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For the past few years I've seen tv shows (won't name them) that claim healthy food is just as cheap as the junk food most Americans buy.
I switched from the junk to the more healthy (stopped prepackaged/sodapop and started buying fruits and veggies)..but my grocery bill has doubled.
Hmmm....
then today I read this:
While researching our latest book, Eat This, Not That! 2011, we spotted more minefields than ever—in restaurants, at supermarkets, in your own pantry. That’s why we cornered food-industry insiders and asked them to come clean. What they told us may shock you. Go ahead, dig in.
3. Fresh fruits and vegetables cost 10 times more than junk food, according to researchers at the University of Washington. A thousand calories of nutritious food cost $18.16, while a thousand calories of junk food cost a mere $1.76. How do they keep junk-food costs so low? Pretty simple, actually: flavor enhancers and other chemical additives. Speaking of . .
I have never seen any claims to healthy food being the same cost as junk food. Anyone that buys healthy food knows that eating healthy is more expensive than eating junk....but with the economy in the state it is and grocery prices astronomical...sometimes it just has to be hotdogs and beans or mac and cheese for dinner.
A single item unprocessed could yield 3 or 4 times the amount of food that has been processed. 100% pure apple sauce may have 1 or 2 % additional things to make taste specific varieties. Mass produced aopple sauce may only have 30% apples with the rest artificial fillers.
How many tomatoes are needed to make a quart of home made natural marinara sauce? How many do you think are really in some commerical processed quart of "tomatoe" marinara sauce?
Q: WHEN is a strawberry milkshake not a strawberry milkshake?
A: when it comes from a fast food outlet.
Craving for wholesome, sweet strawberries, crushed ice and a splash of ice-cold milk at McD or Burger Kings? Naaah, all you will get is a mixture of milkfat and non-fat milk, guar gum, cellulose gum, sodium phosphate, carrageenan, citric acid, E129, plus flavorings.
Why bother with real fruit and natural flavors? Artificial flavor sells at a much lower price.
59 INGREDIENTS IN STRAWBERRY MILKSHAKE - BUT NO STRAWBERRIES:
These chemical ingredients are mainly four categories:
1. flavor, use more than 40 kinds of subtle deployment of the strawberry flavor compounds such as anethole, malt alcohol;
2. pigment, in order to obtain the same color of strawberries, adding synthetic red pigment;
3. stabilizer and thickening agent, in order to taste exquisite smoothness, adding guar gum, carrageenan and phosphate;
4. sweetener, with the cool sweetness to join the fructose syrup.
Half those ingredeients are also in my toilet bowl cleaner!
My rule is, if the ingredients of the food matches the list on oven cleaner, i ain't gonna eat it!
When we switched to making all our meals from scratch (as opposed to pre-packaged stuff), our grocery bill went way down. I think it can depend on where you live: produce is very expensive in some parts of the country, less expensive in others. On the other hand, I also rarely eat fruit. Fruit is expensive! Unless it is on sale, no fruit for me. Veggies aren't so bad, though.
When we switched to making all our meals from scratch (as opposed to pre-packaged stuff), our grocery bill went way down.
Us too.
I think some of it had to do with the fact that we also started using actual portion sizes.
We used to eat a steak each... now we split one.
REALLY cuts costs...
For us, we used to have a box of cookies and a bag or two of chips per week as snacks...that's what....$5-6. And that was more than 8 servings.
But try 8 servings of fruit! 1 apple is a buck in my town. Want an orange..the price goes UP. I made lasange with zuchinni and onion instead of beef and it cost more than the pound of beef. Crazy!
Whole grain bread- all natural costs about a buck or two more than the storebrand white bread.
Natural peanut butter (even the skippy brand) costs more than the 'un'natural.
And of course, the natural milk is almost 6 bucks a gallon versus 3 something for the other.
Butter costs more than margarine.
Real cheese costs more than the kraft singles 'cheese food'
3. Fresh fruits and vegetables cost 10 times more than junk food, according to researchers at the University of Washington. A thousand calories of nutritious food cost $18.16, while a thousand calories of junk food cost a mere $1.76. How do they keep junk-food costs so low? Pretty simple, actually: flavor enhancers and other chemical additives. Speaking of . .
Obviously they are not figuring in the 20+ years of treatment for high blood pressure, cholesteral, diabetes, heart disease, fatty liver, and the gazillion other medical ailments which can be traced directly to poor diet.
Even at ten times the cost, natural, healthy food is one heck of a bargain, I would say.
20yrsinBranson
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