Low Carb Observations During Covid19
 

Dealing with this as we all have over the past couple weeks, I have some observations that relate to our journeys on low carb. Visiting supermarkets in my area, I have witnessed completely razed, sold out meat counters, butcher's counters and have had to visit more than one store to find my meat. While I'm not hoarding on the protein front, I now know that vegans and vegetarians and plant-based acolytes are not the majority. Definitely not. Yes, they have loud voices, but that doesn't account for the complete absence of meat and fish from these supermarkets. People know what the priority foods are for survival, and one need only to witness which foods are not in stock to realize that animal protein is valued highly. Yeah, I've been trying to locate fresh romaine despite the fact that I eat little of this, but I have it occasionally with sliced cucumbers despite my quest to minimize vegetables and fruit. We may perceive that the "world" is against animal protein and saturated fats, but that's not what I'm finding. So, this time is revealing for us low carbers, what are your experiences and thoughts?

I haven't been to any stores since the craziness started. I went to Costco early in March before the frenzy, but I suspected it might come to this and stocked up on TP and paper towels. I also bought some meat but not as much as I would have liked because I have a very small freezer and knew there was no room for much. But I got some ground beef, and bacon which packs pretty flat. I'm now thinking I should invest in a freezer except I really have nowhere to put one.

But I agree about the meat from what I hear. On my local resident FB pages people are moaning about the lack of meat and posting photos of empty meat cases. There is a local butcher in town and someone had posted that they had plenty of meat - but it was selling fast and they said they were unable to get more meat from their supplier so might have to close down. Yes the vegetarian/vegan crowd might be loud but they definitely don't speak for most of the population!

All the groceries are out of bread and tp.

One store was well supplied with meats. As good as ever. No flour. well, one bag of whole wheat tucked in the far back of the bottom shelf.

Next store, walmart, no flour.

next store, shaws, no flour, pretty good supply meats.

Im not sure logic is driving the food choices. Seems more knee jerk shopping imho.

Vegetable Isle = Full

Organic Vegetable Isle = More Full

Cheep 73/27% Ground Beef chubs = SOLD OUT

I went into a Food Lion today and the only thing in the meat department was some plant based "meat" and brisket.

Dried beans are emptied out around here, as well as meat. Didn't look at the Beyond Meat--but the older brands, like Yves, of plant protein based sausages etc. didn't look like it had been touched.

I might just buy more meals at work, and run through what I've got at home more slowly. I'm already exposed to whatever's in the restaurant anyways.

Found this interesting;



I remember twenty years ago a lot of talk of making things more efficient by chaining production to demand--less stockpiling of goods, saves on cost of warehousing. Made practical in part because of modern computers. A 35 percent increase--if everybody bought 3 boxes a week and started buying 4, that would do that. Of course there's some real hoarding going on. But especially for perishables like fresh meat, where they'd try to match supply to purchase especially tightly, I don't know if it would take people buying that much extra on average to temporarily empty the shelves.

We stopped shopping in stores days ago - observing the 6 foot rule / safety distance. Carriers of the virus can infect others while they themselves may not see symptoms for days. Those lines waiting to get in will thin drastically soon. We have 109 confirmed cases here.

Pick up service is sketchy. First order for 12 cans of salmon, they filled 3. Second order of two tubs of kitty litter, got 1.

I have a pick up at walmart for 6 cans of salmon, and I'm debating whether the risk is worth the reward.

Already rescheduled my tax appointment once - now I'll cancel it as the deadline is extended to July 15.

Have an April 30 poll worker training, which I fully expect to be cancelled. As the upcoming primary election will also.

Will eventually run out of distilled water and will stop using the cpap sleep apnea machine.

Mail order still working..., for now.

LCHF / Ketogenic eating will only last so long, then it's MREs.

I've hit several grocery stores this week, mainly in search of bog roll. Similar story - very little fresh meat, lots of PBG (plant-based garbage) meat replacements. Little or no flour, pasta or canned veggies.

I think Teaser is right - until this week, it was too costly to keep fresh meat supply on hand that might not sell. That's been a frugal MO for me for years: pop into the store after work and grab whatever meat is reduced for dinner. PBG has a longer expiry time; they can keep much more on the shelf. It's also expensive: people who might have been half-a$$ing a "more plant-based" lifestyle probably throw in the towel when they're laid off or otherwise scared about their income. It wouldn't be realistic for them anymore to spend $6.99 for 8 fake meatballs when they can get 3 tubes of real ground beef for $10.00. (Yes, that's what it costs here. That's a whole 'nother thread!)

At first, I was surprised when I saw lots of frozen and preserved meats. Plenty of bacon, frozen seafood, smoked sausages and deli meats, as well as eggs and cheese... but I suppose it makes sense considering the above about expiry times being longer, and in the case of cooked meats, it takes up a lot less space than similar servings of fresh.

One store here has plenty of meat, but it's all from Mexico so we didn't buy any. Might be ok, but you never know.

Also gone are all paper products, flour, yeast, cereal, bread, granola snack bars, and frozen food (entrees, sides, snack foods, pizza, chicken nuggets, fries, etc.). Fresh fruits and veggies are available -- I think because people touch more than one before making a final selection.

Definitely obvious what people think is important.

We have plenty of meat in the freezer to last for weeks, and that's all we really need.

We'll all get through this. No need for panic.

For us, getting HEADS of lettuce has proven problematic.

I haven't been inside the grocery stores b/c we decided we'd pay a little more and use curbside pick-up instead. The local grocery store (HEB) where I usually shop only allows curbside pickup to be scheduled up to two weeks in advance and they have not had a single curbside time slot available for the past week! I've been looking daily! I did manage to grab a curbside timeslot at an HEB 27 miles away...for APRIL 1st.

But, hubby was running out of salad greens and he eats a salad for one meal each day, so I needed to get some lettuce of some sort for him a bit quicker than that.

I finally decided to try Walmart when he was down only 1 or 2 servings of salad greens left. I don't usually shop Walmart for fresh foods b/c they're usually a bit more expensive than HEB and their produce never seems quite as fresh. But, Walmart had an available curbside pickup time-slot for the next afternoon.

In case they might be out of something, I ordered 2 heads of iceberg, 1 head of romaine, and 1 head of butter-head and 1 package of baby spinach. He eats salads once a day and I occasionally like to wrap a burger in lettuce or add a little spinach to an omelet. So I figured that even if they HAD all of it in stock, we'd be able to eat it all before it went bad.

Right before I was supposed to go get our order, I got an email from Walmart saying that they were out of some of my items, which I had rather expected. What I hadn't expected was that they were out of ALL of the salad greens I had ordered!
Instead, they substituted two 1 lb. bags of SHREDDED ICEBERG LETTUCE for the heads of iceberg lettuce I'd ordered. That was it. The other greens were just canceled.

I don't use bagged lettuce (except for spinach leaves) because I want to be able to rinse it before we eat it! ESPECIALLY NOW.

But those two bags of shredded lettuce were all I could get. And, by shredded, I mean that it looks like it had been put thru a paper shredder! I know bagged lettuce is supposedly already treated with chlorine water before being bagged but I'm leery.
And there is no way one can rewash shredded lettuce and ever get it dry again!

So, now I'm on the hunt for fresh lettuce... which means also trying to get another grocery curbside pickup time slot somewhere.

BTW - if you're concerned about possible pathogens on fresh produce, here is a https://www.lsu.edu/agriculture/pla...isinfection.pdf on how to use chlorine water (household bleach in water) to clean them. My mom always used to wash produce in bleach water when I was a kid but, up till now, I've always just rinsed in tap water.

Seems like I chose the right time to go full carnivore, LOL. I have a fairly good stockpile of meat in the freezer, and I just ordered some more from US Wellness Meats. They were out of many items but still had plenty for me to fill a cart with. So that makes life pretty easy. I got my big Costco orders of TP and paper towels early in March before the craziness started.

And one current benefit of Carnivore during these crazy times is that I use far LESS toilet paper now! :D

Other benefits have been that my weight, BG and BP have been steadily dropping almost daily while on Carnivore. A few weeks ago, while on regular LCHF my BP was hovering around 150/90, and today it was 119/74.

This is good advice and easy to carry out with a common household product. I did find a healthy-looking romaine head today and will discard the outer leaves and use the method in the link Bev provided.



:thup: :thup: :thup: Isn't it great?

I was thinking the same thing this morning.

I've not gone full on carnivore but, since Hubby decided that, to stop having gout issues, he needed to cut back on meat by eating LC salads one meal a day... and started fixing his own salads, I've cut way back on the amount of veggies I eat. While my weight hasn't dropped as dramatically as Merpig's, I'm definitely losing again. My weight HAD been ever so slowly creeping upwards over the last several years so it's nice to see the scales moving in the opposite direction.

My weight loss may accelerate once we run out of nuts. I've always bought nut the bulk bins to save money, and for some reason, my grocery store doesn't have bulk bin items available for curbside pickup. Packaged nuts cost more than I want to spend so that snack item won't be available to me anymore....which ought to help curb some of my "anxiety snacking."

Got out early this morning and headed to Costco. No lines and a white board outside the store showing which products were out of stock. Sanitary hand wipes and Clorox bleach were two I noticed. I was there for protein, however, and proceeded to the meat department to fetch some packages of NY Steak. Next, ground beef, but they didn't have the kind I like, so I picked up a large package of wild sockeye salmon and headed to the register. No lines in self checkout and was back home 20 minutes after I left. This is going to be my Costco routine going on a week day morning and being able to find resupplied items after the weekend.

The way it's going in Northern VA it seems there is now less panic, and with stores like Costco, Wegmans, and the other supermarkets, you can more easily manage food and essentials trips if you time it right. I never felt the need to hoard, and fortunately the food suppliers are replenishing on a regular basis. Some stores have designated shopping hours exclusively for people 60 and over, but I sense a return to being able to make regular shopping trips without risk of exposure and finding more food selections on the shelves. Can't say it's back to normal, but it's better than it was last week.