Skip to main content

Urban food myth #1: it costs more to eat healthy than to eat fast food

I get so tired of hearing this:

"It costs less to buy a burger from McDonald's that to eat healthy food from the supermarket."
"Low-income families just buy processed food, they don't cook their own food anymore."

That always sounded questionable.  Here is a study showing in great detail that fast food is much more expensive than healthy food bought at the supermarket.

Also, it turns out that the vast majority of meals eaten by low-income families are prepared at home:
Blisard N, Stewart H. How low-income households allocate their food budget relative to the cost of the Thrifty Food Plan. Economic research report, United States. Washington, DC: Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2006;20.

What is true is that buying healthy vs. unhealthy foods can cost $1.50/person/day more, at retail prices.  However, when health cost consequences are factored in, unhealthy foods cost twice as much.



Comments

  1. Thanks for rising such an important topic! People should understand that this myth isn't true. The dark side of junk foods is not an unknown fact. Even knowing that fact that it may even cause cancer, people keep eating it. I recommend you reading this post http://www.agsinger.com/fighting-cancer-by-controlling-angiogenesis-foods-to-avoid/ in order to find out which foods are worth to be excluded from your nutrition plan.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is it a “Miracle Drug”?...if it Costs a Fortune and Creates Lifelong Dependency...&...Saggy Faces!?

[It’s been a while since our last blog post.  A lot has happened since– including some “miracles” ! So we’re going to do two posts in a row…] Normally we should all be happy about miracle drugs... shouldn't we ? Yes, there is lots of upside from taking semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy), tirzepatide (Montjaro)--and upcoming new, even-more-miraculous drugs TBD:  losing huge amounts of weight quickly, a much lower risk of diabetes–and probably less heart disease and other chronic conditions as well.  But what if the “miracle” requires:   $200-300/week, with a lifetime cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars…  a drug that you can never quit…because if you stop taking it, you gain back all the weight it helped you lose–not to mention the chronic diseases which the drugs kept at bay… and it leaves your face (and the rest of your skin?) sagging …    (plus, it’s so new at such high dosages– who knows what happens after years of use…? ) No doubt, in spit...

Smoking out the pessimism on changing health habits: adult smoking is down 2/3 !!

Only 14% of US adults smoke now --compared to 42% just over 50 years ago. That's a 2/3 decline. Yet many of us think that we can't change Americans' unhealthy activity & nutrition habits. Why has smoking gone down so dramatically, while obesity & diabetes keep going up?  Well, we actually seriously tried, as a society & a political system, to reduce smoking.  We have not seriously tried to reverse obesity & diabetes. How did we reduce smoking so much?  Here is my grading of how poorly we are doing, at using strategies that worked against smoking--to fight inactivity & unhealthy nutrition: - Broad & profound awareness of seriousness of problem  (D) - Strong physical & health education programs in schools  (D) - Hard-hitting, pervasive public information campaigns  (F) - Very strong government health warnings  (D) - Large insurance premium discounts for healthy behavior  (D) - Cost-effective behavior cessati...

Both/And: Personal & School & Social Responsibility for Health

Many people are promoting a false dichotomy for who/what to “blame” for decades of pervasive inactivity & unhealthy nutrition--the key preventable factors which have led to the majority of adults developing chronic disease. Some believe that people with preventable chronic diseases made a series of unhealthy choices for decades, for which they need to accept personal responsibility for the consequences. On the other side, a growing number of policymakers focus on the “social determinants of health.”  In other words, there are many things beyond your control, which impact what you eat & drink and how active you are.  This includes factors such as your family, neighborhood, school, employer, transportation, public safety, housing, community layout, etc. etc.  It’s those external social factors which determine your health destiny.   Actually, the personal and social are inextricably connected--not opposite ends of the spectrum.  Let’s consider the role...