The Cost Of Eating Healthy
The Cost of Eating Healthy
The cost of eating healthy could be relative, if we take in consideration that in the long run, not taking care of your health will be very costly due to medications cost and possible hospitalization for either acute or chronic diseases.
Menu: Be ready
We suggest to our patients to do a menu with the fresh ingredients to prepare their dinners during the week. We promote buying only necessary for the people they are feeding. It is our experience making this little change , it have helped us to not only reducing the amount we eat (since is just enough to feed us at that time), but we also eliminate leftover resulting in less waste. We encountered, lower grocery bills.
Family
Avoid breads, pasta; potatoes and rice in your household if possible. Motto: If you do not buy it you won’t eat it! Temptation won’t be an issue. Introducing healthy alternative to the family will be win/win situation. Youngster and teenagers will benefit of this in the long run. Family should not be an excuse to include temptations on the household. Of course, you can have one or two special days with the forbidden food for the children, but substitute something healthy for you. There is a Pasta Zero, soya based substitute, that you can get on produce department, cook this for the adults and give the children whole grain pasta.
Transition to a healthy choices
Try to introduce new items in your list such as tofu, fish; salad; and vegetables. Before you buy, check internet options for recipes, there are thousands of good alternatives, and you do not even need to have a cookbook. There are website which even give you the calories; fat and carbohydrates measures on each recipe.
Training your taste buds
This could take time to adjust, but the importance is to be consistent. Healthy choices which could be a little most costly but there are going to give you an improve health check-up next time you see your physician, maybe eliminating a medication off your list.
Eating out…
is nowadays one of the most difficult aspects in keeping control of the diet, it is also one of the behaviors that will increase the budget.
Always when you visit a new restaurant, ask about the size of the portions, avoid surprises, most of the servers won’t tell you that information. I have encountered tables around me with food for ten people when there are just four people on the table. We this practice you will reduce you final bill.
Other Techniques that have helped reduce intake and reduce our restaurant bills are: Take time to order from the menu. Do not order all at the same time, pace yourself. First, order salad or appetizer, graze; enjoy a good conversation and check if you still hungry after that, listen to your gut telling you: “I am almost there” or “I am done”! If you are almost there instead of ordering main menu , an appetizer will be the next best choice. If you gut tells you: I am done! Stop. Check if the restaurant offers salad and bread with dinner, this will help you to make an more educated selection of your menu.
At the time of dessert, avoid this is possible, but if in need, share with others at the table or choose the smaller size if they have that alternative. Some restaurant nowadays are offering small portion desserts for their clientele.
These behaviors will surely make your dinner experience less costly and at least less caloric. Instead of feeling so full and broke, you and your pocket will be felling content at the end of the night.
I challenge to try these alternatives, you will see a difference in your budget and in your health.
Blanca Crespo, MPH, CHC
photo credit: Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash