Posted on 07/05/2007 6:00:55 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For students living on ramen noodles or people in low-wage, time-consuming jobs, folks who are down on their luck or living on fixed incomes, healthy eating may seem too expensive.
Nutritionists say, however, that's a false perception. Healthy eating, in fact, is cheaper. The cost of expensive eating often isn't the food, it's the bells and whistles of trendy packaging.
"You pay for convenience," says Amy Moore, a dietitian at St. Louis University. "What it takes is planning and sometimes a little investment."
That means eating more fresh food from low-cost stores and farmers markets, watching store sales and using store coupons. The nutrition gurus, from the United States Department of Agriculture to the American Dietetic Association, say healthy diets should be built around vegetables, grains and fruits, not meat and prepared foods — the biggest expense on grocery bills.
Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Cape Girardeau, lived on $3 a day (to prove a point about food stamps) for a week and ended up eating mostly salads and lentil soup. She repeated that planning was the key.
"I learned how to shop. It gives you great insight on what it is to live on a fixed budget for your food," she said. "Most people who get food stamps are working poor."
She spent 2 1/2 hours planning and shopping at one store for the food for a week, which included reading grocery store ads for bargains.
"As one who doesn't eat a lot of carbs, I found it difficult to live on $3 a day," she said. "You can buy fresh fruits and vegetables, but you have to know how to cook."
PUBLIC ASSISTANCE
Dorian Jones, dietitian and counselor for People's Health Centers, says low-income families must learn to use money wisely.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
My dad grew up poor in the Midwest. Dandelion sandwiches were a fairly common snack/lunch.
you betcha
I wish I woulda known this neat way of preparing garlic when I was younger: take a really wide, flat blade, the bigger the better. A wooden cutting board works best. Skin the garlic and remove the innards and chop coarsly, then cover loosly in pickling or table salt.
Then, drawing the _flat_ portion of the blade over the mix hard, you kinda chop but more smash the mixture into a thick paste, it’s done then. The salt keeps all the juices, and the garlic is strongest when made this way, a little bit goes a long way.
**Freeper Kitchen Ping**
What about a good vegetable soup, a meatless lasagna, chili, beef stew? You don’t even need the time if you put these inexpensive dishes in a slow cooker, and your meal will be ready when you get home from work. Turn off the TV the night before, prepare the dish, put it in the frig, and plug it in before you leave for work. Fast food, homemade style, and much healthier and cheaper than McDonald’s or Pizza Hut.
And pasta sauces.
Oatmeal, mmmmmm! I used to put wheat germ all over it. Then I got some kind of affliction that made it hard to swallow even oatmeal, and I got hooked on wheat germ and cream.
Here in the middle of nowhere, central PA, good vegetables are not cheap. In Jersey they were often free, when I was young; people grew too much and gave away bags of free produce! Now, here in PA, I look at relatively feeble tomatoes and see they are two or three dollars a pound!
“...healthy diets should be built around vegetables, grains and fruits, not meat and prepared foods...”
A couple of problems with this advise - contrary to what dieticians (a lot of old paradygm in what they advocate) and the USDA say, grains should be minimised in our diets. Grains are bad for several reasons - phytates and polyunsaturated fats. Refined grains (bread, pasta, etc) are the worst kind, although sprouted grain breads are healthy in moderation. Fresh vegetables and fresh fruits are good. Eggs should be included in all diets. Eggs are the lowest cost source of protein, and eggs are the standard by which all protein foods are measured - a near perfect protein food (forget the cholesterol myth - eggs are not a problem). Raw or minimal cooking is best for most of these foods, including eggs.
Red meat (beef, venison, buffalo, beefalo) can be healthy, but the “poorer” cuts are healthiest. Have these ground, or grind them yourself, and add organ meats to the grind for a super health treat. Rare is healthy.
Cut out the sugar and sugar sources. Use honey for sweetener, or maple syrup, or stevia. Fructose (not high fructose corn syrup) is ok in moderation - low glycemic and nearly twice as sweet as sugar. Minimise white potatoes (white flesh) and eat with the skin. Fried is good, but it must be fried in coconut oil.
Polyunsaturated oils are bad (corn, soybean, canola, peanut etc). Olive oil is “neutral”, but do not heat it - use it for your salads. Coconut oil, a saturated, medium chain fatty acid (mostly lauric acid) is the only oil that should ever be used for cooking or frying. We get a naturally refined coconut oil that does not smell or taste like coconut, and it is reasonably priced.
Trans fats come from polyunsaturated fats. I think that although trans fats are not good for us, they are no worse than any of the polyunsaturated fats - it is all bad.
So, back to eating well for less - fresh fruits and vegetables are easy to find at reasonable prices in season. And if you can find a market that specializes in these items in a bulk food, market type atmosphere, you can probably get good stuff for less year round. Again, eggs are a cheap source of the best protein out there - eat as many as you want, but eat at least four eggs a day. And go for the lower cost cuts of beef. Chicken is ok, but you need chicken that has never seen hormones or antibiotics. Stay away from store-bought milk. Pastuerization and homogenization make milk deadly. If you know a dairy farmer...well, get it straight from the cow.
Well, guess I got a bit long-winded with my comments, but you get the gist. We eat well, and we do it for less - routinely. We do not buy prepared foods. We do not buy dry breakfast cereals. If we occasionally have oatmeal, the oats get soaked over night or longer so that they have a chance to begin fermenting - much healthier, and the oatmeal tastes better. We eat eggs, good, fresh, free-range Amish eggs, and they cost less than the supermarket eggs. We use real butter, real milk, lots of leafy green stuff, and we like and eat fresh fruit. We get beef, occasional chicken, occasional fish (wild caught only, not farm raised). Last but not least, we drink lots of water. Not city water, however, with its chlorine and fluorine. We know where to get good, fresh spring water, and it is free, right from the spring.
Well, add some unsalted peanuts and brown sugar.
Makes a great breakfast...
I’ll take some veggies and fruit. Cows exist on this planet for a reason. To become steak.
As for grains, they aren’t food. They are weeds at best. Everybody has been conned into eating them b/c they are cheap to grow. You have to pulverize them, add butter, oil, salt, sugar, etc. etc. to make them taste better than straw. A large percentage of the population then gets sick off of them.
“As for grains, they aren’t food.”
Right on, bluefish!
I agree with what you say about many on welfare. I once saw a woman use a ‘food stamp’ card and the checker said it wasn’t good.
Below counter level, the woman pulled out ANOTHER card and said ‘try it again’. She did this 3 times before one card worked and paid for all her chips, cookies and junk food!
Then they eat out at the fast food places all the time!
BTTT
I want to hear more
.
That means at least 2 IDs
That buys more expensive stuff and more junk food
Time is a problem, but quick healthy food is doable. I found that fresh veggies microwaved and then seasoned with a butter substitute & lemon pepper is great, even for a snack. Gorton’s has a line of grilled fish are good. In our local supermarket we can get 10 microwaveable entrees with low fat for $10. You can even do dessert. Klondike has low fat ice cream sandwiches that take great!
She had at least 3 cards! The cashier was ‘going along’ with her on pretending to ‘try’ the same one over and over.
What I don’t know is if each person in a household is issued a card - mother, father and ? children? Otherwise it looked illegal to me.
Two words: Bulk, Costco.
Crock pots are cheap and essential and a person can make a very nice meal with them with relative ease. I agree with you.
Using food stamp debit cards that were sold for cash @ $.60 on the dollar. Lots of this happening.
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