Originally posted by romansperson
Maybe we ought to take a look at what the Chinese people eat?
[btw: Obesity is on the rise in the Netherlands as well]
Not sure where jsgoddess lives but…
This is a phenomenon I will never understand. I’m from South Bend, IN, currently living in Las Vegas, which is just not terribly far from the San Joaquin Valley, where much of the nation’s fresh veggies are grown. The produce prices her, in Vegas, where the veggies don’t have to be shipped all that far are much higher than the prices I remember back home in Indiana, and the quality of that produce is generally poorer.
Incidentally, mom and I have developed a new shopping strategy. We do the bulk of our shopping at the 99 Cent store, then buy our fresh produce at Trader Joe’s. The fruit and veggies there are at prices comparable to an Evil Soulless-Mart Supercenter, often cheaper, better quality, and it’s very easy to find organically grown produce there. Most of their private label stuff is organically grown.
Ava, do you have a Trader Joe’s anywhere near you? I’m vegan, and have been for the past 7 years. I found my grocery bill got prohibitly expensive when I was consuming a lot of the Amy’s prepared frozen meals and tofu substitutes. No more.
Trader Joe’s actually has really affordable fruits and vegetables, and their frozen bell peppers are delicious. I was really suprised about their prices actually, being a health food store, I expected them to be naturally high. They’re actually cheaper than the average grocery store. Even their packaged foods are healthy (very few ingredients you can’t pronounce).
I’ll bulk up on fruits and veggies now (frozen where I can, fresh when they’re just better, like strawberries and grapes) and buy the frozen stuff sparingly, for treats and for lunches, really. (Even their healthy frozen meals are cheap, they average about $2.00 per meal).
I also tend to cook a big meal every few days. Because I live alone, that one big meal will last me quite awhile. I’ll either vacuum seal it and make my own frozen meals (this is the most cost efficient way of eating IMHO, I’ve got 3 or 4 ready to eat meals of hot and sour soup I made from scratch a few months ago. Heat up some rice and there’s a healthy meal in a bowl for each package I froze) or live off of it for 3 or 4 days. I couldn’t afford to maintain my way of eating otherwise. I tell you, that vacuum sealer was the best gift I’ve ever recieved. It’s worth it’s weight in gold.
Heh. I hadn’t even seen the above post mentioning Trader Joe’s.
They really are that good. 
Do you have a site for this? I’ve got a really hard believing that a truly healthy diet can consist of absolutely no fruits or vegetables.
Supplements are a kind of dietary insurance, if you will. They’re not meant to take the place of foods you should be eating. If you’re truly eating a healthy diet, you’ll have no need for dietary supplements. The fact that you do need them is indicative that your diet isn’t nearly as healthy as you think it is.
And whoever mentioned that your body more readily absorbs vital nutrients via food than pills, is dead on.
The misconception that you can replace all your dietry needs by vitamin supplements is simply dangerous. Fresh fruit and vegetables have all kinds of enzymes, antioxidants and other useful things that simply cannot be obtained in a pill. They are also recognised anti-carcinogens, which is why it is recommended that you eat at least five pieces of fresh fruit and/or vegetables a day.
Furthermore, vitamin pills over the long term place considerable strain on the liver. There is no substitute for getting your nutrition for its evolved source.
Ilsa’s diet is considerably better than the majority of the population’s, consisting, as it does, of little saturated fat, salt, preservatives and other chemicals and so on. But it is still crucially lacking in vital areas for the long term.
pan
Couple problems here.
First of all, the prime goal of a food company is to make a profit. While it would be nice if they maximized nutrition at the same time, the bitter truth is that profit pure and simple is the prime mover here. If you don’t make money you don’t stay in business. So everything from the taste to the packaging to the advertising is geared to sell-sell-sell. This effort has in many ways been wildly successful, with people buying more food than they should eat. The fact that heavily salted, sugared, preserved, fatty, carby food often will last a long, long time without things like refrigeration and withstand some abuse only adds to the problem - fresh fruit is often better, but requires temperature control and gentle handling which costs more and reduces profits.
The upshot - high calorie food available everywhere, constantly. I work with people who never seem to stop chewing.
A lot of companies used to have a policy of no food at your desk - back when they had company cafeterias. This limited eating to lunchtime and one or two coffe breaks. Now the cafeterias are gone (cost too much), you have to eat at your desk because the “break room” is far too small to hold everyone at lunch time, and because you can eat at your desk you frequently do - as I said, the chewing never stops. There are entire fields full of cows with less jaw work going on.
Second big problem is that our current society in the US conspires against physical activity. Where I work, most people can’t take the stairs between floors, you have to use the elevators. I get strange looks because, given a choice between walking up a flight of stairs or using an escalator, I take the stairs. I actually ride my bike to go places in the summer. A lot of people in the US drive everywhere - apparently excercise is not permitted anywhere but the “health club”, implying that you have to pay money to be active. So folks drive to a gym and insist on parking as close to the door as possible so they can go inside and ride stationary bikes that go nowhere, or walk to nowhere on treadmills, even though my area has an excellent “rails-to-trails” network - a couple hundred miles of groomed trail suitable for walking, running, biking, roller blading, etc. FOR FREE.
I’m not supermodel thin (ewwwww… what a thought…) but I’m reasonably healthy and not obese. Why? Because I don’t eat constantly, I snack on things like bananas instead of fat-loaded banana muffins, I take the stairs when I can, and I get up off my butt, away from the TV, and keep moving. It really is that simple for 99% of people. But they get caught up in this show and that show which keeps them in front of the TV, and listen to their friends who say - “You’re walking upstairs???!. How weird”
America has some very very fat people. We also have some physically fit people. If you let the “free market” determine this sort of thing, taking a “hands-offs” approach, this is what you will get. Some folks will make good decisions, some will make bad, and you’ll have most folks somewhere in between. Overall, you won’t have the maximum possible health.
I think the “what are you talking about” are regional differences in produce prices. Someone else earlier in this thread compared some fresh produce to chips and it was consistent with prices I’ve seen on my travels. Here in Toronto, depending on where you shop, a bag of chips will be $1.69 to $1.99. A bunch of broccoli (at a grocery store) will also be roughly $1.69.
China and Japan also have some of the lowest rates of heart disease. A lot of it can be attributed to their seafood and rice diet which has good helpful fats (as opposed to the heart clogging kind of bad fats).
They get a very good balance of protein and carbohydrates, and vitamins and nutrients galore from green veggies.
I could live on sushi. I could! Dammit, now I want sushi! Craving! Craving!..
I also spent $2.50 on some strawberries the other day. 2 pounds of strawberries. I’m not sure if I could eat 2 pounds of strawberries in one sitting, nor am I sure a $2.50 meal at Taco Bell would fill me up…been a long time since I’ve been to a Taco Bell. In our home, these berries mixed with another $2.00 worth of cottage cheese, yogurt, or ice cream (if you please) translate into 8 servings of dessert. The trendy alternative at our local healthfood juice bar is a fresh fruit smoothy which goes for nearly 4 bucks a pop. That’s $32 balanced against my $4.50.
This conversation could become quite tiresome with all of us sharing our grocery receipts, but I scratch my head every time I hear people say it’s cheaper to eat unhealthful foods, since my experience is quite the contrary. Farmman and I went on a serious austerity budget for a few years before buying this place. We lived in NYC at the time, btw with corner grocery stores stocking fresh fruits and veggies superior to what I find rural and for much less money. We stopped buying any processed food and adopted a far more healthy lifestyle because of it. We didn’t buy our carrots peeled or our potatoes washed or our mesclun mix mixed. These things we did ourselves rather than pay someone else to do them. Everything was made from scratch, no mixes, no boxes, no packets of spices. Those who woefully complain that they can’t afford better than Hamburger Helper should consider purchasing the pasta and spices contained in that box separatley…they may save enough money to buy an apple…perhaps even an organic one. Same with macaroni and cheese. My boys get it on occasion, but not the boxed, processed, no-real-cheese variety. Too expensive, if you can believe that. I buy pasta for less than 50 cents a pound and make my own sauce from butter, flour, milk and cheddar for pennies. (remember, that box doesn’t include milk and butter) Fresh fruit salad (made by me from fruits in season) costs less per serving than any prepared dessert or snack I can find on the shelves, and if given the choice, I’d eat $2.50 worth of frozen peas before I’d chow down on Taco Bell.
I honestly don’t believe it is any cheaper to eat crap than it is to eat good stuff and I believe this argument is masking the real issue: The real difference lies in the amount of prep work you are willing to invest. Prepackaged crap is cheaper than prepackaged healthful foods, but anyone willing to invest a little time and work can afford a healthy diet.
Great post Farmwoman. It can be just as cheap if not cheaper to eat healthy. In my experience (many years in a wholefood store) the problem often lies with two other factors. First, for many people and particularly to kids, good food just ain’t real food. Rice, beans, fresh veg? On your proverbial bike with your hippy hampster food! And that isn’t helped by manipulative marketing aimed at kids.
And of course people are so, so busy with their precious time-famine lives that they couldn’t possibly, you know, actually prepare and cook food no matter what its doing to their or their kid’s bodies. :rolleyes: Make the time, use the freezer etc.
Left to their own devices too many people make the wrong choices. I have no problem with tax being used to give an incentive to people to make the right choice more often any more than I have it used to encourage the development and use of cleaner energy sources. Doesn’t remove freedom of choice, just changes the cost.
Why here in the UK should crap get the 17.5% VAT exemption? Get rid of it for high fat and high sugar food. The obesity problem is now, and pardon me here, so huge that the status quo, ‘voluntary’ schemes and moral and educational exhortation aren’t options.
That’s just it, though, that’s your personal experience - where you live. The same is not true where I live, where even sven lives, or where several other people live. And I don’t eat “trendy” health foods - my diet is usually one of brown rice, fruits & vegetables and very little meat. And most people I know who live in the nearby depressed neighborhood could never conceive of having enough money to afford fruits & vegetables - for one thing, they charge more in their neighborhood for those things when they’re even available; and second, if they were to go to the grocery I go to in order to get them, they would need a cab (few people in my area, particularly those living in my neighborhood, have cars) and a time frame of about 2 hours because few cabs will even go to that neighborhood. So it’s a hell of a lot cheaper and easier for them to eat at Church’s chicken (which sells two chicken pieces and a biscuit for $.99) than it is to go to Schnucks (our local grocery) or Sam’s (Costco equivalent).
Feeding children a healthy diet on not so much money is more difficult in your average suburban area than I think some folks think.
For instance: A can of frozen orange juice is, on SALE, $.99. That makes less than a half gallon of orange juice.
A packet of generic kool-aid costs $.10, plus the (slightly less, for me) cup of sugar to sweeten it. That makes a half gallon.
Most of the time the kids drink milk (over $3.00/gallon lately) or ice water - but I can rarely afford juice.
Let’s look at it from a convenience angle. I’ll just use one of my bi-weekly Costco convenience food purchases as an example.
Kool-Aid Jammers have 100% of the kids’ Vitamin C for the day and 25g of sugar. A pack of 40 costs about $6.
Mott’s Apple Juice boxes contain 100% of the kids’ Vitamin C for the day and 25g of sugar. A pack of 32 costs $8.
Other people have talked about their cheap produce. The cheapest I can get bananas is $.33/lb, at Costco. A Trader Joe’s just - and I mean just - opened in my area and I’m going to check it out next Friday when there’s money again.
I try to feed my kids a healthy diet. They get a lot of rice and chicken. Two of them love veggies and the other is slowly coming to understand that no other foods will be forthcoming if she doesn’t want to eat her veggies (in other words, no more rice until she eats the green beans). It’s really hard to keep little growing bellies full without loads of starch (rice, pasta, bread), though, and those will put on the pounds if you can’t moderate them - and it’s hard to because they’re cheap, fillling, and not THAT bad for you.
Huh? Who’s ideas?
Our duly-elected legislators write legislation. It’s true corporations may influence them, but that’s the fault of corrupt legislators.
More scare mongering, perhaps?
Not my children. I know where the TV’s “off” button is. If your children are influenced by “propaganda,” that’s your fault, not the fault of “evil” corporations.
A wage is a price. As such, all wages are set by supply and demand. As they should be. In a free society, at east.
Let me repeat: corporations have absolutely no coercive power over me. None. Zip. Nada. Zero. It is impossible for a corporation to make me do something I don’t want to do. The only thing that has power over me is government.
Unfortunately, the nearest Trader Joe’s is about an hour from here, near Cleveland. In normal circumstances, I don’t think I’d mind driving the hour to get some of the stuff I’ve heard about at Trader Joe’s, but with the price of gas, it seems kind of pointless to drive for two hours round trip to save money on the food, only to pay more money on gas.
I am heading up to Michigan to stay with a friend for Father’s Day weekend, so I may see if it’s feasible to stop on the way back since I’ll be in that area anyway.
I am incredibly jealous that you have a Trader Joe’s. The closest I had in NYC was a Whole Foods and it was a bit of a lug to go from Tribeca to home in Brooklyn carrying a bunch of grocery bags. I would kill for a decently priced, organic food store - I don’t buy organic now because it’s too expensive.
By the way, for those saying that it’s not expensive to eat healthy? I heartily invite you to visit me and take a trip to the supermarket. I alternate shopping at three different stores to get our groceries in order to get the best prices, and it’s still outrageous. Just because it’s not expensive in your area doesn’t mean it’s like that everyone.
Ava
Well that sucks. I’ve got 4 Trader Joe’s within an hour of me. 2 of them w/in the confines of my city. Although I still go to Safeway and Alberton’s for some stuff (pasta, cleaning supplies, stuff that’s cheaper at the main grocery) I work the multiple stores to get the best buy angle, too.
California has some drawbacks yeah, but it does have it’s perks.
And overlyverbose, even sven lives in Santa Cruz, California. The hippy capital of our Great Golden State. Trust me, there’s many places she can find cheap, healthy food. I think it may be more of a convienence issue with her as opposed to the inablility to find affordable, healthy food.
Easier, yes. Cheaper, no. More healthful? Absolutely not, and that’s the point I’m trying to make. The claim that junk food is cheap and readily available can’t be disputed. Nor would I argue that pristine, just picked, organic fruits and veggies and healthfood in the state of ‘heat-n-serve’ are affordable to all. However, the oft repeated and illogical leap that healthful alternatives are cost prohibitive to people without a lot of disposable cash falls into the category of ignorance worth fighting. It just isn’t so.
That $.99 chicken dinner can be brought in cheaper and more nutritiously regardless of your access to decent fresh markets if one is willing to bone a split breast, use the the scraps to make a gravy and whip up some biscuits from scratch. Or, for a goof, let’s substitute the biscuit and gravy with some of those cheap and readily available frozen peas and a little rice.
Granted, certain locales will offer wider varieties and deeper cuts, but having experienced healthful eating on the cheap in both Brooklyn and in strip mall heaven where one can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a superwalmart, I have to stubbornly insist that it can be done almost anywhere. Citing exceptions to the rule won’t convince me that the nutritional injustice of poverty is a real issue over the lamentable fact that wealth can buy a whole lot of convenience.
First of all, if you can’t get a split breast in the market nearest you, how is it cheaper to spend the money to go elsewhere and buy groceries and somehow cart them back? Most markets in my immediate vicinity have NO fresh, uncooked meat available. And that situation is NOT an exception to the rule. Not where I come from, anyway. St. Louis is one of those towns that requires a car - public transportation is so shitty that if you don’t have a car, you either waste two hours getting from point A to point B using the city buses, or you pay for a cab to get you there in less than half the time, but that is hundreds of times more expensive. I think that’s wonderful that living in New York afforded so many healthful, cheap options, and I applaud you for taking advantage of those options.
I think it’s an ignorant statement worth fighting to indicate that it’s cheap for everyone to eat healthfully. I really don’t think you’re looking at the overall picture. Not everyone lives in a location where public transportation is readily available to everyone. Also, I personally think that using Brooklyn of all places as an example of somewhere where it’s hard to get a healthy meal is preposterous. Last time I was there (last year, anyway), there were stores on every street corner, for cryin’ out loud! And there are a LOT of places in that area where fresh fruit stands are set up. Of course it’s cheap and easy to eat healthfully when you’re tripping over fruit stands and safe stores to shop in, or when a supermarket is just a short subway ride away.
I think that those “exceptions” that you cite aren’t quite so exceptional as you might think.
I thought San Francisco was the hippy capital. But I haven’t been to California for a long time now. Did they move it without telling me? 
I’ve been meaning to ask…what’s Trader Joe’s? Is it like a Sam’s or Costco? Someone might have explained this earlier, but if they did, I missed it.
Farmwoman, keep a plate warm. I’m coming over. How do I get to your place?
overlyverbose, Trader Joe’s is the Crown of Western Civilization. It’s this little store where you can get all kinds of wonderful, yummy foods and even wine or beer, usually with all pronounceable ingredients, and, more often than not, at prices that are comparable to supermarket private labels. They feature organically grown produce at prices that often would make Evil Soulless Mart blush, nice fresh hummus for ditto, pre-made lunch plates at about five or six bucks each (I usually manage to get two meals out of one) hormone free milk for about the same price as milk at Evil Soulless Mart’s hormone-laden crap.
Olive oil, five bucks for I think a liter. Extra Virgin, even.
Some of their specialty items and deli meats are a bit pricey, but on the whole, you can do your grocery shopping there and get off a lot cheaper than if you shopped at a regular supermarket, if you do it right, you can even shop cheaper than Super Wal-Mart. And the quality is far better.
That isn’t all I eat, dammit. I eat fresh fruit and vegetables. I was making the point that you don’t have to stuff your face with berries to eat healthily. The argument that since strawberries are expensive in winter, eating healthily costs more is bullshit. Vitamin supplements are very helpful, sometimes necessary on a mass gain diet. Of course you still need some fruit and vegetables. My point is that you don’t need wild Zambonian dingleberries. A bag of granny smith apples is sufficient, and is definitely not more expensive than potato chips or snickers bars.