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Old world saying is that good health comes thru the mouth, in oder words watch what you eat and eat healthy.
Saving on food and going shoping in those discount stores is worst thing you can do to your self and your health.
Never save on food quality, eat organic produce as much as possible, stay away from products in the bag, like chips and etc. Eath fresh vegetables, fruits, wild caught fish, ( stay away from farmed fish, eath organic veggies and fruits ), nuts, drink fresh juices, eath garlic, ginger, turmeric, cayenne pepper.
Save and live frugal on everything else if you want, but don't do it on food quality. Buy only quality food and stay away from proceseed foods if you want to avoid Cancer in the future.
Good Luck!!!
It's possible to be frugal and eat healthy. I don't buy into the organic food thing, for starters. It doesn't have commercial pesticides, but otherwise is no healthier than non-organic. Organic foods use organic pesticides. Also, organic is just beyond the budget of most Americans. It's super expensive.
But one can buy big bags of frozen vegetables and fruit. Frozen is even healthier than canned, since it's flash frozen, freezing in the nutrients, whereas fresh loses their nutrients as they are shipped and waiting to be purchased.
Fresh fish is beyond the budgetary means of most Americans. Frozen fish is just as healthy. Canned, while not as good, will do just fine. No one got sick from eating canned salmon instead of fresh, which isn't available in most of the world and costs more than ordinary people can afford.
Sam's Club, less expensive grocery stores...one can buy a larger amount of healthy food at these places than at organic or pricey places. So it's not buy fresh or suffer. Frozen and canned is just as healthy and costs a fraction of the price of fresh. One can eat very well and very healthy by buying frugally.
Canned foods w/o preservatives or sodium are possible to buy in ordinary grocery stores. Frozen fruit and veggies have no preservatives, usually.
The processed foods to stay away from are chips, box meals, anything with a lot of chemicals on the label. Fine for a special treat occasionally. But not as a mainstay.
Exercising every day, whether walking or yoga or floor exercises, is critical to good health. Food doesn't matter if you don't maintain the body. Flexibility, bone strength, muscle maintenance, cardio...all necessary for optimum health. And of course healthy food. Sam's has huge bags of frozen veggies and fruit. I love them. No preservatives...chock full of nutrients. They're pricey, but they don't go bad.
Don't forget growing a few things, whether in a yard or on the balcony. IMO, I think it makes more sense to grow things that would be expensive to buy rather than inexpensive foods.
... organic is just beyond the budget of most Americans. It's super expensive.
On average, if you are comparing supermarket produce aisles of national brand names the difference is 15%.
$1:00 vs $1:15
$2:00 vs $2:30
15%
I do not believe it to be beyond the budget of most Americans. Not when most Americans spend more on electronic gadgets and telecom services than they do on sound healthy food.
Sure, junk food is not so healthy for you, but so is NOT a lot of things. ALL THINGS IN MODERATION.
WHY don't I tend to believe it?
Because My grandparents and "greats" aunts and uncles on both sides lived to the ripe old ages of the 90s.
What did the first half of their lives in the back hills of the Appalachian mountains consist of? Eating and cooking everything with LARD, pigs fat, OR churned BUTTER, LOTS of it. EATING the pigs fed with any garbage foodstuffs left over from what they processed by hand and cooked {slop the hogs}. Eating chickens who ate who knows what among foodscraps, bugs and parasites..RAW unpasteurized an non-homogenized milk from the dirty teat of the cow, strained through cheese cloth, washed in between in the dirty wash pan water..
Drawing water from the well that was about 50 feet {or less} from the nearest outhouse.
Growing the garden with manure from the barn, the cow, the mule, and the chicken droppings.
People make fun with jokes about "possum stew" or "squirrel soup", well, GUESS what........
True, their chickesn were "free range", their milk "fresh", and the garden "organic"....but today's "processed" {even veggies are "processed"...washed, cleaned, de-leafed,de-stoned and de-dirt-ed, UNLESS grown hydroponically with artificial fertilizers.}, MAY make a better stand against some of what they ate.
They also got a LOT more exercise than we do, hoeing the garden, planting and harvesting, canning and preparing for winter, gathering fuel all summer long to store up for the cold winter.......and those 'long' walks to the outhouse {or using the lard bucket at night and emptying in the morning}....so maybe THAT was their secret to long lives.....
And yet another person who wants to control what everyone else is allowed to eat.
My family eats extremely well and we can do that because I am very careful about prices. Careful shopping, which can include some thrift stores, allows for the purchase of more variety and better ingredients.
Personally, I won't believe the "organic" label unless I have grown it myself or obtained it from someone I know personally. I'm not taking it as gospel that organic foods grown in foreign countries are honestly organic.
One of the really expensive health food stores here has some pretty produce, but as a general rule the organic produce looks no better than the regular produce and my experience with canned or otherwise processed organic foods is that the quality is much worse. Vegetables are overripe to the point that they are woody. Seasonings are severely lacking so flavor is uninteresting.
If I've grown it myself and it is organic, it is better because it is picked at the correct time and not shipped. If it is meat, it is better because it was raised correctly and if I home butcher, I do a better job of butchering. It's not better because it is organic.
Can you guarantee I will be cancer free if I stay away from processed foods?
I don't think it works that way. It certainly will lessen your chances but it will not completely eliminate it. There are so many factors besides food that contribute to cancer, heart disease, etc.
On average, if you are comparing supermarket produce aisles of national brand names the difference is 15%.
$1:00 vs $1:15
$2:00 vs $2:30
15%
I do not believe it to be beyond the budget of most Americans. Not when most Americans spend more on electronic gadgets and telecom services than they do on sound healthy food.
A 15% difference is quite a lot. If someone spends $400/mo on groceries, that would be an extra $720/yr. That would have to come out of the medical budget, the household budget, the car budget, the vacation budget....somewhere.
15% is a lot, when it's not necessary for good health. If someone chooses to spend the exra 15%-20% because they like it or want to, that's their choice. But until organic becomes close to the same price, it will remain the province of the wealthy (or the spenders).
BTW...I never pay $1.00 for a can of vegetables. Perish the thought! I buy on sale or use coupons. Or more likely, buy a big bag of frozen veggies. Canned and frozen are HEALTHIER than fresh. They are canned or frozen soon after picked, locking in the nutrients, whereas fresh are packaged, wait for shipping, shipping time, then sit in grocery store to be bought, during which time they are losing nutrients.
A 15% difference is quite a lot. If someone spends $400/mo on groceries, that would be an extra $720/yr. That would have to come out of the medical budget, the household budget, the car budget, the vacation budget....somewhere.
No reason to stop there, not really.
$400/month is roughly $13.33/day, or roughly 2X what it cost us to feed a family of 7. A 15% increase would be around $72,000 in a century.
You know how to really exaggerate this and make it look super big is to factor in compounding interest for that century.
Do you have cable? Want to see what you cable is costing you, per century? I bet that is a bigger number.
Anyway that you want to exaggerate this, we can make a contest to exaggerate it more.
Grow your own.can for winter ....or dehydrate them.
Problem solved.
The gastro system is complex. Nutrients and toxins are regulated and sometimes the cause of other organs health. Be informed.
I personally don't get on the organic bandwagon of glory. It's so hyped. But I'm not a soil expert. So I'll keep growing my own and continue to Blanche,pickle,can or dehydrate for long term storage...I do use the grocery store for milk bread eggs and seasonings. I just can't bring myself to tend to chicken and cows in my condo
Our condo let's us "rent" garden plots.. it's nice to hear suggestions when out tending.
I looked at their website, they seem to be based in San Diego. Not a lot of farms in San Diego the last time I was there.
I understand now why Certified Organic has gotten a bad rep. I had assumed it was due to the NOP and Tom Vilsack [along with all of the other monsanto execs currently running the USDA, FDA, and EPA].
At our regional certifier up until 2 years ago EVERYONE working there is a gardener or farmer themselves. They only recently hired a director who is not a farmer himself.
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