I was recently greeted with incredulity in a Pit thread when I suggested that healthy food is not more expensive than unhealthy food, if you stay away from pre-prepared type stuff.
I’m not talking about wild strawberries out of season here. I’m talking about rice and beans and whatever vegetables are on sale and buying whole chickens instead of prepared chicken breast and not eating beef every day.
The person who took me to task suggested that it was because low-fat meats and cheeses cost more than the other kind. So? Eat less meat and cheese.
Now honestly, what do the rest of you think? Is cost an excuse for eating badly? Personally, the healthiest diet I ever had was as a starving graduate student/junior professor. And I’ve done this both in Calfornia and in small frozen towns in the midwest.
I think you’re right, cher3. If we’re talking about buying a lot of processed foods like “Healthy Choice” or the like, then yeah, it will be more expensive. And I’m not sure that would necessarily be a healthful diet.
Now, I was just bitchin’ about how much more my grocery bills seem than my neighbors and thinking about it, we do eat a lot more healthfully than they do. The difference is, they are feeding their families 4/$5 frozen pizzas and ramen noodles and mac n’ cheese every night, while I tend to make “square meals” from scratch.
Hmmmm, I guess it really depends more on what you are eating than how healthfully you are eating.
Hmmm. I still think if you look at it over the long run, healthy can win in the cost department. Sure your neighbor can buy 4 pizzas for $5. But think about how much rice, beans or whole grain cereal you could get for $5 (assuming you are buying it in bulk or store brands.)
I think healthy eaters tend to be more adventurous and enjoy more variety in their foods, so they don’t necessarily spend less. However, I maintain that, if I had to, I could spend as little or less than your neighbors and still have enjoyable healthy meals.
It would not,however, look like an “American” diet. There would be no big comforting piece of meat in the center. There would be no cheese sauce or big hunks of bread.
I’m no foe of mac 'n cheese or frozen pizza. But I bet I can put a meal on the table for under a dollar that would put either of those to shame.
Good wholesome food can be relatively inexpensive. The only real difference is the time involved. When you get fast food you do not have to shop, cook or clean. Then again, you have to pay steak prices for a hamburger. That bag of French fries would buy you an entire sack of potatoes.
The time that you save buying fast food is far outweighed by the unhealthy content in it. Few people make an effort to get a balanced meal at the drive through.
That is very true, Cher, I should have thought of that. We could save a lot on our food bills if we bought in bulk, but we have a tiny kitchen with no storage space and have to lug things up four flights of stairs, so I buy the smaller sizes.
And I do think I’m getting the better deal, since we enjoy the heck out of our meals. Another thing that drives up our food bill is that I love trying new recipes, which means buying a new spice or two every week (you’d think I’d have them all by now!) and unusual ingredients.
True, and I think that in the case of some of my friends they are intimidated by cooking so it is easier for them to make a frozed pizza or lasanga. This is not something I understand, but it seems quite common.
I don’t know where you guys shop, but here where I have to shop, it is more expensive to buy lowfat than “regualr”. I don’t buy pre-chopped, pre-cooked, pre-sliced, pre-shredded convience anything but bread. I don’t buy my kids expensive sugared within an inch of its existence cereals. I even make my own tomato sauce. Mac and cheese is made from scratch. We eat healthy meals in this house complete with salads when I can afford the outlandish prices they charge me for fresh veggies this time of year.
Yes, they are “comfortable American meals” with meat for the most part, but it is still more expensive for me in my part of the country to do the law fat meals that are the types of meals we were discussing in the Fat People thread in the Pit. Maybe it’s because of where I live, everything is more expensive in Stillwater than it is in the larger cities in Oklahoma, mostly because so much of this town is devoted to the University. In any case, I can only base my views on what I see at the stores around me.
I think Zenster hit the nail on the head. What I would call “real food” is NOT more expensive than the unhealthy stuff, but it DOES take more time to prepare. I would also add that you have to know how to prepare it. I am truly astonished at the number of people in my age group (out of college but not married yet) who have NO IDEA how to, for example, make a simple chicken stock. I have friends who didn’t know before they came over for dinner that it is possible to make your own applesauce. I think that’s really sad, because cooking is really fun & eating is even MORE fun!!
But back to the OP. Where I live, there’s a farmers’ market six months out of the year. You can go there with $40.00 & get enough groceries to feed four for a week, except for milk & beef/chicken. (You can get free-range eggs, wonderful cheese, fish that were swimming in the Chesapeake that morning, & bacon even a rabbi couldn’t resist at the farmers’ market.) So much for the argument that good food is expensive. People think, I guess, that “healthy food” has to come from places like Fresh Fields where cruelty-free cabages go for five bucks a pound…
Again, this is a benefit of your place of residence. When we have a farmer’s market-which is only 3 months out of the year-it’s not so hard. But the rest of the year, it’s just nearly damned impossible.
Note:
“cruelty-free cabbages”? I do hope you’re joking. I’ve never heard of such a thing and thinks it’s damned funny
I’ve belonged to the local food co-operative for over seven years. (See my Birkenstocks and “Question Authority” button?) I buy my dried beans and grains from the bulk containers, my chickens whole, my fruits and vegetables locally-grown and often organic.
Any time I need to go to the supermarket for anything (my son has developed a powerful hankering for bubble-gum flavored yoghurt) and I purchase more than three or four items, my jaw hangs slack at the prices I’m paying. “Thirty BUCKS for a jar of gherkins/loaf of rye bread/half-pound deli-sliced pastrami/package of frozen butter beans/three pounds ground round? I could buy a WEEK’S worth of fucking food for that at the CO-OP!!!”
See if you can find a copy of EAT IT!, a 1972 stoned-out hippie cookbook, illustrated by R. Crumb. Great tasting cheap healthy food.
When I lived in Tennessee, back in the Dark Ages, we belonged to a food co-op. Youre right, Ike. They’re great! Haven’t lived anywhere near one since. <sigh>
I’ll look for the cookbook. One more in vast Ranger Collection can’t hurt. {I swear, I have more cookbooks then any other single type of books.}
Yeah, Arden Ranger. Lowfat cheese is more expensive than regular cheese. But why would anyone buy lowfat cheese in the first place? It tastes like–well it doesn’t taste like anything actually.
I think the problem is that people assume you have to replace everything exactly. Me, I buy regular full-fat cheese and just use less–we have spinach and cheese enchiladas, instead of cheese enchiladas. And throw some of that leftover corn and beans in there, too. “Lowfat” products are generally a ripoff, IMHO.
I lived in a small backwater town in Pennsylvania for quite a while. I know that fresh produce is more expensive at some times of the year, so what we did was eat “seasonal” meals. More canned or frozen veggies in the winter. Soups instead of salads. We also made weekend trips to the nearest city and stocked up (“recreational shopping.”) During the growing season we went to the farmer’s market every week.
I guess I’m fortunate in that neither my husband nor my kids are picky eaters and they don’t feel deprived if we don’t have meat all the time (my daughter wouldn’t even touch it until she was 2 1/2 and she still doesn’t like fast food–except fish tacos). My husband likes everything and actively encourages me to make vegetarian or near-vegetarian food. Our method is to eat really simply most of the time and then, when we want meat or fish, have a little of something nice, rather than a lot of something mediocre. I can’t remember the last time I bought ground beef.
And yes, I’m in Southern California right now. It’s a whole lot easier to find healthy food–not because the produce is all that much cheaper in the major chain groceries, but because there are a lot of competing co-ops and ethnic markets where they cater to people who don’t eat on the American plan.
Also, tatertot, when I mentioned buying in bulk I didn’t just mean larger sizes. We live in a small apt., too. I was actually thinking of places that sell unpackaged rice, etc., in bulk bins, so you can just buy as much as you want.
It depends on how you define healthy. Here’s a breakdown for my family of 4.
What I consider a pretty healthy meal:
Rice is about $1 a lb (the even healthier brown rice is about $1.30 a lb). I use about 1 cup for dinner. Beans are .70 a bag for dry, $1.20 for 2 cans. Fresh spinach is 1 a bunch, I use 2 to 3 bunches as a side. Fish is too expensive for us to have on a regular basis. Enough catfish to feed my family will easily cost more than 10. A chicken big enough for the 4 of us, $5.
What I consider a very unhealthy meal:
Can of spam $2. Eggs $1.09 for a dozen (we’ll use about 8). 4 potatoes for frying .70.
Time spent cooking healty meal= 3 or 4 hours.
Time spent cooking unhealthy meal= 1/2 hour.
Arden, I was indeed joking about the cruelty-free cabbages. As far as I know, anyway.
cher, I think you are my culinary soulmate!! All that “lowfat” fake food sucks big-time. If I weren’t such a pacifist, I’d suggest that somebody should bomb the Snackwell’s factory. Maybe SoCal isn’t as evil as I thought it was.
Okay, Cher3. I don’t know what the hang up with cheese is, but just for the record, I buy it maybe twice a month and the lowfat cheese I do buy when I can afford it is actually not bad.
Let me add that I not only have a limited budget to shop with, I also have three people with severe food allergies to contend with. I’m allergic to egg whites and citrus fruit, my daughter is allergic to many different types of beans, my son is allergic to nuts, and those are just the major ones. My kids aren’t picky, there’s just some things they can’t eat.
I’m not some kid fresh out of momma’s house who’s never had to do this before. I’m almost forty and I’ve been cooking since I was twelve and doing the shopping since I was sixteen and taken required nutrition classes in college for the past three semesters. Whether you mean it or not, Cher3,you’re coming across as thinking I have no idea what I’m doing or what I’m talking about and I most certainly do. If I have read something that isn’t there, I apologize.
Stella*Fantasia, you must live in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. I love the farmer’s market under the Jones Falls Expressway! And I agree, Fresh Fields is very expensive. I use that market for specialty items (pate, free-range chicken and milk in those cool glass bottles).
I rarely purchase ‘processed foods’ (as my mother calls them). In my house, you’ll almost never find Mac n’ Cheese in a box, canned pasta (i.e. Chef Boyardee), Hamburger Helper (and their ilk), frozen microwave meals, etc.
Now there are a couple of exceptions. Once a quarter (not on purpose, it just works out that way) the hubby and I ‘treat’ ourselves to Marie Calender’s Country fried chicken microwave meal. OMG! We call it the microwaveable heart attack or the microwaveable food-gasm. We also purchase rising crust frozen pizzas quarterly (once again, it just works out that way).
My grocery bills could be a lot cheaper it I purchased dried beans, whole chickens, made my own 'ghetti sauce, etc. I don’t because time does not allow me to prepare these things and my budget can handle the expense. But I also think my grocery bill would be a lot cheaper if I purchased more processed foods instead of the fresh meats and veggies we buy now.
Well, up here, (Whitehorse, Yukon) a weeks worth of healthy, nutritious groceries for a family of four is close to $200Cdn. If you like variety and flavor. Average expenditure per four-member family, in 1996, was $153.39. according to Statistics Canada.
Apples range between 4$ and 8$ per 5lb bag, oranges ditto, when you aren’t paying ungodly amounts per kilo. Ferget the exotic fruits like pineapples and stuff. Milk is 5.67 per 4 litre jug. All of our groceries in the winter come from down south. When produce jumped in price after the California cold snap, we were paying up to 4 per head for lettuce. I forget what broccoli and cauliflower went up to, I was so aghast at the price we went back to frozen mixed veggies for a while. At 4.98 per kilo bag. Store brand rice is around 3 a kilo.
You can get some better prices by shopping around, we do have four full-size grocery stores, but spending 5$ in gas to save 39 cents on a food item is hardly cost-effective. Did I mention that said grocery stores are some kilometers apart?
Aaand then there’s Iqaluit, where the 4litre jug of milk is 7$. Don’t even mention the produce, be glad that the apples and oranges are edible. The rest composts pretty quick.
It is actually cheaper to live on meat and carbohydrates, especially if you hunt your own meat. Actually, we get really good meat prices, as we get good ol’ Alberta beef, fresh as they sell it. It has been known to be cheaper to eat steak than pork chops.
Okay, I gotcha now. We haven’t really got a good place to go for that here, but I know what you are talking about.
That’s a really good point, it is so expensive to buy produce out of season and it’s usually of inferior quality.
I do think that the posters who brought up that it’s harder to find cheaper food depending on where you live have a good point. We don’t have any sort of food co-op here that I know of, and if we did it would be German and they pay more for their food than we Americans do.
Well, I’m sorry if I appear to be picking on you, Arden Ranger. With all the limitations you mention, I would be hard-pressed to make cheap healthy meals, too. I rely a lot on eggs and beans.
I just picked up on the cheese because it was one of the things you mention, quite rightly, that do cost more in their low-fat version. We’ll just have to disagree on the taste.
I think I’m ticked off about this because I know a lot of people (including my diabetic parents) who seem to completely give up on the idea of healthy food if it requires them to spend any time or thought beyond what it would take to pop in a frozen pizza. This is clearly an attitude you don’t share and you’ve made it clear that you work hard at what you do.
Part of the problem is that certain foods are branded “healthy” and others “unhealthy.” Just to use Biggirl’s foods as an example: Eggs are bad, potatoes are bad, chicken is good. Well, why not lose the SPAM (at $2.00 a can it’s a lot more expensive than that chicken) and have a spinach and potato frittata? There’s nothing inherently wrong with eggs or potatoes, or with frying, as long as you don’t do it for every meal. And you can afford have chicken and fish as long as they aren’t the centerpiece of the meal–that’s the way most of the rest of the world lives. You can get three meals for two out of a chicken–or you can devour the whole thing at one sitting.
However, I do think that unhealthy food is often cheaper partly because it is what people really want. Zenster mentioned the idea of trying to get a healthy meal at the drive-thru. Well, you can’t. Why not? Because every semi-healthy alternative most fast-food restaurants have tried has tanked. Why are all the “healthy” frozen pizzas at least twice as expensive as the other kind? Because people don’t want veggies on their pizza–they want pepperoni.
YMMV indeed. I don’t ever spend three or four hours cooking a healthy meal. Unless you have to actually make the beans from dry, I don’t see anything on your list that would take that long, and soaking beans is not “work”.
I also don’t understand the “healthy food more expensive” argument. If you want cheaper food, cut out packaged things. Conincidentally, the majority of unhealthy foods are packaged ones. Sure, if you eat a pound of lard, a rib roast and three dozen fried eggs for dinner, it’s not going to be healthy, but that’s not what we’re talking about.
Flour is cheap. Beans and rice are cheap. Whole chickens are cheap. Unless you live in the Yukon, fresh vegetables in season are cheap. If you do live in the Yukon, oh well. Guess you’re out of luck. Although seal meat and salmon would probably hold you over.
If you live in an area that has any rural element at all, you can find out what local produce is available. It will all be cheap, in season. Fish, unless caught locally, has traditionally been a luxury item, so don’t be surprised at that.
Eat locally, in season, and unpackaged, and I fail to see how your food bills can’t go down. And there’s no way you should spend 3-4 hours on one meal. If you do, you’re trying to do things that are too complex for your skill level.
With food allergies, eh. All bets are off. I truly feel for ya.
Allow me to dive in here late and with a different opinion than most, if I may.
When I’m on a healthy diet kick (as I am currently), I buy a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, and that makes our grocery bill pretty expensive relative to when I wasn’t on this particular kick. It’s not at all unusual for me to go through $4 worth of oranges every day - and that’s just me using oranges for snacks. Very healthy, but also very expensive.
Rice and beans? Isn’t that what they feed you in prison?
