the words 'DONE', 'HELP', and 'SHOW' keeps getting added into my list.

You'd need to show your code to make a more specific answer possible, but it sounds like you are saving the input in the list and then testing to see if it is a special command word.

To keep those words out of the list, your code must test before adding the input to the list.

I ran into that as well. It seems as though the 'new_item' is added to the list whether or not it is printing additional info (e.g. SHOW, HELP). I'm new to python so this may not be the best approach but.......

shopping_list.remove("HELP") shopping_list.remove("SHOW")

seemed to work. Initially, it was creating errors because sometimes "HELP" and "SHOW" were not in the list yet so I ended up using try/pass. This removed the commands from the list leaving just my fruits and vegetables.

shopping_list.append(new_item)  

try:
    shopping_list.remove("HELP")
except:
    pass
try:
    shopping_list.remove("SHOW")
except:
    pass