Cheap food is for rich people. Bear with me here and I will explain.
Two of the largest costs to a household is food and healthcare. What most people do not seem to realize is that these are heavily relative to each other. When you eat poorly, you can do potentially irreversible damage to your body over time. What happens when you have poor health? You have high healthcare costs.
If you live in a country with high healthcare costs, the minor savings you have from eating cheap is easily outweighed by the increase in medical expenses over your lifetime. Even if you have affordable healthcare, do you really want to live your life feeling awful because you want to eat cheap?
You Are What You Eat
Food is a category where you can easily become penny wise, pound foolish. Don’t get me wrong, if you go out to restaurants and order fast food multiple times a week, then those expenses can and should be kept to a minimum. What I am talking about here is choosing to cook low nutrition meals for you and your family rather than spend a little more money on healthier options.
Consider for a moment that your body is a car. Would you rather be driving the old beater that manages to run on anything you put in it, or the foreign sports car that can only function on the most premium fuel? Your body does its best to function at maximum efficiency, but it can only take you so far.
Poor Fuel, Poor Results
If you are paying attention, it is easy to see we are living in a food pandemic. There has been an explosion in popularity in cheap, easy, and fast food. When broken down, this is all nothing but calorie dense, nutrient barren foods.
The way our brains process these foods is nothing short of addiction. Our bodies have two phases of digestion; one when you are eating and digesting, the other when you are no longer digesting. During this second phase, our bodies work to detoxify which can make us feel awful if there is a significant amount of waste to remove due to poor diet. The easiest way to stop this pain is to continue eating. Sounds like addiction to me.
It should come as no surprise that consuming too many calories is a health risk, but to compound on top of that by eating foods lacking nutrients you actually become more hungry than you were in the first place! Statistics have shown that the average diet in America is actually leading to significant increases in premature aging, early age stroke (under 45!), heart disease, and diabetes.
Another factor in all this is the way the food is cooked. I have had conversations with people that do not realize oil is considered a processed food. When consumed, oil is rapidly introduced to the blood stream leading to a spike in calories that leave you unsatisfied. Based on this, it should come as no surprise that vegetable oils promote obesity. Where I live, it is basically a requirement to fry all your food and unfortunately that is likely the reason the south is so overwhelmed with obesity.
Premium Fuel, Premium Results
Despite being surrounded by poor choices in food and little direction, there is hope. By taking a few targeted steps we can begin to improve our diets and subsequently our physical, mental, and financial condition.
The biggest issue for me personally is avoiding fried food. It is a tradition deeply engrained in my family, so learning to go without is a challenge. Fortunately there are many alternatives; rather than fry food, you can steam, grill, roast, bake, braise, or stew. Just by avoiding the oil you can easily remove several hundred calories from a single meal.
Another step to try and take is reducing animal protein intake. I am not saying to go off the deep and commit yourself to veganism, unless that is something you are interested in, but our bodies were not optimized to consume nearly as much meat and animal products that has been normalized today. Eating less meat and more plants has been linked to a longer life with less risk of heart disease. Go figure that the US has the most meat eaten per capita in the world!
Take a hint from one of the cultures that treat meat as an ingredient, not a centerpiece, and find some new recipes for your family. Seven of the top ten countries who consume the least amount of meat are in Africa. Also, Bangladesh and India consume less than about five kilograms of meat per capita, whereas the US consumes 24 times as much! Take one or two days a week and designate them as “meat free” with recipes from these areas. Who knows, maybe you will prefer them over your typical diet?
Likely the most controversial way to reduce food and healthcare costs is by entirely abstaining: fasting. Remember what I wrote earlier about the two phases of digestion? If you are constantly eating then your body never has time to detoxify and rejuvenate. By extending the period in which your body is in the second phase, you extend the time your body is allowed to do some housekeeping. Not only do you reduce your risk for numerous diseases, you save money by just not eating as much.
Treat Yourself Right and Save Money
I hope some of the information in this piece was able to give you some ideas on improving your daily life. I actually made some changes myself after doing the research to compile this together. Let me know below what your thoughts are or if I missed anything. Together we can slowly shift the general public’s attitude toward food and bring a happier, healthier, and richer future to everyone.
