Do this with any non-perishables.

4. Follow the per-piece/per-pound rule. When the price is per piece, buy the largest fruit or vegetable. You obviously get more for your money. Less obvious, is that you should buy small pieces when the price is per pound. You might buy four small bananas for the price of 2 large ones, but you’ll still only eat one at a time, right? Again, you get more for your money.

5. Be an opportunist. Buy what you like – when it’s on sale. Do you really need oranges every day? Get them when they’re cheap. When they aren’t, buy orange juice or grapefruit or whatever is on sale. As a grocery opportunist, you get plenty of variety. You even get everything you like, because everything goes on sale once in a while. Bonus: when fruits and vegetables are cheapest, they are also usually the highest quality, because the season is at it’s height. This is a great way to save money on groceries.