The Bay Area is a cradle of environmentalism and a region with a rich trove of health and medical research and resources. In this blog, we’ll report on the deepening understanding of how the places we inhabit and the lifestyles we adopt contribute to our own health and the health of our communities.
In addition to easing the load on your waistline, eating more fruits and vegetables may also lighten your wallet by several hundreds of dollars, according to a study published last week in the policy journal Health Affairs.
Federal dietary guidelines received a makeover in January, and now encourage consumers to eat more foods high in vitamin D, calcium, potassium and dietary fiber.
But nutrient-dense foods like fresh fruits and vegetables can be costly. Simply increasing consumption of potassium — the most expensive of the four recommended nutrients — would tack on an additional $380 to the average consumer’s annual food costs, the study found.
Its findings have caused controversy, garnering headlines such as “Healthy Eating is Privilege of the Rich” in the USA Today and "Nutritious Food Costs Thousands a Year, But Fat's a Bargain" on the website Colorlines.com.
The study's lead researcher, Pablo Monsivais, however, believes that the findings merely demonstrate that programs to promote good nutrition should take into account the financial realities of the people they target.
“We need an economic reality check on the guidelines,” said Monsivais, an assistant professor at the University of Washington. “We need to take the best dietary guidelines that we can get, issued every five years based on science, and merge that together with the economic reality that we all live in.”
Monsivais criticized some marketing materials for starring healthy-but-expensive foods such as salmon and blueberries. To meet the new guidelines, he recommends cheap staples such as potatoes and bananas for potassium and dried beans and lentils for dietary fiber.
Interestingly, the study's subjects were relatively well-off. Monsivais and his colleagues analyzed the dietary habits of about 2,000 adults in King County, Wash., where the high-income, well-educated population is 88 percent white.
© The Bay Citizen, 2012
Frank Snapp
"Eating healthy costs more." This is a meat/dairy industry/business consortium propaganda meme that the useless modern U.S. English language broadcast media is always parroting. It's not actually true, of course. Healthy eating means buying foodstuffs that are in their most simple condition, without packaging, and most of this can be bought bulk at great discount. We're talking beans, seeds and nuts. We don't need a whole lot of the more expensive seeds and nuts. Humans aren't actually made for eating grains, except non-inflammatory ones, such as Quinoa, which comes from a cheap and easy to grow weed related to lamb's quarters, which leaves are very nutritious and tasty--not bitter like nasturtium or dandelion. If you don't like paying high prices for veggies and fruits, guess what, we live in a frost-free climate and there's plenty of unused space for communities to take over, with or without approval, to grow foodstuffs--If you're concerned about lead, Roundup, pesticides and radiation, you shouldn't be buying packaged foods or agricultural products anyway. Horticulture and permaculture are the way to go. Is outdoor space even necessary? Nope. You can raise all you and your family need, if organized enough, simply by raising sprouts of various seeds on shelves in your house. This doesn't even require natural light. There is nothing forcing people to purchase 7-11 or other junk foods, except (and this is real and not easily overcome) the stress of poverty, depression, perpetual marketing brainwashing, dumbing down (also perpetual) in all our media, and institutions in the U.S. Mostly, we all can do better; but the region of the brain that governs food choices is, in humans, the same region that governs "beliefs" including religious beliefs. This is not the same part of the brain that governs spirituality, or rational thought. It's NOT a rational part of the brain. There are many of us who know the right things to eat, in what proportions, the value of exercise, yoga, etc., but still eat crap most of the time. This is in large part because for many or most of us, food choices are not rational. The healthiest consistent food choices are made inside a community context. Good luck with that in the sociologically low-context status quos--not getting any better in the (very divided and conquered, community wise, very selfish values in this materialistic culture) United States.
MotherLodeBeth
My food bill dropped drastically when we started eating more like we did in France which is smaller servings, and mostly fruits, vegetables in season, and fish a few times per week, but mostly vegetarian fare. Knowing how to make healthy delicious meals with the dozens of types of beans available doesn't cost much at all.
And stopping drinking sweetened drinks kicked my body into gear and into a healthier state. Bear in mind I am very fortunate to be able to wild food forage as well as grow a vegetable garden. Yet when I do buy food its things like bulk items such as Quinoa, CA organic grown Lundberg rice's. Its mainly eating less but whole foods that is key for me.