I overhead a trainer in the gym this morning tell a new trainee that eating healthy is more expensive than eating junk, and i disagreed.
Anyone have any opinions?
I feel that when you take into consideration long term health, and quality of food that goes into your system it is cheaper.
Add up all the spendings in a typical day someone that didn't cook all of their families meals would spend:
Coffee at FiveBucks in the morning, lunch out somewhere, snack at a drive thru or convenience store, sodas instead of water, meals for an entire family.
I think that we've been mislead into thinking that eating healthy means spending more, so why would someone in a tough spot financially spend more? Might as well just keep eating the junk....blah!
At first glance it definitely seems more expensive. Fresh fruits and veggies are pricey - lean ground beef is more expensive than the high fat, etc. Frozen meals marketed as healthy are more expensive.
If you are considering the monetary value of time, preparing your own meals is more costly than convenience meals. So saving money at a grocery store buying ingredients rather than mostly prepared meals will probably not net you savings, if you could have spent the time cooking doing work that pays money.
If you dig around, there are many convenience foods that are healthy but not marketed as such. Canned foods are cheaper than fresh, etc. I simply don't have time to invest in cooking meals every day, so I gravitate toward these things to save a little money and eat healthily at the same time. However, not everyone will do this because they're either too damn picky (ewww - canned veggies? Pansies. ) or don't have the intellect or patience to do the research to find these bargains and check labels on everything that goes into their mouths.
So, yes, in a nutshell, eating healthy IS more expensive to the average consumer.
Eating healthy is more expensive. I have numbers to prove it. I am a financial nerd, and we track every stinking penny spent on groceries. Over the last year, we've been spending about $50 per month more because we're looking for better foods, not the cheapest ones. For example, 93/7 ground beef is quite a bit more expensive than 70/30 beef. Egg beaters are more expensive than a carton of eggs... etc, etc, etc. As for eating out - you can do that quite a bit even if you're a healthy eater, and I stop on a regular basis for a decaf coffee or a Sobe somewhere, so I think that's mostly a wash and a matter of personal preference.
However, eating healthy for an entire lifetime is probably less expensive than the bill you'll get for one angioplasty procedure. (This is also how I justify spending $100+ every 6 weeks on new running shoes!) So, as a lifestyle, its cheaper than eating from the dollar menu and waiting for The Big One.
So, I think it all depends on how you look at it. I think spending an extra $50 a month is well worth the benefits to me and my family. More expensive in the short term, but overall, it will save tons of money and add years to our lives.
Agreed. Eating healthy is more expensive, but doable for almost everyone. And the almost is just to cover people who are very very poor. It's a matter of priorities. And I definitely think you should look at it over the course of your life as Brian did. For example, my father-in-law hasn't been very healthy for most of his life and he just had to have stints put in the arteries around his heart. He's 47. I plan on keeping my hubby super healthy even if it is more expensive so that he doesn't have the same issues.
I think eating healthy is definitely more expensive. If I wanted to, I could feed myself on under $25 (approx £17.50) a week. However, I would be getting a high fat, low protein, high salt diet and it probably wouldn't be very good for me. Everything would be full of preservatives and crazy kinds of yuck.
As it happens, I tend to eat a mainly vegetarian diet anyway, so I get away with perhaps $40 (£25) a week. Fresh fruit and veg is expensive, as are chicken, fish and lean cuts of meat.
Eating healthy is definitely more expensive. This study from 2005 shows it costs $1000 a year more to eat healthy. http://news.ucanr.org/newsstorymain.cfm?story=650
The biggest problem is what our own government is telling us. The government puts out tax statistics that show what a person should spend on groceries per month (it varies per city). It's mind boggling low, about $200-$250 per month (Los Angeles). The only way you could only spend that much for groceries is if you are filling up on cheap, empty calories (hamburger helper, etc). A healthy diet of freshly prepared proteins and fresh fruit & vegetables is at least double your cost.
Just to clarify, if your food budget was only $200 per month you'd only be able to spend $6.66 per day on food. That's how the government thinks you should eat.
OK, so yes and no. Yes in the short term, no in the long term.
I know that myself personally i was spending more eating like crap. Soda alone is really expensive, those damn 32 oz. energy drinks, frequent snacking etc.
We planted our garden this weekend, so soon we'll have a bunch of veggies, my wife is really excited, she had a garden at her dad's place that they kept going year round, and last year we started clearing the side of our house for it, so this year we can finally finish it up. Let me tell you how much easier lawn work is now!! Had a great weekend workout getting everything prepped.
And who knows, maybe save some green...
I'm really curious about this claim that eating healthy is more expensive. I live in Israel, so obviously my experiences are different (produce is cheaper here, low fat dressing and milk cost the same as regular), but when I switched my food to rely mostly on produce I ended up saving money.
My exchanges went something like this: fruit (one apple\one orange) instead of processed snacks (like chocolate bars), making my own salad dressing out of the basic olive oil and lemon rather than buying. Whole rice and potatoes instead of pasta and chips. Quickoats instead of any kind of cereal. Lentils, beans and fish instead of ready made meats. Fresh and frozen veggies instead of ready made soups.Tap water and herbal tea instead of any drink from a bottle. Home made sauces instead of bought ones.
The only things that were more expensive were the change to whole grain bread, seeds, nuts and edamame instead of salty snacks and possibly the fact that I but more veggies (as an addition).
If I had done this in the states, would I have ended up spending more money? Here I ended up saving the equivalent of 12 dollars per week on groceries (and that doesn't include mystery spending which has been cut since I now bring snacks and drink from home).
Oh, and planning my meals and snacks weekly and shopping only according to that is definitely a big saver.
Maybe I just live in a strange place, but healthy food is nowhere near as expensive as processed crap here.
Around here fresh fruits and veggies are pretty cheap--a week's worth of bananas is about two bucks, a carton of baby portobello mushrooms is about two and a half, avocados are either a buck or two for a buck depending on whether you get the little or big ones, a broccoli crown costs about a buck and will last me two or three days unless I just whack all the florets off it and munch on them right there. Even berries aren't too pricey--a pound of strawberries for about $2.50. Cherries are kind of ridiculous, though.
Eggs aren't too expensive--I get the hand-gathered cage free ones, and the price difference between those and regular eggs is negligible--but chicken is crazy expensive for some reason. Most of the time a tuna steak is cheaper than a package of chicken... which leads to me eating a lot of fish and not much chicken these days. I hardly ever cook beef at home, so I haven't really paid attention to the price on it lately; a package of three or four perfectly sized wee thin boneless pork chops goes for about $3 or $4 most days but I'm not a huge fan of pork chops in any form other than tonkatsu-fried, and... well, that is not something I need to eat on a regular basis and besides, it's a pain in the butt to cook.
I usually do my grocery shopping a day or two at a time, on account of my main mode of transportation being a bicycle. I used to drop $10 for a day or two worth of prepackaged processed canned stuff and frozen dinners and Hamburger Helper and such. That same $10 will get me a week's worth of eggs and three or four days' worth of produce, and maybe a package of tortillas.
Yeah i wasn't too convinced that eating healthier is more expensive. I snack less, so i go out to eat less, hit convenience stores less etc. I guess it really depends on how badly you ate before too, i was dropping at least $10 a day on soda alone, not to mention all the other crap i used to eat.
This shows that for the nutrient density, you pay much more for healthy foods. It stands to reason, if I were only eating broccoli, I'd need to eat a lot to get a proper calorie content for the day (if not nutrition)
Where as I'd have to eat wayyy fewer fries, or oreos, or other things.
I don't really think so, it depends on where you live and how much you are willing to shop around.
I'm lucky enough to live near a farmers market so the fruit and veg is not only cheap it is also organic.
Before that I would buy frozen fruit and veg. It isn't ideal but it is far better than buying frozen nuggets or fries.
Like you mentioned in your last add to this post, the money you spend on crap when your eating unhealthy is ridiculous. When I total how much went on Chinese take aways compared to making my own healthy stir fries at home I cringe because it was just ridiculous.
I'm growing my own fruit and veg now for the first time! Hopefully that will go well enough for me to cut the costs.
Amie, I looked at the article and I have 3 comments based on the article (again, I don't live in the US):
1- the point is to look at food that are equivalent but healthier, which they don't do: french fries should be compared to a baked potato or whole rice (i.e. healthy calorie dense foods). Vegetables should be compared to instant soups, parts of frozen dinners, sauces and dressings.
2- it still seems like making from scratch is your cheapest option (wheat). I imagine whole wheat is more expensive then white, but still less than 50 cents (am I wrong?). And canola oil is cheaper and healthier than butter.
3- Our hunger mechanisms tend to judge quantity rather than quality. Meaning our spending on an unhealthy diet is based on quantity. So unless you have very very little money to buy food and therefore a- have to accept the constant feeling of hunger and b- have to spend what little you have on calorie dense food in order to avoid starvation (like in Africa) comparing calories isn't as relevant as comparing quantity (serving for serving). And even then; wheat flour (yes, even white)made into a simple bread is both healthier and cheaper than fries. The article points out that you can get your caloric needs for about 2$ a day. How many of us, when on unhealthy diets spend anywhere near that little?
If you WERE a person who ate out all of the time and rarely cooked meals, and started grocery shopping it would seem that eating healthy is CHEAPER then eating out all of the time.
If you WERE a person who always grocery shopped (just bought the crappy not good for you stuff) and moved to purchasing healthy food, then it would seem that eating healthy is more EXPENSIVE then eating the grocery store crappy stuff.
) or don't have the intellect or patience to do the research to find these bargains and check labels on everything that goes into their mouths. 
for the first time! Hopefully that will go well enough for me to cut the costs.
