5 Things You're Doing Wrong at the Grocery Store

What he found: The rate at which we put items into the cart is highest at the beginning of the trip and lowest at the end, Wansink says. This is great if you start in the produce section (as many of us do) and then go directly to, say, the natural foods aisle. But what Wansink observed while tracking shoppers is that after leaving the fruits and vegetables section, most people then went into aisle 2, filling their carts with whatever they found—very often it was snacks and candy. Then they started jumping around the store to top off their nearly full cart.

What you should do: Shop the perimeter of the store first, where you'll encounter healthy options—dairy, meat, fish—when you're most likely to grab things.