The Cost of Eating Healthy
The ever-changing food-fad-phenomenon and how it affects you.
Bryan Bissonette
In a world being increasingly overrun by quick calories and “portion distortion,” a revolutionary movement gains a healthy following by providing real food to a market filled with anything but.
Natural, whole, organic. Whatever you want to call it. No one would argue that processed, bioengineered products of food science are healthier than real, grown-in-the-ground food. But an ever growing portion of our society is “defaulted into fast food.” Limited, by anything but a desire to eat healthy, most families have no choice. It’s the difference between feeding a family of five in 5 minutes with $5, and taking the time to prepare a healthy, nutritious, wholesome meal – despite the fact that it costs just about the same. The cost to our health, on the other hand, is hugely one sided.
Blame it on a lack of effort, or a lack of knowledge, but “convenience costs money.” You might save money by eating all your meals at McDonalds, but further down the road, untold health problems could rob you of every dime you might save.
Jean Bigauoette, Registered Dietician, argues that people will go to Price Chopper, Wal-Mart, and Hannaford for the convenience and the apparent benefit to their budget. Referring to the healthy shopping options in Albany, she says, “There’s only one Dean’s Natural Foods, one Paradise Foods, but there are dozens of other choices people have to lead them away.”
Honest Weight Food Co-Op offers bulk dry goods at reduced prices, discount items, membership discounts, work programs, and countless other choices that can all add up to some major savings on your grocery budget.
Dean King, of Dean’s Natural Foods, explains that it’s the difference between buying regular unleaded and super plus. “Most ‘natural’ products are garbage; labeled as such because that is what the consumer wants to see.”
What stores like Dean’s and Honest Weight Food Co-Op try to do is not only provide the community with healthier options, but educate the masses in the benefits of eating real, grown-in-the-ground food, and living a more health-conscious lifestyle.
Shoppers will not only get a cornucopia of healthy, natural foods to choose from at these local establishments but a “wealth of personal expertise and knowledge” aimed at helping and informing fellow shoppers. For most of us, the student/working class, our food choices are up to us. Whether you live on campus uptown or on 2nd Avenue, we are all able to make healthy choices within our limited budgets. A little effort can go a long way in the search for healthy nutritional choices, and will bring you closer to a community bent on introversion.
Shopping at your local Wal-Mart is not helping your local economy.
Corporate owned, large scale farming produces produce loaded with preservatives, hormones, and god knows what else. If we eat locally, consuming products grown strictly in their “natural state” we will not only feel physically healthier, but we will feel better about ourselves by helping our neighbors with whom we are all in the same boat.