The REAL Cost of Healthy Food

When asked what holds them back from making the changes necessary to lose weight and improve their health, I typically hear the following answers........

"I can't afford it"

"It's cheaper to eat fast food than healthy food"

" I can't afford to pay out of pocket to see a nutritionist"

" I don't have the money to join a gym"


These are the things said to me by the Starbucks toting woman whose weekly trips to Target fill the back of her Suburban. So I began to do some research, and here's what I found.

Sarah is a friend who is trying to lose weight. She is a very busy working woman. On a typical day, she makes the following stops.......and here's what she spends........

7 am - Starbucks for a Venti Caramel Machiatto .......................4$

(just coffee, trying to watch her weight)

10 am - Diet Soda and Baked Lays at the Mapco.......................3$

(a little hungry, on the way to a client meeting)

1pm - McDonalds Extra Value Meal at the drive thru...................5$
(starving, can't eat it fast enough-Quarter Pounder
w/ cheese, fries, and diet drink- because she's watching her weight)

4pm - Vending Machine snack - snackwell cookies................ 0.75$
(trying to make healthy choices)

7pm - Lean Cuisine Select meal............................................... 3$
( only 320 calories!!!)

9 pm - 1/2 pint Chunky Monkey .............................................2$
( just can't hold out any more)

Total food cost........................................ $17.75 per day

Now lets look at what she is consuming.........

Starbucks Venti Caramel Machiatto...................... 300 calories

1 Package Baked Lays........................................ 130 calories

McDonald's meal................................................ 890 calories

Snackwells cookies ............................................ 210 calories

Lean Cuisine Meal............................................... 320 calories

Chunky Monkey ................................................. 600 calories

That's a total of 2450 calories- far too many for a 35 year old, 5'2", 140 pound inactive woman. At this rate, Sarah will gain close to 85 pounds per year, and be morbidly obese before her 40th birthday.

Sarah is also getting 113 grams of added sugar- that is more than 22 tsp of added sugar in her day. This alone has a huge impact on her weight and health-but more on that another day.

Now, lets look at an alternative..............

7 am - Home brewed coffee (cream & sugar).......$1 and 180 cal
hard boiled egg, and a banana

10 am - Carton of yogurt & an apple...................$1 and 230 cal

1 pm - Grilled Chicken Sandwhich on whole .......... $4 and 500 cal
wheat bun (lettuce, tomato, mustard),
with small veggie salad

4 pm - handful of almonds and 1/4 cup dried.......$1.25 and 160 cal
blueberrries

7 pm - Grilled Salmon, spinach salad, .............. . $4 and 500 cal
and brown rice

9 pm - 1 orange and piece of string cheese........... $.75 and 140 cal

The new totals are..........$12.00 per day and 1710 calories per day

By making these changes in her day, Sarah can save herself $5.75 and 700 calories per day!

Calories:

A 700 calorie deficit alone translates to a 5 pound weight loss per month, bringing her to her healthy ideal weight in just a few months.

Money:

By purchasing and preparing her own food, Sarah can save over $170 per month.

With this savings, Sarah can afford to.......

Join the YMCA ...................... ............... $60 / month

Participate in YMCA group personal .......$90 for 2X/week
training sessions,

----- or -----

2- 30 minute massages at the YMCA .........$90

These are immediate savings; savings that are obvious and hard to deny. But what about the other savings? With her new diet, Sarah is getting an abundance of fruit and vegetables, antioxidants, good fats, and fiber-all of the nutrients she needs to avoid the downhill track she was headed on towards obesity and disease (see Nutritiacare 101).

The excuse that healthy choices are more expensive just doesn't make sense. I know that change is difficult. In future posts we will introduce the baby steps needed to make a total transformation in your health with little effort or pain.

*costs listed are estimates based on market prices for items in the Nashville, TN and surrounding areas
**calories listed are based on estimates taken from food product labels, manufacturers websites, and restaurant literature

Let Food Be Your Medicine......

The food industry spends billions of dollars each year “improving’ our food supply:  taking out trans fats, adding in omega-3’s and probiotics.  Ironically, the more money American companies spend on manufacturing new food “products”, the sicker and fatter we have become.

It begs the question, why do we think we can do better than nature?  We humans have been put on this earth with everything we need to survive and thrive, yet we continually think we can improve what is already perfect.

Recently I have come across the story of one man, Joe Cross, who has shown us just how we can take what Mother Nature has provided, and use it to cure ourselves of the messes we’ve made. 

In his documentary film Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, Cross gives a compelling example of the power of food to either harm or heal us.  Cross is  shamelessly honest as he shares how his lifestyle choices have left him literally fat, sick, and nearly dead.

What I love about this film is how it illustrates the power of the nutrition of fruits and vegetables.  In just sixty days after giving up a diet full of fast food, sugar laden and over-processed foods, and going on a supervised fast of pure vegetable and fruit juices, Joe Cross lost almost 100 pounds, and became completely symptom free (and medication free) of a debilitating autoimmune skin disease.                     

Another powerful example of the power of food to heal is the story of Dr. Max Gerson.  Dr. Gerson used nutrition and lifestyle therapy to cure patients of diabetes, tuberculosis, and cancer.  His story is documented several ways, but a beautiful illustration of his work is found int he documentary Dying to Have Known.

Dr. Gerson had a keen understanding of just how powerful nutrition is against the disease process.

But as Joe Cross explains, in the beginning of his film, maybe curing disease has more to do with allowing the body to do what it does naturally.  The only true way we can do this is to

1- take away those things which interfere with normal functioning of our body (toxins like artificial ingredients, preservatives, colorants, sugars, etc)    AND

2- give our bodies all the good things they need to work properly- fruits and vegetables, good fats, and proteins


Do we really need to go on a juice fast?  Maybe some of us do.  Maybe a reboot is exactly what some of us need.

For the rest of us, we should all make an effort to make fruits and vegetables a bigger part of our diet, whether we use whole food supplement like Juice Plus, make our own juice, or just be more intentional about our choices each day. 

Our health is in our hands, and people like Joe Cross and Dr. Max Gerson have shown us what we can achieve when we ...

“let food be our medicine, and medicine be our food” - Hippocrates

You can find more information about Joe Cross and his amazing journey on his website fatsickandnearlydead.com

You can learn more about Dr. Gerson and the Gerson Institute at gerson.org



Eat Well          www.sickofspaghetti.com         Spend Less