What Your Grocery Cart Says About You

With two children under the age of 3, Jackie Kesterson is finding grocery shopping to be far less fun. “The last couple years haven’t been as joyful as it once was,” she said, “just because there’s a lot more pressure and a lot less time.”

After her son was born in 2021, she made all of his food herself, followed the baby-led weaning approach and aspired to introduce him to diverse flavors. But come the arrival of her daughter, who is now 11 months old and picky about eating vegetables, those priorities shifted. “You have all these big dreams of building these food traditions with your kids, but I just don’t have the time,” said Ms. Kesterson, 36, who works in finance. “It is like, ‘Oh do you want a quesadilla or a peanut butter sandwich, or do you want chicken nuggets?’”

Baby-food pouches have become an easy way to sneak in vegetables. “I certainly feel conflicted about it,” she said.

Growing up in a low-income household, Kimberly Uhuru watched her mother bring a calculator to the grocery store, and grew accustomed to eating processed foods. Now she makes a comfortable living as a lawyer, and she and her husband can afford to prioritize buying fresh, organic ingredients. But the closest well-stocked grocery store is still a 25-minute drive from her home in Rosedale Park.

So she buys most of her groceries at Target, where the produce selection is limited but she can still get tomatoes, her favorite food. She can also find staples like yogurt and cereal, as well as Nature Valley bars, Sunchips and peanut butter cups for her two vegetarian teenagers to snack on — and plant-based meat alternatives. “My cart looks ridiculous,” said Ms. Uhuru, 48, who supplements her hauls with vegetables grown in her garden. “It looks like I am holiday shopping, and that will just be a regular Sunday for me.”

At the store, Ms. Uhuru is in the zone. “I have a list on my phone and I click off each item,” she said. “People think I am a shift shopper.”

What might a stranger notice if she peered into Sawyer Bonsib’s cart? A lot of liquids. “Food-to-beverage ratio is unusual,” Mr. Bonsib said.

As a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he stocks his fridge with a variety of drinks, in part to replace alcohol. “It just helps me relax, to drink something cold,” he said. There’s iced tea, milk (almond, oat and cow’s) and strawberry-kiwi juice. And there’s Red Bull, ginger ale and root beer. But his favorite beverage? “When I am thirsty, there is nothing like water,” he said.

Mr. Bonsib, 37, lives alone and works from home for a health insurance company. He isn’t always keen to meal-prep, so he often eats frozen meals for lunch — his favorite is spaghetti with meat sauce — and saves more elaborate cooking for dinner. In April, he made a crispy tamari-marinated tofu stir-fry one night; on another, he pan-seared a filet mignon, which is “more of a splurge.”

It’s tough being the host with the most when you live in a state that imports 95 percent of its food, and pays dearly for the transport. But that’s reality for Ayse Gilbert, an artist who with her husband entertains weekly at their home. Her elaborate menus rarely repeat. An April dinner party featured a berbere-spiced rack of lamb and an orange marmalade cake.

While some people associate sparse grocery shelves with the pandemic, in Alaska shortages are the norm. “I have to maintain flexibility, because if I decide I am going to stir-fry Indian-style okra, it may not be there,” said Ms. Gilbert, 71, who moved to Anchorage from Carmel, Calif., in 1974.

She’s moved by attractive fruits and vegetables — a fragrant buddha’s hand, a citrus fruit, caught her eye on one shopping trip, and she misses the fresh artichokes of her West Coast upbringing. “I go to California, I have a $20 bill and I can get a ton of great produce,” she said. “I have a $20 bill here? That is two pounds of green beans. That is it.”

Sonal Singh distinctly remembers what shopping was like in 2004, when she immigrated to the United States from India to get her master’s degree at the University of Georgia. “My grocery bill was $50 a week at most,” she said. Now that she is married, with two teenagers, and living in California, the bill is closer to $500 a week. Her twins are experiencing major growth spurts — and snacking accordingly — so she picks up Cheez-Its, Pocky and Annie’s fruit snacks in bulk at Costco.

Ms. Singh, 43, a partner at a consulting firm, has no trouble finding Indian staples like $45 boxes of Kesar mangoes and dosa batter in Foster City, which has a large Asian American population. But her children have a low tolerance for spicy foods and often request dishes like pasta with vodka sauce and smash burgers, requiring her to prepare two dinners a night.

Ms. Singh’s parents were visiting from India in April, so she made sure to stock the refrigerator with parathas, honeydew melon and grapes, further adding to her grocery bill.

Grocery shopping is meditative for Abdul Bingahlan, a statistical analyst who cooks for himself and his wife, Anisah, a medical school student. “As I got older, it became a place of experimentation, trying new things,” he said. While he is content to cook the same dish on repeat, his wife has encouraged him to seek variety in different cuisines. So in April, he bought herbs and chiles to make a new pad krapow recipe. “We’re now left with an abundance of green chiles, so I’m spinning my brain on how we can put them to use,” said Mr. Bingahalan, 27, who bought a container of roughly 50 for less than $3. Among his options: making chicken karahi with them, or seeing if his neighbor could use any.

Since he was observing Ramadan through April 9, he sometimes shopped on an empty stomach. “The old adage ‘Don’t go grocery shopping when you are hungry,’ applies triply during Ramadan,” he said.

Many parents are familiar with the term “berry budget,” the outsize percentage of grocery funds spent on berries for young children. Gabby Cavazos said her 2-year-old son, who she brings to the store with her, typically eats a carton of blackberries before they even get to the checkout counter. She reaches for whichever berry is least expensive — blackberries were unusually cheap on a recent trip, so she stocked up. “Ten dollars a week on berries is where we try to cap him,” she said.

Ms. Cavazos, 32, an account executive at a software company, still feels the effects of inflation and doesn’t shy away from deals, like $7 sushi or nearly expired sliced watermelon. “I am like, ‘What did I even buy? How am I spending 100 bucks?’ ” she said.

Still, you can count on one item to almost always end up in her cart: the famous tortillas from the Texas-based grocer H-E-B. “We always have those in our fridge for a quesadilla or breakfast taco,” she said. “Or my toddler will gnaw on a tortilla while I’m making dinner.”

On the mainland, finding ingredients like galangal root, Chinese chives or purple snap peas might prove tricky. Not on the Big Island of Hawaii. The state is home to many cultures and even more varieties of fresh produce, and thankfully for Alan Young, many grocery stores, farmers’ markets and bakeries accept his Electronic Benefit Transfer card, loaded with $500 every month.

Mr. Young, 80, a retired caterer, is one of 41.9 million Americans — nearly 13 percent of the population — who are part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides financial aid for groceries to individuals with low incomes. Although food in Hawaii can be expensive, the monthly stipend goes a long way for him. In April, he bought locally grown radicchio, heirloom tomatoes and various kinds of bananas — and a few extra treats for himself. “One of my indulgences is La Croix seltzer,” said Mr. Young, who lives with his partner.

Mr. Young, who does not own a smartphone and declined to be photographed, likes to seek out good deals. But, these days, many coupons are accessible only on apps.