Clarissa Gideonse is trained as a lifestyle coach. Healthy food has her special attention. A year ago she followed additional training for a new specialization: that of grocery coach.
I offered myself as a test subject. She accompanies me when I do my shopping in a supermarket. In the middle of the store, Gideonse oversees approximately two thousand square meters of food. What percentage could you label as unhealthy here? She says: “I think: about 80 percent.”
Do I know where to find the 20 percent healthy ‘groceries’? We will see.
Lifestyle coaches are on the rise. Because too many Dutch people live unhealthy lives. About half of adults are overweight. Nearly 15 percent suffer from obesity, that is: sickening excess weight. Governments and insurers have started the fight against these and other prosperity problems. Anyone who wants to improve their life can receive guidance from a GP for two years lifestyle coach.
In theory, two lifestyle adjustments can do wonders: more exercise and healthier food and drinks. But in practice it is difficult. Society is full of temptations for a lazy and comfortable life.
Also read our Smart Living guide: How do you make sustainable choices in the supermarket?
Shopping coaches want to help people fight this evil at its root. Unhealthy consumption starts with a shopping cart full of foods that are too oily, too salty, or too sweet. Hence this new niche of lifestyle coaches, who charge an average of 60 to 80 euros per hour for their work – which many insurers reimburse (up to a maximum of 1,100 euros), after referral by a GP.
Gideonse’s one and a half hour coaching is divided into two parts. It starts with a conversation, in a coffee shop next to the supermarket. It is not an ‘intake’, like with a doctor. She mainly wants to know how I came to approach her. What is my expectation of what she can do for me? And: how deep is my motivation to change my consumption pattern?
I answer that I want to lose a kilo or so and that I want to get rid of weak moments of craving for sweets, especially at the end of the afternoon and evening. I really know what causes this (something to do with fluctuations in blood sugar levels), but I am unable to adjust my behavior.
We talk about sugar and salt, as hidden seducers, which industrially processed food is full of. Such food quickly makes you hungry and thirsty again – and so the treadmill grinds on, with another cookie, another slice of cheese. How to escape this?
Hidden sugars
The word grocery coach was invented by Ralph Moorman, a Wageningen food technology engineer. Ten years ago he wrote a book with this title. It is about, as can also be read on the book cover: “Honest food, with natural ingredients, without flavor enhancers, trans fats, chemical additives, hidden sugars.”
For over a year now, Moorman has been providing training for lifestyle coaches who also want to become qualified as grocery coaches. It takes about a hundred hours of study, with some online sessions, as well as reading and a series of videos to watch. Moorman has now trained more than seventy grocery advisors. The training costs 500 euros.
For years, Moorman has been committed to developing healthy food products himself. Until he discovered that the food industry and retail chains are hardly interested in this. “Their primary goal is to generate high turnover and make a profit.” So, he thought: “If the supply of healthy food is difficult to control, I might as well focus on influencing demand. After all, more demand means more supply. That’s just how it works.”
In despair
For part two of Gideonse’s coaching, we walk around the supermarket. With a different look I look at the shelves full of soft drinks, beers, sweets, cookies, snacks, ready-made meals, packets and bags. Suddenly the store looks like a museum of fat and excess. “That’s the problem,” says Gideonse. “It makes people initially quite desperate when they realize this. Then they shout: but what can I eat then?”
In her view, the solution is simple: the simple choice is usually the better one. I grab a tub of margarine full of ‘omega 6 fatty acids’. I think this is healthier than butter. “Read what’s in that one tub?” asks the coach. “That is certainly not all healthy. Liquid natural oils are really better for you and cheaper than all those packets, tubs and plastic bottles for spreading, baking and frying.”
We walk past the cold cuts and meat. I take a package of two hamburgers out of the refrigerator. I have already learned something (read the label more often) and see: 90 percent beef, 10 percent water, vinegar powder, preservatives, flavor enhancers – total: twelve additives. Gideonse, as an advocate of simplicity: “You can also buy ground beef, preferably organic of course, and with some herbs you can just as easily put together a few hamburgers yourself, which is cheaper and much tastier.”
No therapy
Coach Gideonse does exactly what trainer Ralph Moorman has taught his students. He says: “It doesn’t work if you fill people with information. You want them to really remember a few things, like eye openers. If they apply it, change can be initiated. I often hear that people say: thanks to you, I have discovered something that I like just as much and is much healthier. I do not provide therapy, this is not weeks of treatment to achieve a completely different lifestyle.”
Sounds clear. However, two problems of the average consumer have not yet been solved. Time and money. “Healthy food does indeed have the image of being relatively expensive,” Moorman responds. “But look at that from a different angle, when you survey the contents of your entire shopping bag. Bags of chips and candy, packs of cookies and bottles of soft drinks are also expensive. If you leave a little more of one thing, you can more easily afford a little more of the other.”
Does this also solve the time pressure that many people experience? ‘Convenience food’, the word says it all. Moorman: “The shopping coach can help you eat and drink healthier, but of course this does not solve all the problems of people who live under time pressure. Ultimately, it is not about ‘time’ but about ‘priority’, and therefore about your own intrinsic motivation.”