You can't afford NOT TO EAT a healthy diet!

Recently I posted some thoughts/ data on Facebook about processed food and food additives (like MSG) and there was quite a bit of open dialog in the way of comments being posted.  As the comments went back and forth one idea kept reoccurring - people with low incomes (poor people) can't afford to eat healthy. One friends comment put it this way "...it's cheaper to buy a box of Little Debbie's than a carton of strawberries. If people struggle financially, it isn't feasible to eat healthy." This idea prompted me to write this post and ultimately this blog - because
I USED TO BELIEVE THE SAME THING.

You can skip this part if you want but a little background about me might set the stage- For nearly 10 years I worked at a Fast Food Pizza place and I believed that all I needed to do was eat the 4 food groups (Meat, Vegetables, Dairy and Grains). This is what I was taught in school and because I was at work 60 - 70 hours each week, I had my three meals per day in the form of PIZZA. Every slice of pizza I ate had ALL four of the basic food groups - what could be wrong with that? I was also on a fixed salary of about $15,000 per year and could never see myself paying the "high cost" of fresh, natural vegetables and making my own meals. Even when my health began to deteriorate and the doctors couldn't find anything wrong - I held fast to my elementary school teachings. Later in life, as I began to pack on the weight (27 lbs. to be exact) I also held to the truth that I just couldn't afford all that "fancy, expensive food."

What I didn't know was that if I had added my medical bills together with my grocery bill (even eating discounted pizza) I would have been SPENDING LESS EVERY MONTH.

The problem was that I was still young and my eating habits hadn't completely caught up with me. I just felt like crap most of the time - no biggie.

Enough about me (for now) - let's really get into the cost of eating healthy. I'm going to try and break this down into two sections:
Section One - will be a basic price comparison and a Myth Busters style approach to the quote from Facebook.
Section Two - will deal with nutrition bang for buck.

Section One - Myth Busting... or How Much Does Food Really Cost?

As soon as I reached this portion of the blog post, I drove straight to a natural and organic grocery store then to Walmart to take some pics and compare some prices. Lets start by comparing the price of a box of strawberries to a box of Little Debbie to see if my friend on Facebook was correct. I want to emphasize that the exchange on Facebook was a friendly debate and my friend and I were in agreement - to be honest, I thought that Little Debbie would be cheaper than fresh strawberries - most Americans would believe this to be true - it governs how we all shop on a daily basis in this country. Here's what I found:

Every kind of Little Debbie snack cake/bun you could ever want for $3.50

*Side note - I almost bought every box of Honey Buns they had - went to the cookie dough isle, loaded up on that then hit the ice cream isle - all this to make a Honey Bun, Cookie Dough, Ice Cream Sandwich. But I didn't.





A container of strawberries for $1.98










I know that there are sales on strawberries and then there are sales on snack cakes - but what this tells me is if I can randomly walk into a Walmart and find fresh strawberries for almost half the cost of snack cakes - I can choose to buy the healthier option. I can choose a cantaloupe over Twinkies, apples over potato chips and I CAN eat healthy for around the same price or in this case LESS.

Here is another discovery I made a long time ago - eating organic isn't that much more expensive. On my shopping trip I wanted pictures to compare (which was hard because the Natural grocery store was afraid to give me permission to take pics so all I could get was their flyer). But I still found some good pics.

I tried to find a "healthier" bread at Walmart to compare to the bread at the Natural store. Walmart was cheaper though.

The lettuce at Walmart was actually more expensive than the Natural store..







I know all this isn't super scientific - but it does debunk the American myth that it's impossible to eat healthier options if you'r poor. It is possible but we have to choose to eat this way and to find the less expensive route each time we go to the store.

Section Two - Nutrition Bang For Buck or... Maybe This Should Have Been 2 Blog Posts.

I've always been a "Show me the money" kind of guy - if it makes sense in a spreadsheet then I can rally around it (whatever it may be). As I began my journey to better eating and nutrition, my wife and I had many discussions about how much we were spending on natural and organic foods. Then one day I was at home sick (sick from 40+ years of bad eating) and I found a documentary on Netflix called "The Beautiful Truth" (you can watch the entire film here) and while I enjoyed most of the documentary, there was one part that kept coming to mind daily it was only a few minutes long. It's an experiment that an Aerospace Engineer conducted to show the difference between the energy of a raw vegetable and a cooked vegetable. I made this collage as an illustration:

Top Left:
You see two carrots being hooked up to electrodes.
Top Right:
Is the energy patterns of a cooked carrot (note the gaps and overall brightness)
Bottom Left:
The uncooked carrot
Bottom Right:
An uncooked pepper (for comparison).



While this isn't exactly proof positive of the transference of nutrition (energy) from our food to our bodies, nor is it proof that the way we handle our food has an impact on our bodies, it got me thinking.

"If it's possible to cook the nutritional energy out of food, then it seems logical that we could also alter it's nutritional content throughout the food cycle - from seed to table."

So I did some research on the nutritional contents of organically grown produce.

I found that the most consistently reported beneficial findings showed decreased nitrate content (which is a good thing and makes sense, due to the lack of nitrogen-based fertilizers), increased vitamin C, and increased mineral content (including calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorous, and sodium) in organically produced foods. These findings have been reported for strawberries, peaches, pears, apples, green leafy vegetables, potatoes and the list goes on and on (reviewed in Bourn and Prescott 2002, and Williams 2002).

That's when it hit me - Americans (and westerners in general) are nutritionally starved yet the most obese culture in the history of the world! WE ARE PUTTING BAD GAS INTO OUR GAS TANKS!
Out of all western countries, the United States has the highest rate of obesity. From 13% obesity in 1962, estimates have steadily increased to 35.7% of American adults as obese, and 17% of American children.

We are nutritionally starved so we eat more! What's worse is - what we are eating is high in calories, grains, starches, trans-fats and modified fats, and cholesterol. This "Western Diet" is lacking in vitamins, minerals, monounsaturated fats and micro-nutrients. Unhealthy food leaves people feeling less full, making one inclined to eat more of it. Diets that contribute to obesity leave us overfed, undernourished and left with a host of preventable diseases. People who are 50 lbs. over their ideal weight are considered obese but health problems start at a much lower weight and symptoms that we take for granted as "normal health issues" begin to mount and escalate.

Imagine if we were talking about gasoline and an engine - as I eluded to above. If there was "bad gas" that was readily available and cheap, but a car only got a fraction of the MPG - or bang for buck out of it - compared to a cleaner more pure fuel that gave high fuel efficiency  - we wouldn't have to fill up as often, we'd get more miles out of a tank and our engine would last longer. It's sort of like the options we have now at the pump. We can choose somewhere between an 86 octane rating and a 93. Only with food choices it's more like choosing a 55 octane with unknown bits and pieces from the refinery (that may or may not cause engine damage) and a 100 octane rating that is pure.

All of this may (or may not) sound like a good theory on paper - where is the proof? I am that proof. When I eat a diet consisting mainly of natural and organic foods I eat less, feel better and eat less often (there by reducing my portion of my families grocery bill.)
However, when I slip into my old habits and find myself going through a fast food drive up or I have too many business lunches - I feel like I'm starving all the time. I also begin to have all sorts of annoying ailments (allergies, headaches, joint pain, etc.)

The truth is - For lunch I can eat a sandwich on gluten free bread made with grass-fed roast beef topped with organically grown lettuce, tomato, and organic mustard with a side of sweet potato chips and a glass of water for in the neighborhood of $2.80 and feel great all the way until dinner - or I can eat a super-sized double meat burger, fries and a soda for about $4.00 and I will be starving by 5 pm. All the while popping allergy medication and pain medication - and if I do this long enough I'll end up in a doctors office with a $50 co-pay - and if I keep doing it - I'll end up in the hospital with a $10,000 bill even after insurance.

I believe that I have found absolute proof that it's a lot cheaper to eat naturally and organically grown foods than to continue to eat a "western diet." I hope that everyone would do their own "Myth Busting" with food - We would all come to the same conclusions.