Seriously. We’re not poor, and there’s still no way in hell I’m ever paying that much money for carrots and celery. That was a ridiculous example of “inexpensive healthy food.” Nearly $4 for a loaf of bread? Are you kidding me? We only eat 100% whole wheat bread in this family and I never pay more than $1.50 a loaf, often much less. Now, granted, I am fanatical about shopping the grocery sales, but still, you can find excellent whole-wheat bread for $3/loaf or less around here even when it’s not on sale. Cheaper yet if you’re willing to go with the dubious “Wonder Whole Wheat”. Also, they sell baby carrots here for about $1 for a 1-lb bag, on sale. No “nonsensical” chopping necessary. Also, it takes about 20 seconds to chop up a celery stalk.
OK, a little more on topic, I think that what would help the most right now would be more education on this issue. I buy a lot of fruit and vegetables, and whole grains, and so forth, and I don’t spend a lot on my groceries. It’s because I know how to shop. I also know how to prepare a lot of food at once and freeze the extra; I have and know how to use a crock-pot so that dinner for my family is ready as soon as everyone gets home from school/work, etc. Now, granted, some poor people aren’t going to have a crockpot, and they aren’t going to have a lot of freezer space (or any) and they don’t have access to grocery stores. That’s a bigger problem than not knowing how to shop. But personally I think there are a lot of people who do have a freezer, and access to a grocery store, and just don’t really have the know-how to be able to efficiently use what they have.
I grew up in a relatively poor family with a single working mom, and we had a LOT of convenience foods, because she just really didn’t know how to cook, and what she did know how to cook came from her mother, who had been a housewife with time to make something that took 3 hours on the stove. My mom got home at 5:30 pm and needed to get dinner on the table by around 6. So we had a lot of frozen dinners and spaghetti sauce from cans and so forth. If she’d known some quicker recipes to make, or been able to make a huge pot of something on Sunday and freeze it up so we could just defrost it throughout the week, I think that would have helped a lot.
Sorry, I get kind of long-winded on the topic of grocery shopping and convenience cooking.
I wasn’t ignoring you. You may have indeed pointed to a few items in which to eat healthier and save money, however that is not the case for the majority of items. As evidenced by most of the posts here so I am unsure of exactly what you are referring to.
A recurring theme I am noticing is all of the ‘cheap healthy food guru’s’ expect the American populace at large to prep and cook all of this health food every night of the week. Most poor families I know don’t have the luxury of a stay at home mom with that kind of time.
If you give people the options of:
Spend an hour cooking something from scratch
Spending 5 minutes boiling water for mac n cheese
Which direction do you really think they are going to go.
As much as they used to preach about healthy eating in school, (I don’t know if they still do or not to be honest) then they turn right around and serve pizza and burgers once a week with the other three days being other less than healthy foods.
You guys seriously can’t be serious when you say eating healthy is less expensive (or even comparable) than eating like shit (unhealthy).
Again, you have yet to demonstrate anything. There are more than “a few” inexpensive healthy items.
As has been said before, you just don’t understand the difference b/t eating healthy, and buying a bunch of products with “low fat” or “healthy” on the label.
It takes the exact same five minutes to boil water for whole wheat pasta, into which you can throw some olive oil, a little parm or asiago, and some VEGETABLES of either the fresh or frozen variety.
Or even a jar of store-bought spaghetti sauce. Not maybe as great as homemade, but not terrible, either. Or, defrost some homemade from your freezer stash! (OK, OK.)
But this is what I’m saying, about educating people. There are too many people that just automatically think that processed = quicker. Like, do you know how much longer it takes to make pancakes from scratch than from store-bought pancake mix? About a minute. I’m not kidding. Frozen vegetables take about 4-5 minutes to heat up in the microwave. You don’t have to chop them, peel them, or wash them. And so on.
I also think that education is a huge issue. Many people don’t know what’s healthy vs. what’s not. For example, maybe you (general you) consider it common sense that steamed spinach is healthier than creamed spinach or spinach sauteed in large amounts of butter, but many people don’t understand that. They figure that a vegetable is a vegetable, however it’s prepared. And if you can make your vegetables taste really good, you’ll eat more of them, thereby having a “healthier” diet.
It’s amazing what people think is healthy. I had a friend whose doctor was concerned about her cholesterol. He told her that one thing she could do to help remove saturated fats from her diet was to cook with olive oil instead of butter. He said that doing so should also help her lose weight. What he didn’t tell her, though, was that using a quarter cup of olive oil when a tablespoon would do could actually make her gain weight, not lose it. She simply assumed that, because olive oil was “healthy,” she could use as much as she wanted. She went back to the doctor and had gained weight because, even though she had cut butter out of her diet, she had replaced it with even larger quantities of fat because she was using indiscriminate amounts of olive oil, figuring that it didn’t matter how much she used. Lots of people do that because they just have no idea that even if something is healthy, you can’t eat unlimited amounts and not face consequences.
I think you’re completely right, and a lot of people take for granted not only their access to fresh food and the luxury of time, but also good habits and cooking skills handed down from their family. I’m sure being exposed to a multi-billion dollar diet industry isn’t helping much, either. Even rich, educated people can’t seem to decide what to eat.
Even the spaghetti sauce mentioned above. I’m sure it’s going to be healthier than McDonald’s, but chances are it’ll also be loaded with sugar.
But if your potions are reasonable, you aren’t eating a lot of sugar other places and you get enough exercise, the amount of sugar in jarred spaghetti sauce isn’t bad. The problem is that the nutrition and health are complex. It isn’t a one size fits all deal. And many people combine a little sugar here and there, with a lot of sugar in other places, a little fat here and there, with too much fat somewhere else, too large portion sizes and not enough exercise.
See, I always thought the reason for the obesity was directly correlated to the lack of exercise people get these days. How many of you had P.E. in school every day growing up? I know I did, up until I had athletics (7th grade). The education of eating healthy would be a huge boon (if people actually took the time to learn), however what we are seeing is that healthy eating costs more (whether in time or money).
If I want to eat pasta everyday, or a bowl full of spinach, I’m good. I like that blog but can’t really get into the recipes. They look like almost all veggie dishes. I grill almost all of my veggies. Artichokes are sublime on the pit. Someone show me some cheap healthy meat and potatoes dishes please.
There are a lot of veggie dishes - because veggie dishes are both cheap and healthy. And because one of the contributors to the blog is vegetarian. But there are meat dishes out there, and more in her links. Meat and potatoes as a staple aren’t healthy - nor is a lot of meat healthy. Meat and potatoes are side dishes in a healthy diet.
(Not a lot of dishes with mayo though, she hates mayo).
I have a killer turkey chili recipe. It made enough for dinner for five people and we still had a ton of leftovers. Total cost of the ingredients was about $9 or so, less if you use chicken broth instead of beer for liquid. I made it in the crockpot and total prep time was about 20 minutes. You could cut that down to 10 minutes by not pre-browning the ground turkey.
I’m not sure if that would qualify as a “meat ‘n’ potatoes” recipe but it’s pretty dang good.
There are lots of reasons for or contributors to obesity - eating too many nutritionally void, calorie-dense foods, not exercising enough, not sleeping enough, predisposition, etc. As Dangerosa noted, “nutrition and health are complex.” It’s hard to pinpoint one reason for obesity, especially when such a large portion of the population is obese.
Also, some interesting literature has come out (I think it’s been around for a while) suggesting that not all “sedentary” activities are created equal. link. According to the linked study, the relationship between sedentary behavior is even more complex than previously thought. For example, the study indicates that kids who were sedentary because they were reading were less likely to be obese than kids who were sedentary because they were watching television.
There was also a New York Times article a couple of weeks ago that discussed a study that indicated that exercise doesn’t necessarily help people lose weight because, due to the calorie burn, people tend to eat more after they exercise. But it does contribute to better cardiovascular, bone and overall health. I don’t know if that’s entirely accurate since muscle still burns more than fat, but it’s still an interesting idea and I’d like to hear more about it.
I don’t like cooking every night either. That’s why, for most dishes i make, i generally cook enough to make at least two full meals for my wife and me.
For example, last night i made a batch of lentil dahl and basmati rice. It fed us for dinner last night, and there is enough left over for at least another dinner for two, plus probably a lunch/snack sized portion as well. The ingredients probably cost less than $3 in total, and it’s a tasty, healthy meal. Add a steamed green vegetable on the side (broccoli is what we had), and you add maybe another dollar to the meal.
Also, while the rice and the lentils have to spend a bit of time on the stove, actual prep time is minimal, so it really doesn’t take up much of your busy day.
And both lack of exercise and lack of healthy diet are tied to lack of time - and what we choose to do with the discretionary time we have. If you work 60 hours a week, you probably don’t have a lot of time to do pilates 3x a week, or take up jogging, or cook spaghetti sauce from scratch. And even if you have time, face it, most of us would rather spend it in from of a TV or computer.
I can get healthy tomorrow - and eating that candy bar today gives me instant gratification, and I don’t see the effects of my poor choice - well, one candy bar - ever. And even a candy bar a day sneaks up on you - you don’t wake up one day obese. We’d be better off if empty calories had an immediate effect (like dumping for someone who has gone through gastric bypass)…
Exercise really has very little to do with it. And nutrition is only a contributory factor. The primary reason is because people eat too much.
You can increase your exercise regimen, and burn maybe 200 extra calories a day. Compared to the average American diet of way over 2000-3000 calories a day, that’s not very significant. But by eating sensible portions, one can fairly easily cut their calorie consumption to below 2000. Which is actually fine for most people, even if it’s 1800 calories of relatively unhealthy food.
Eating healthy gets even harder for someone like me. I have IBS, so lots of foods just aren’t in my diet (including beef, tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers, etc.), and I can’t eat things like rice or pasta without turning ravenous.
Healthy and cheap meat-and-potatoes meal? The easiest is probably slow cooker pot roast.
Buy a cheap cut of beef or pork, or use chicken breasts. Cut it into cubes and trim all the visible fat (you can use stew meat, but that’s more expensive since it’s pre-cubed). Throw it into a slow cooker with tons of chopped onion, some garlic if you like, and a very small amount of water or wine or beer, plus salt, pepper, and any spices you want. Rosemary is especially good. Cook until the meat is pretty tender. Add cubes of potato and/or turnip and slices of carrot, plus any other veggies you like it a pot roast. Cook until the veggies are tender. You might want to stagger the times for the various veggies, or hell just throw them in whenever. Some people like the flavors blended even if it results in mushy veggies (which are less beneficial) and some like more firmness in the veg. Your taste is your guide.
A bit off topic but I did a caloric intake study while in college of my eating habits. I’ve never been a part of the healthy eating crowd, just blessed with an amazing metabolism and busting my ass in the gym. I’d often spend 8-10 hours a day in the gym. Couple hours lifting weights, the rest doing various cardio related sporting events (volleyball and basketball).
Anyway, long story-short, my average intake in college was around 6700 calories (I wasn’t especially careful about where I got those calories from either)
I am still trim today but I am also still doing the various weights/cardio regimen. Granted not nearly as much but my intake has also drastically reduced as well.
From my own empirical data, muscle mass and exercise are probably the biggest contributors (or lack thereof) to obesity in America.
This is actually a subject I am very much interested in. Mainly due to the fact that most schools are doing away with everyday P.E. in favor of other subjects. Well that and the fact that I need to learn better cooking/feeding techniques to pass along to my kids.
friedo, it isn’t really the calories that you burn in the gym. Muscle burns fat at rest (even while sleeping)
This probably contributes to how hard it is to lose the weight once you have it stashed somewhere. But I agree, people over-eat. Portions have drastically gone up.
But what do I know, can you what-a-size your next post, please.