Eating low-carb, shopping at Aldi

[erikab922]

My DH and I hate food shopping with the white hot fury of a thousand suns. We've recently decided to get all of our meat from the butcher, all of our veg delivered from a local green grocer, and then get everything else from Aldi. However, anyone who's been to Aldi knows you rarely get a large choice of things - for instance, if you want peanut butter, you get peanut butter, not a choice of 5 different kinds. Like many others I work insane hours and now that we'll be properly home-cooking our meals I just can't fathom spending ages searching for a no-sugar peanut butter (this is just an example, I really don't have anything against peanut butter).

Someone who knows way more about low-carbing than I do could probably answer this best for me - if you are doing your damndest to cut out carbs/grains but the odd thing is in your diet (like the aforementioned peanut butter with brown cane sugar) is this going to ruin the low-carb WOE or am I just confusing low-carb with no carb?

We should all be low carb, but getting our carbs from veg. The whole earth low sugar peanut butter I saw was 15g of carbs per 100g!!

For peanut butter specifically I buy from my protein as its cheap
It's just peanuts and oil, about £5 for a kg and 11.6g carbs per 100g (5.9 of which sugars)

Sainsburys basics is only 3.6g per 100g.

Oh that's interesting... Does it have added sugar?
Food is such a bloody minefield!

well you dont have to have peanut butter , and it's probably better if you don't as the carbs can add up quickly with nuts...

if you're getting meat from the butcher and veg from the grocer there's not much else to get really is there, other than dairy and fish. fish, butter, cream and cheese will be much of a muchness carbwise, the only thing that might be tricky is yoghurt, which case you might have to miss out some weeks if they don't have a low enough carb greek yoghurt available? tbh it is better to avoid the more processed products anyway, so this may be to your advantage

Aldi do a greek yoghurt which is really nice. It is 4.9g carbs/ 100g. I'm not sure how this compares to the Total and Lidl ones that are often mentioned on here? I am avoiding eating it at the moment.

Aldi mayonnaise is 1.6g carbs / 100ml again, don't know the numbers for other brands but I think that it's acceptable.

I shop at Aldi and try to eat low carb, I don't have many problems with it, but I do find I have to get the odd thing from other shops. Not usually due to low-carbing though, more my fussy family! My kids won't eat their ketchup, for example, and my DH doen't like their muesli or toiletries....

Low carb is exactly that - it's not no carb.

And whether or not it has an impact really depends on why you're low carbing in the first place. If you're trying to lose weight, then adding back in carbs always risks weight loss being stopped, or even a slight weight gain. If it's for general health reasons, then the odd higher carb food/meal shouldn't be too much of an issue.