The Cost of Eating Well

**Warning: This is an extremely long post with no pictures or yummy recipes involved. It is a post about an issue that I'm trying to work through as a middle class working parent who is trying to provide healthy, home-cooked meals to my family.

This morning on a Louisville radio station, the DJs were talking about nutrition in America, and more specifically, nutrition in the poorer areas of the country. I found myself listening with interest about how they thought that the neighborhoods that they grew up in had more fast food restaurants than wealthier neighborhoods. I agreed silently. They talked about how many kids are growing up eating only McD's and as adults just don't have the palate for other foods. I agreed. But then they mentioned that the only reason the rich eat healthier foods is because they shop at Whole Foods and can afford the fancy organic food. I heartily disagreed.

From what I see, eating healthy in America can be a wealth issue, but I see it as a time issue as well. Yes, certain foods are very expensive. Yes, organic food can be costly. But healthy food does not have to take a huge chunk out of your wallet. Those frozen/boxed/canned premade meals might be convenient, but often aren't as inexpensive as people think they are. And they definitely aren't healthier. Fresh vegetables, especially the basic staples, can be very inexpensive. Buying meat in bulk when it's on sale can be cheap. I even heard recently that milk can be frozen, so you can buy that in bulk when it's on sale. And although I'm a fan of organic food, healthy food doesn't have to be organic.

I admit that I am lucky to have resources to spend on food, but I could actually cut back on my grocery spending and still eat healthy. I rarely venture into the middle aisles of the grocery store these days (only for baking supplies, pasta, tea, coffee, spices and some canned goods). My weekly budget for groceries is $125. I know what I spend is a lot of money to a lot of people less well off than I am, but again, I could cut a lot of what I think of as luxury items out to make a smaller budget work. (And although I like coupons, I rarely use them, so this could be cut even further if you were an avid coupon clipper.) I think this is a lot of money to spend on food and I cringe every time I see my bill, but many people, both wealthier and less wealthy than I am, gasp at how little I spend on food. I just don't understand, then, what they are spending their money on.

But what I also see is that people don't have the time or don't think they have the time to actually cook this food. And the poor often work long hours and/or more than one job to make ends meet. Cooking healthy is perceived as difficult because people think that it has to take hours to make a good meal. But it doesn't. Recently, I've gotten several comments from friends that go along the lines of "I just don't have as much time as you do to cook as 'gourmet' as you do." I have two kids. My husband and I both work full time. My daughter recently joined soccer. We don't have a lot of time, and when we do, it's often interrupted by our five month old needing a bottle or our daughter showing us her latest "art project" that she created all over her bedroom floor. With all of this, I am still able to feed my family healthy food. We don't eat what I post on this blog every night, but we do eat healthy meals, and it takes a lot of planning and preparation.

Healthy food doesn't have to come from Whole Foods. Healthy food can be bought at the cheapest of grocery stores. (Shoot, if I shopped at WF-like stores regularly, my grocery budget would be double or triple what it is now.) I guess my problem with the statement on the radio station was that it seemed like they were saying that buying unprocessed foods is only for rich people and they seemed to attach a sort of stigma to it. They also jumped from the unhealthy (relating it to fast food) to the healthy (which was tied solely to shopping at Whole Foods.) This whole conversation makes me wonder if all of the talk by Michael Pollan, bloggers who are moving toward more natural, homemade meals, the media, etc. is actually hurting the slow food movement in the spheres (i.e., the poor) where it is most needed. There are loud calls to eat organic and to think that the big grocery stores are evil. Even the term "slow food" makes it seem like good, nutritious food should take a long time to make. And I agree with the basic tenets of many of these calls to action--organic food, knowing where your meat came from, cooking from scratch, eating together as a family--but if we're trying to make the entire nation healthier, it seems like we're actually scaring off people who think they can't afford the healthy food talked about in these venues or think they don't have time to cook healthy "gourmet" meals or think that healthy food is only for the rich. We're not making good, healthy meals accessible to the cash-strapped or the time-strapped.

I don't really know how to fix this or even to address it other than here in my little corner of the blogosphere. I'd love to know what you all think...and perhaps if you have a recipe (a link if you're a blogger or just the recipe if not) for an inexpensive, easy-to-prepare, and quick but healthy meal using "whole" ingredients (not prepackaged), we can create a space for that kind of food here (or elsewhere). I'm open to comments and suggestions!

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