Name: Kara SolmundsonStore: MarketPlace IGA (110–909 Burrard Street)Items: Local apples, organic bananas, tomatoes, peppers, nonfat yogurt, lime PerrierWhat's for dinner? Stir-fry with eggplant, zucchini, mushrooms, peppers, garlic, ginger, and tofu or shrimpNever buys: "Store-bought cookies or red meat; I only eat chicken, fish, and seafood." Guilty pleasure: "Pretzels, or anything crunchy. I also love Chapman's frozen yogurt in Triple [Mixed] Berry, and my husband loves the chocolate-cappuccino with espresso flakes." On food: "I can eat a lot of food because I used to be a full-time athlete," Solmundson says. "I believe that when you eat healthy foods, you feel more energetic. If I eat a lot of lousy foods and don't exercise, I'm going to feel lousy." On grocery shopping: "I shop when I have time; IGA is great because it is open from 7 a.m. to midnight, so we can drop in whenever."

Name: Tony Hird, 27, art director for an advertising agency Store: MarketPlace IGA (2030 West Broadway) Items: Package of six pork chops, plain stirred yogurt, bunch of bananas, bagged organic baby carrots, Honey Nut Cheerios cereal, apple-cinnamon instant oatmeal, and carton of mango-pineapple-veggie juice What’s for dinner? “I don’t know yet! Yogurt-and-banana pork chop surprise?” Hird says, laughing. Thinking for a moment, he adds: “I’ll probably put the pork chops on my George Foreman grill.” He received it a year and a half ago as a gift. He’ll throw a little seasoning salt on the chops, pour himself a glass of mango-pineapple-veggie juice, and presto, there’s dinner. Guilty pleasure: Sundaes, yogurt-banana smoothies, and barbecued steak. “I don’t know how to barbecue, which can be a problem,” he admits. What he avoids: “Any spray or canned cheese.” But Hird is not averse to all brightly coloured orange foods. “I love mangoes,” he exclaims. “They’re tropical!”

Name: Bharat Joshi (left), cancer researcher. Shopping with his wife, Pragna Joshi (centre), and friend Trupti Soni Store: Punjab Food Centre, 6635 Main Street Items: Mango pickle chutney, jaggery (solid unrefined palm sugar), eggplant, snap peas, big bunch of mint, canned patra (spinachlike colacacia leaves) Where it's headed: Mint for tea and mint parathas; jaggery to sweeten curries. "Indians like their food a little bit sweet as well as spicy, so we add it instead of sugar to food," Bharat says. For the patra: "You take the patra and add chickpea flour, cilantro, spinach, green chili, and roll it, dice it, and then steam it." What's for dinner? Home-made chapatis, snap-pea curry, dal, rice. "We cook Indian and Italian at home. We eat Indian food almost every night. Once a week we'll go out for Italian or Mexican." what they avoid: "We are vegetarians. We never buy meat." Guilty pleasure: They buy Indian sweets once in a while, but not often because "they're not very healthy." Occasionally, they'll buy butter. "We don't use it every day." On shopping: Bharat says they live around UBC but shop on Main Street because that's were they find the ingredients they want.