Eating Cheap vs. Eating Healthy
31st May 2008
At my house, we are by no means super-health food addicts. We don’t have the most wonderful diet, and I think once I have more disposable income (i.e., I’m not paying 95% of my income to pay down my mortgage by making 5 times the monthly payment), I will probably try to purchase more healthy food. There are a few places where I draw the line:
1. DH will not eat a lot of oil or egg yolks. It doesn’t matter what studies I show him (that egg yolks are or are not bad for you), he won’t eat them. We have a lot of egg-white omelets.
2. We don’t buy desserts. There is something more natural about eating homemade chocolate chip cookies vs. storebought cookies. I know chocolate chip cookies aren’t good for me (healthy), but if I load them up with good stuff (like ranger cookies - oatmeal and nuts), they’re a little better. And they probably outpace crappy granola bars from the store. Plus, I know there’s not preservatives in my cookies.
3. We eat a lot of beans. Beans are a perfect food. Luckily, DH’s family eats a ton of beans, so it’s very popular in our house to supplement main dishes with kidney beans.
4. We eat a lot of fruit. Fruit is actually cheaper than fruit treats, plus it’s way more satisfying. Fruit can be bought for cheap per serving, so don’t think it is more expensive to eat healthfully.
Those are the basics, in my mind.
What’s your take on healthy eating vs. cheap eating? Do you trust restaurant food to be healthy? Do you think fruit is expensive?
June 1st, 2008 at 3:40 am
I definitely do not trust restaurant food to be healthy, but some restaurants do have healthy choices. Our problem with restaurant food is that we tend to only eat things at restaurants that we can’t make as well at home and don’t really focus on eating the healthiest options.
In regards to fruit, I tend to think it falls into the same category of almost all perishables at the grocery store. As you watch/monitor the prices you will pick up on the trends of sales that allow you to purchase them cheaper.
A couple of general rules come to mind; when fruit first comes in season and when the season is ending, the sales are normally abundant and you can do well. Fruits and vegetables that are grown locally or in the same state can sometimes carry a lower price as long as the grower is large enough to keep logistics costs down. It may seem weird, but Dole strawberries from California normally run cheaper than strawberries grown in our state, (TN).
June 1st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
I’d like to be “long-term cheap” all things considered.
IMHO, many restaurants, if anything, only offer the appearance of healthy choices, and the best you can do is minimize the damage. Splitting oversize meals among two people, for example.
Fruits and veggies are a bargain at almost any price. If we came with a (somewhat magical) food-impact cost calculator the way some cars do real-time MPG, the results could be an eye-opener.
June 1st, 2008 at 8:52 pm
You can be frugal and still eat healthy. Just a matter of making the food tasty enough to eat.
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:48 am
Aren’t beans extremely easy to grow? Of course, if you eat TONS of beans, you’ll need a slightly larger garden. . .
I have found restaurant food to be not only generally crappy, but a waste of time. We go out to restaurants to socialize, I’ve found. In Portland it’s definitely not worth it to go out to eat since most of the food is the same: burgers, fries in American restaurants, fetuccini noodles and spaghetti with some kind of sauce in Italian places, and $7 subs. . . All of these use the bare minimum of ingredients to pass as “food”. We don’t know much about cooking, but it’s a social event at our house to cook a meal. i’m looking forward to the time when my daughter can cook with us.
June 2nd, 2008 at 4:54 am
also. . . forgot to mention:
Price vs. COST. . . first of all, I’ve found eating healthy to be (organic or not) much MUCH cheaper than eating unhealthy. The fact that you get more nutritional bang for your buck, paired with actually savoring your food and controlling portion sizes actually seems to fool your body into needing less *bulk* of food.
e.g., I’d need a lot more animal crackers to provide the same nutrition that a homemade oatmeal-raisin cookie could provide.
also, the *cost* of eating unhealthy is most clearly demonstrated in the movie “Fast-Food Nation”. Your health is worth a lot of money.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:35 am
We don’t eat out very much really. My oldest son is allergic to milk, eggs, and peanuts so there are very few places that can accommodate that type of diet.
We attempt to buy fresh fruits and vegetables whenever possible. However, we have recently noticed a spike in the price of several fruits in the past few months where we live. I think it is a result of higher gas prices. I can’t find a watermelon for under $6.99 this year when normally they would run around $4 - $5 in our area.
June 2nd, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I think that while it is possible to find healthy food at a restaurant it is just very difficult. It can be expensive in the short term to have healthy food at home because of the initial investment but it gets easier as you go along.