Costco Shopping List

• Any one-ingredient food (apples, melon, banana, cucumbers, eggs, milk, chicken, turkey, fish, beef, etc.)
• Fruit and Vegetables—the ideal choices are grown in your time zone rather than shipped from another continent. I love the bags of baby Persian cucumbers and baby carrots—both of which last a while in the fridge and are super easy to prepare.
• Nuts….such a great selection
• Marinara Sauce
• Chicken Broth (I get the kind in the box with the flip-top lid)
• Popcornopolis Nearly Naked Popcorn—great high-fiber after-dinner snack
• Cooked Brown Rice Bowls (microwave for 90 seconds….you may want to add a little oil or butter for extra moisture after cooking)
• Sweet Perry Orchards Almond Butter in individual servings
• Kirkland peanut butter
• Cooked Steel Cut Oatmeal—very convenient…don’t forget to add the extra 3 Tbsp of water/milk/soymilk after you cook it. Need to mix very well.
• Babybel cheese, string cheese, any cheese really
• Peggy’s Premium frozen non-GMO edamame in individual steam-heating bags
• Canned vegetarian refried beans
• Yoshida marinade—I use this to marinate chicken, turkey/beef burgers—so easy and adds a lot of flavor
• Hummus
• Refrigerated Pesto
• Seeds of Change Quinoa/Brown Rice Blend (shelf-stable boxes)
• Chobani and Fage yogurt
• Chocolate milk
• Cheerios
• Frosted Mini Wheats (6 grams of fiber!)
• Frozen berries (for smoothies)
• Panko Bread Crumbs (use them all the time for breaded chicken)
• High Liner Basil Pesto Tilapia (frozen fish, real ingredients, SO YUMMY and easy)

Grade B—pretty good choices within Costco (join Costco and check out their Costco membership cost)

• Nature Valley Oats & Honey crunchy granola bars
• Freeze Dried Fruit
• Stretch Island Fruit Strips, Mott’s Fruit Twists, Annie’s Fruit Gummies—all 3 are much better choices than Fruit by the Foot or other gummies. Yet they are more of a “treat” than a “fruit.” If you throw them in your kid’s lunchbox, include a fresh fruit or veggie too.
• Wheat Thins (they have more fiber now….but I wish Costco carried Triscuit Thin Crisps)
• Pirate’s Booty/Organic Animal Crackers/Graham Crackers (all fine for lunch boxes, with relatively short ingredients lists but unfortunately not much fiber)
• Fiber One Brownies and Bars–Yes there is a long ingredients list with quite a few additives BUT….they can be so helpful for constipation. Especially for kids—I much prefer a Fiber One Brownie a few times a week than relying on Miralax.
• N.B. Fig Bars
• Outshine Frozen Fruit Bars (no fake colors)
• Aidell’s refrigerated fully cooked meatballs/sausage (shorter ingredients list than most other cooked meat products, and pretty tasty as well)
• Dino or Mickey Nuggets—I am realistic and I know many parents rely on these for quick dinners. They are fine if they are the exception rather than the rule. Use them for really busy days, when you need to get good protein into them and don’t have time to cook. BUT …if your kids are eating them 3-4 nights a week I recommend re-thinking dinner!
• Tortilla Land Uncooked Tortillas—easily warm up in nonstick pan, very yummy
• Roland Couscous
• Danimals smoothies and Simple Go-Gurt (not much protein and more sugar than they need BUT no fake colors and a good source of calcium—good for kids who need more calcium but don’t care for Greek yogurt or milk. I MUCH prefer Chobani Champions tubes and yogurt….but they’re not sold at Costco. I keep the tubes in the freezer.)

“C” List—Very long ingredients lists

• Corazon’s Bars—ingedients list way too long
• Nutrigrain bars—just a “blah” blend of fillers with no fiber
• All the Greek Yogurt granola trail mixes—it’s not really yogurt, otherwise it would need to be refrigerated! “Greek” blends are everywhere right now but if they are shelf stable, it’s just a more tart version of a chocolate chip with a long ingredients list.
• Whole Wheat Sandwich Rounds—I was so excited to see these, but WHY is the ingredient list so long? I don’t get it. 100% whole wheat bread doesn’t need more than 10 ingredients
• Ultimate Fish Stick—LIL in the frozen section

Please Do Not Buy

• Sara Lee Soft & Smooth Whole Grain Bread—the ingredients list is so long and filled with additives/preservatives/chemicals
• Uncrustables, Hot Pockets, Bagel Bites—A completely horrible category of convenience food. Instead, grab a bagel thin or mini bagel, spread a red sauce on it, top with shredded cheese and stick in toaster oven. So much better.
• Jimmy Dean Delights and Special K Flatbread Breakfast Sandwiches (instead, just toast an English muffin, stick a slice of cheese on it, and maybe add precooked scrambled egg or a slice of ham)
• Entenmann’s mini blueberry muffin bites
• Fruit by the Foot
• Welch’s Fruit Snacks
• Eggo Waffles
• Costco muffin tray
• Froot Loops
• Turkey/Swiss Tortilla Roll-ups—Great if you love to eat stabilizers and binders.
• Prepared foods–Chicken Salad, enchiladas, meatloaf, and almost everything in that section. Unfortunately they have LIL and many weird gum and powdered additives. I know they are convenient but honestly I do not find them to be that tasty. It would be better, nutritionally, to serve the plain components (see dinner ideas here) than the pre-prepared sum of the parts.