Isn’t It Expensive to Eat Healthfully?
Researchers at Harvard
University compared the cost and healthfulness of various foods across the
country, hunting for the best bargains. They found that in terms of nutritional
bang for your buck, people should
buy more nuts, soy foods, beans, and whole grains, and less meat and dairy. They concluded: “The purchase of plant-based foods may offer the best investment for dietary health.”
buy more nuts, soy foods, beans, and whole grains, and less meat and dairy. They concluded: “The purchase of plant-based foods may offer the best investment for dietary health.”
Less healthy foods only beat out healthier foods on a cost-per-calorie basis, which is a way we measured food cost back in the nineteenth century. Back then, the emphasis was on cheap calories, no matter how you got them. So while beans and sugar both cost the same at that time (five cents a pound), the U.S.
Department of Agriculture
promoted sugar as more cost effective for pure “fuel value.”
The USDA can be excused for
discounting the nutritional difference between beans and pure sugar. After all,
vitamins hadn’t even been discovered yet.
Nowadays, we know better and
can compare the cost of foods based on their nutritional content. An average
serving of vegetables may cost roughly four times more than the average serving
of junk food, but those veggies have been calculated to average twenty-four
times more nutrition. So on a cost-pernutrition basis, vegetables offer six
times more nutrition per dollar compared to highly processed foods.
Meat costs about three times more than vegetables yet yields sixteen times less nutrition based on an aggregate of nutrients. Because meat is less nutritious and costs more, vegetables net you forty-eight times more nutrition per dollar than meat. If your intent is to shovel as many calories as possible into your mouth for the least amount of money, then healthier foods lose out, but if you want to shovel the most nutrition into your mouth as cheaply as possible, look no further than the produce aisle. Spending just fifty cents more per day on fruits and vegetables may buy you a 10 percent drop in mortality.
Now that’s a bargain! Imagine if there were a pill that could
reduce your chance of dying by 10 percent over the next decade and only had
good side effects. How much do you think the drug company would charge?
Probably more than fifty
DR. APPIAH
Dr. Appiah is a Natural Health Therapist (Naturopath) who engages the natural healing agents given by God to save lives. EAT FOOD AS MEDICINE! EAT TO LIVE, DON'T LIVE TO EAT!! FOR BOOKINGS AND MORE: WANT TO ADVERTISE YOUR PRODUCTS? WANT A PERSONAL(CERTIFIED) NATURAL MEDICINE PRACTITIONER? REACH ME DIRECTLY ON WHATSAPP +233245643615 appiahinok@gmail.com
