If you resolved to eat healthier in 2014, I have good news for you. Instead of fearing you'll have to increase your food budget until you're throwing your whole paycheck at it -- a joke often tossed around when talking about grocery store chain, Whole Foods -- it turns out that the difference between a healthy diet and an unhealthy one can be as little as $1.50 a day. How you approach your food, prepare it, and consume it can make your meals and snacks healthier without breaking the bank!
A lot of people have a love-hate relationship with food. Recently, NPR's The Salt took a look at the results of a meta-analysis that took a look at 27 studies from 10 different developed countries and the cost of healthy and unhealthy food in those places. And it turns out that the retail price difference isn't as vast as some would expect. Add into the raw numbers on ingredients the fact that how you prepare and consume your food can have huge impact in how healthy your diet is, and eating healthy just became approachable from a financial standpoint!
We'll not get into the ins and outs of healthy eating this time around, but the results of this study spell good news for those looking to eat healthier and keep their costs low. It also gives us all extra incentive to give unhealthy diets a makeover. The costs associated with poor eating include stomach problems, weight issues, lack of energy and inconsistent energy, and more. If eating healthy isn't terribly expensive and we can feel better doing it, maybe it's time to set aside that bag of chips and reach for more whole fruits!
Now, while this meta-analysis only looked at the relative costs associated with procuring both healthy and unhealthy food, we all know there are more things in play when we go to the grocery store and get the food we'll be eating. How well a food stores, how easily it can be prepared, and general appeal all come into play as we wander the aisles of the grocery store. So next time, we'll spend a little time looking into those things and more and talk about some easy tweaks that can be made to a typical diet to help make your New Year healthier and, hopefully, happier!