But eating right is so expensive...

SummerLovesPhil

Just some grist for your mill, next time you think eating well costs too much. I carry this information around with me for when I'm feeling whiny about my grocery bill.

Estimated lifetime cost of diabetes for an individual diagnosed at age 30, including out-of-pocket medical costs and lost productivity: $305,000. (American Diabetes Association)
Estimated lifetime cost of a heart attack: $700,000 to $1 milion, depending on the severity. (American Heart Association)
Average cost of one year of treatment for a woman with colorectal cancer: $51,327. (National Institutes of Health)

Average increase to my weekly grocery bill so the three of us can eat decent food: $30. If I spent that every week until I turned 100, that would be $103,080. Probably worth it, eh?

jwdieter

If you're eating 3000 calories/day, and you cut that back to 2000 calories/day, you could shave over 30% off your food costs.

SummerLovesPhil

I disagree. In fact, that's exactly the problem with our food supply: Healthful foods cost more than empty calories by orders of magnitude. The number one predictor of obesity in the US is income level, and the very fact that I've decided to alter my lifestyle is an exercise in economic privilege.

The cheapest calories on our grocery shelves are from government-subsidized commodity foods: Corn, soybeans, and the resulting cheap animal products. Think boxed mac & cheese, packaged ramen, and the like. If you eat those foods until you're not hungry anymore, you will have eaten too many calories. If you have to do that every day, you're going to get fat and sick. Eating well costs quite a bit more money than eating the standard American diet, which is why most people don't do it.

sloth3toes

If you're eating 3000 calories/day, and you cut that back to 2000 calories/day, you could shave over 30% off your food costs.

I disagree. In fact, that's exactly the problem with our food supply: Healthful foods cost more than empty calories by orders of magnitude. The number one predictor of obesity in the US is income level, and the very fact that I've decided to alter my lifestyle is an exercise in economic privilege.

The cheapest calories on our grocery shelves are from government-subsidized commodity foods: Corn, soybeans, and the resulting cheap animal products. Think boxed mac & cheese, packaged ramen, and the like. If you eat those foods until you're not hungry anymore, you will have eaten too many calories. If you have to do that every day, you're going to get fat and sick. Eating well costs quite a bit more money than eating the standard American diet, which is why most people don't do it.

I'm all about your statements regarding the cost of getting sick vs the cost of staying healthy.... but, I think what jwdieter is saying is, that the cost of your food is directly proportional to how much you eat. I can't see anything wrong with the logic there. That is, if you continue to eat the exact same food, just 30% less... that will cut your food bill by 30%.

magerum

Your entire premise is faulty.

bethannien

Dry black beans: about 99 cents per lb. Makes about 5 cups of prepared beans.
Frozen chicken breasts: about $8 for a bag containing 6-10 breasts.
Frozen blueberries: $11 for a 5 lb bag at costco. (I bought a bag in July that I'm still working through)
Whole wheat pasta costs maybe 25 cents more than white pasta.
Brown basmati rice is also about $1per pound, delicious and lower arsenic content than regular brown rice.

I spend LESS on food when I'm eating healthier because I eat out less frequently and my junk food budget is a fraction of what it was. I used to buy chips every time they were 2 for 5. That's $5 I can spend on fresh produce. I would buy 1-3 candy bars every timeI went to the store. I can buy a carton of greek yogurt instead. It ddoesn't have to cost much more if any.

Will_Thrust_For_Candy

I also disagree that it is more expensive.

Ultimately healthy choices provide a lot more nutrition which keeps you full MUCH longer than processed food. You are actually eating a fraction of what you would otherwise. At first it feels like it's so much more pricey, but once you get into the habit of what to buy and start eliminating the "other" things from your shopping trip, you really notice how much less it actually is.

ryry_

WTF am I doing on this site? I just need a second job

jwdieter

I'm all about your statements regarding the cost of getting sick vs the cost of staying healthy.... but, I think what jwdieter is saying is, that the cost of your food is directly proportional to how much you eat. I can't see anything wrong with the logic there. That is, if you continue to eat the exact same food, just 30% less... that will cut your food bill by 30%.

I'm a big fan of good food. I spend a lot of money on food, and I despise the Big Mac for posing as a hamburger. But if you're getting fat eating McDonalds, just cutting back on the calories will provide the lion's share of positive health change. Eating under maintenance will reduce weight and directly reduce your risks for obesity-related conditions - and this of course costs less than eating over maintenance.

If money is a concern, you can save money and improve your health at the same time by simply eating less. If you want to spend more, that's fine too.

nomeejerome

:huh:

laele75

Honestly, I spend less money on food than I used to. The $20 less a month I spend on my own junk food goes to adding to the kiddo's choices so he'll gain weight. Trader Joe's is the best place ever for people on special diets.

Birder150

I also spend less money when I'm eating whole food instead of processed food and other junk.
I eat much less because I'm more satisfied so that helps add to the savings.

Ed98043

I'm all about your statements regarding the cost of getting sick vs the cost of staying healthy.... but, I think what jwdieter is saying is, that the cost of your food is directly proportional to how much you eat. I can't see anything wrong with the logic there. That is, if you continue to eat the exact same food, just 30% less... that will cut your food bill by 30%.

Agreed. The issue with poverty and obesity is not just that they're eating cheap carbs, it's that they're eating large quantities of them. So if you buy a 50-cent box of mac and cheese and only eat half of it each day instead of the whole thing...wouldn't your cost go down 50%? And wouldn't your weight drop as well?

Cheap, energy-dense foods are also more "palatable" (they taste good and are comforting to eat) and so stimulate the consumer to eat in greater quantities. Also, I recently read a study where low-income households were provided with nutritious food that was more in line calorie-wise with their actual daily energy expenditures, but study subjects reported that while it was "enough" food, it was not the type of food they preferred to eat. It goes much deeper than just poor = cheap food = fat.

snazzyjazzy21

Just because you can access healthy foods, doesn't mean everyone can. Lower income areas have less access to healthy foods, and when they can get them, the prices are often greatly inflated. Never work on the assumption that everyone can eat healthy just because you can.

laele75

Just because you can access healthy foods, doesn't mean everyone can. Lower income areas have less access to healthy foods, and when they can get them, the prices are often greatly inflated. Never work on the assumption that everyone can eat healthy just because you can.

This is true. There is just no way I could have afforded to eat the diet I do now when I lived in BFE Nebraska. There were two overpriced local grocery store and a super Wal-Mart. Fruit and vegetables that aren't locally grown are obscenely expensive and we won't even talk about fish. It is much easier here in Seattle to eat healthy cheaply.

Mr_Knight

Just made a giant crockpot worth of stew - chicken thighs, mixed vegetables, brown rice, various spices/flavourings - an entire day's worth of food with killer macros for, like, $4.

No reason that eating healthy needs to be expensive.

eryquem

I disagree. In fact, that's exactly the problem with our food supply: Healthful foods cost more than empty calories by orders of magnitude. The number one predictor of obesity in the US is income level, and the very fact that I've decided to alter my lifestyle is an exercise in economic privilege.

The cheapest calories on our grocery shelves are from government-subsidized commodity foods: Corn, soybeans, and the resulting cheap animal products. Think boxed mac & cheese, packaged ramen, and the like. If you eat those foods until you're not hungry anymore, you will have eaten too many calories. If you have to do that every day, you're going to get fat and sick. Eating well costs quite a bit more money than eating the standard American diet, which is why most people don't do it.

Not really. WalMart sells a 5 box Value Pack of Mac & Cheese for $4.50. At 2.25 lbs for all 5, that ends up at $2.00/lb. Most fruits and vegetables are less than that price/lb, with the exception of a few fancy ones like asparagus or artichokes. It's also easy enough to find chicken breast for $2.00/lb if you watch for when it goes on sale. Whole chickens are often less than $1/lb (of course, you're going to be tossing the carcass, so it's not entirely a fair comparison, but still...)

And the fact is, a product like Mac & Cheese is on the low end of the cost scale for processed foods. When you start looking at things like frozen pizza, microwave dinners, breakfast cereals, and snack foods like Doritos and such, it's more like $4-$5/lb.

pavrg

It's only more expensive if you buy into organic produce, whole wheat pasta, 'healthy' TV dinners, and other fad stuff that really has no effect on anything.

If you just shy away from junk like cookies, chips, etc. and stay away from eating out, then eating healthy is significantly cheaper for you. My entire dinner tonight cost me less than $3.50/serving and comes in at under 650 calories.

kristafb

I switched to a plant based diet a month ago, no dairy,eggs, meat, cheese, fish or chicken and thought I'd have lower bills at the grocery store but just the contrary. I was spending about 40-50 a week and the last 4 weeks I've spend over 70-80 each week. Produce is expensive, if you want fresh, In my neck of the woods a small bunch of kale is $4, 3 small sweet potatoes cost me almost $5, a bag of oranges was $6. it adds up pretty fast. But on the other hand I can't put a price on how much better I feel physically & ethically so I'll keep forking out the dough

HeidiCooksSupper

I process folks at the local food pantry and it brings home to me each week how tough some folks have it. Imagine first that you only have a few hundred dollars coming in a month, you are already living in someone's basement or old trailer for the lowest rent you can find, you don't have a car or access to public transportation and your cupboards are bare. You have been looking for work but even the part-time, minimum wage job you had disappeared. In the US, the sequester means your food stamps were just cut to $30 or less a MONTH. These are the people I deal with every Monday afternoon during my volunteer stint.

They don't have many choices and they can only return to our organization once every thirty days. Some of the people I see are young, some old. Some healthy, some sick. I see people with severe handicaps, both physical and mental. Yesterday there was a victim of a drunken driver who had suffered a traumatic brain injury. These are the people that come to the food pantry.

Yesterday, one client said, no, he didn't have trouble with utility bills because he no longer lived somewhere with utilities. He lost his job; he lost the roof over his head. Although some of the people I see are overweight, many are thin, some painfully so. Sometimes they have cancer or degenerative bone disease, worked hard all their lives and have been wiped out by medical expenses. These are the people I see each Monday afternoon.

So, yes, I do believe you can eat very healthily as well as you can eat junk IF you have access to good food at reasonable prices and the knowledge to cook the healthy food. The people I see on Mondays may not have access to a pot to boil beans or the knowledge of how to do it. No one gives them salt and pepper to make the beans palatable. One mentally handicapped gentleman yesterday asked me what he could do with the bag of dry beans someone gave him. I explained how he could cook them in his crock pot like potatoes. He didn't have a stove. He really didn't know and had no one to tell him. He'd had the beans for a year.

So, it isn't easy. How healthy could you eat if your TOTAL income were $700 a month and $30 in food stamps?

armadillolabrat

It is definitely more expensive to eat fresh fruits and vegetables than processed/junk foods especially if you do not shop at big box stores like WalMart of Costco which I do not. I am only purchasing these things for a 2 person household but for someone who may have 2-3 children and be on a budget only shopping the "perimeter" of the store will definitely be felt in the wallet. Perhaps some people are saving money since they switched to a healthier diet due to the fact that they are now eating much less than they used to when they were buying items like chips or cookies.

cstoney2013

I process folks at the local food pantry and it brings home to me each week how tough some folks have it. Imagine first that you only have a few hundred dollars coming in a month, you are already living in someone's basement or old trailer for the lowest rent you can find, you don't have a car or access to public transportation and your cupboards are bare. You have been looking for work but even the part-time, minimum wage job you had disappeared. In the US, the sequester means your food stamps were just cut to $30 or less a MONTH. These are the people I deal with every Monday afternoon during my volunteer stint.

They don't have many choices and they can only return to our organization once every thirty days. Some of the people I see are young, some old. Some healthy, some sick. I see people with severe handicaps, both physical and mental. Yesterday there was a victim of a drunken driver who had suffered a traumatic brain injury. These are the people that come to the food pantry.

Yesterday, one client said, no, he didn't have trouble with utility bills because he no longer lived somewhere with utilities. He lost his job; he lost the roof over his head. Although some of the people I see are overweight, many are thin, some painfully so. Sometimes they have cancer or degenerative bone disease, worked hard all their lives and have been wiped out by medical expenses. These are the people I see each Monday afternoon.

So, yes, I do believe you can eat very healthily as well as you can eat junk IF you have access to good food at reasonable prices and the knowledge to cook the healthy food. The people I see on Mondays may not have access to a pot to boil beans or the knowledge of how to do it. No one gives them salt and pepper to make the beans palatable. One mentally handicapped gentleman yesterday asked me what he could do with the bag of dry beans someone gave him. I explained how he could cook them in his crock pot like potatoes. He didn't have a stove. He really didn't know and had no one to tell him. He'd had the beans for a year.

So, it isn't easy. How healthy could you eat if your TOTAL income were $700 a month and $30 in food stamps?

That must be sad to see some of the people who are down and out. I used to work at a public Hospital and saw alot of the same. If you suffer a brain injury it is tough to function , and you become a different person. You are a good person to serve the public like that!

but I think the OP was not posting about people who are in that situation, she was making a statement that you have to spend more to eat healthy. I don't agree with that 100%, some of the healthiest foods are not expensive, just .....boring? When they ask the oldest people what they ate to live to 110 it is usually fish and rice, peppers and etc.

pavrg

First, it's important to define eating healthy because that is different for everyone. I think eating healthy is getting your proper ratio of protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, and minerals while staying around your daily caloric intake needs. I do not define eating healthy as buying organic produce, GMO free meats, whole wheat pasta, no frozen stuff ever, etc. It's not necessary to buy any of that stuff in order to get proper nutrition.

Just because you can access healthy foods, doesn't mean everyone can. Lower income areas have less access to healthy foods...

Elitist bs. Walmart is the king of low-income neighborhood retail and you can find plenty of affordable, nutritious food there.

It is definitely more expensive to eat fresh fruits and vegetables than processed/junk foods especially if you do not shop at big box stores like WalMart of Costco which I do not.

So you avoid the cheapest grocery outlets and claim your food costs more because it's healthier? No, your food costs more because you have an aversion to big box grocery outlets that have a more efficient supply and production infrastructure. I shop at Target because it's the cheapest option near me. They have plenty of fresh produce, they have even cheaper frozen veggies (green beans, broccoli, corn peas, carrots) which are just as nutritious, albeit at the expense of some texture when cooked.

No one is getting fat or succumbing to health problems by choosing frozen vegetables with a longer shelf life over fresh produce.

Btw, many of the ones that market themselves as local joints are also owned by mega companies.

I switched to a plant based diet a month ago, no dairy,eggs, meat, cheese, fish or chicken and thought I'd have lower bills at the grocery store but just the contrary. I was spending about 40-50 a week and the last 4 weeks I've spend over 70-80 each week. Produce is expensive, if you want fresh, In my neck of the woods a small bunch of kale is $4, 3 small sweet potatoes cost me almost $5, a bag of oranges was $6. it adds up pretty fast. But on the other hand I can't put a price on how much better I feel physically & ethically so I'll keep forking out the dough

Most of what you are eating can't be digested by the human body, which is why fruits and veggies are so low in calories. So yea, massive amounts of pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables that spoil quickly and are expensive to ship are going to cost more. But people don't have to eat a plant-only diet to eat healthy. In fact, it's probably not recommended by your average nutritionist.

So again, the only way eating healthy costs more is if you are sticking to TV dinners or you are buying snooty organic products. And the solution to that is A) learn to cook and stop buying overpriced produce. Again, my dinner tonight cost less than half of the average fast-food combo per person and came in at under 650 calories: Sausage and peppers with a side of baked ziti.

benol1

Healthy eating on a budget: http://nutritionfacts.org/video/eating-healthy-on-a-budget/

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BostonStrong617

Honestly the issue isn't so much affording food...it's having the time to prepare it. As someone who works 60 + hours a week and has other responsibilities outside of work (who doesn't?!) I just don't always have the time to prepare meals which means I often turn to fast food, frozen dinners etc but I have learned how to fit this into a healthy life style

I_Will_End_You

I don't know where you guys live, but around here healthy foods are a lot more expensive.

SkimFlatWhite68

OP - I couldn't agree more.

My health and that of my DD is worth more to me now than a toasted cheese sandwich.

HeikkiLaukkanen

I switched to a plant based diet a month ago, no dairy,eggs, meat, cheese, fish or chicken and thought I'd have lower bills at the grocery store but just the contrary. I was spending about 40-50 a week and the last 4 weeks I've spend over 70-80 each week. Produce is expensive, if you want fresh, In my neck of the woods a small bunch of kale is $4, 3 small sweet potatoes cost me almost $5, a bag of oranges was $6. it adds up pretty fast. But on the other hand I can't put a price on how much better I feel physically & ethically so I'll keep forking out the dough

We have really increased our intake of produce for our family of five over the last year. My wife does the budgeting and you are spot on, if you're going to buy produce it's going to cost more. Don't delude yourselves.

We spend more on food, but the cost of not eating well is too high!

susannamarie

Depends on healthy.

Yeah, on a per-pound basis vegetables might not be that expensive. On a per-calorie basis they are. When I ran out of money I wasn't eating much other than homemade baking powder biscuits and dried beans (not exactly the most healthy diet) and occasionally potatoes if they were on sale simply because of how cheap they are.

I'm really happy to be employed now and able to afford things like chicken and vegetables again.

echelonokie

@armadillolabr and others, Thank you! I live in a very small town that has a grocery store and a Wal-Mart. Our Wal-Mart is even VERY limited in "good food". To get to anything other than these 2 places, I have to drive roughly 45 minutes, which doesn't bode well for fresh food in 100 degree heat.

Now, for those saying that eating "healthy" is cheaper than eating not healthy, I give you this: One box of whole wheat pasta which will make MANY meals = $1.29, to which I can add nearly ANYTHING and make a meal for me and my son. Bag of Romaine lettuce - $3, which I need many other things to add to and will also usually go bad within 3 days.

Now, to the one who listed the black beans and blueberries and such. You just TRY serving those to a teenager and watch the look you get. Besides, who in the HELL is going to just eat a pot of black beans. Oh sure, I could but then nobody would want to be near me the next day.

Face it. Cheap food is unhealthy but it lasts and it's easy to work with for a family on a VERY restricted budget. A package of bologna and a loaf of bread will feed us for days, or those horrible little bags of Ramen will last forever, but you take a batch of fresh produce and a package of meat, even if it's on sale or clearance, is going to end up running us around $20 for a meal. Yes, even hamburger where I live is $3.99 a pound or higher.