Why is Eating Healthy so Expensive?

Why is it so expensive to eat a healthy diet anywhere you go?  Sure, you can find some deals on healthy food in some niche places, or you can take time to cook bulk purchases at home and tote the remains around with you, but for fast, healthy, food, on the road, you’re going to pay a heavy price for that healthy eating.  We live in the days of the one dollar McDonald’s hamburger and the miniscule, $7, “tomato and avocado” sandwich at Pax.

I am not alone in my dismay.  A recent study found “eating healthy” was incredibly more expensive than not:

The study of more than 1,000 people, found that those who bumped up their potassium intake – a nutrient needed to keep blood pressure in check – tacked on 380 dollars to their annual food bill.

It also showed that those who ate foods high in added sugar and saturated fat had lower grocery tabs than the ones who relied more heavily on whole grains and other good-for-you items.

The bottom line is if you can’t afford it, you can’t eat it, the New York Daily News quoted Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, as saying.

He noted that low-income families often purchase cheap processed food over pricey greens to make ends meet.

We are slowly becoming a nation of massive guts — egged on by cheap sugar and dollar menu items soaked in saturated fat — and if you want to bump yourself out of that vicious cycle of eating without getting back any measurable nutrients, you’re going to have to mightily pay for that privilege.  You no longer have a navigable way out of the everyday morass because your mainstream choices are hamstrung by price and not by any notion of a health quotient.

If you want to break free from a rotting, chemical-infested, American Diet, it will dearly cost you in added time to hunt down the right food and you will price yourself out of your real life budget as you try to commoditize your healthy body against the long term viability of your bank account.