Here is a little food for thought!
While a healthy diet is now factually
proven to cost more than an unhealthy one, the gap between the two is not as
great as you might think. In fact, a study published online December 5 in BMJ Open shows that the healthiest
diets cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy diets.
Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)
researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 27 existing studies from 10
high-income countries. The studies included price data for individual foods and
for healthier vs. less healthy diets. Scientists evaluated differences in
prices per serving and per 200 calories for particular types of foods, and in
prices per day and per 2,000 calories (the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
recommended average daily calorie intake for adults) for overall diet patterns.
Both per-serving and per-calorie costs were assessed because prices can vary
depending on the unit of comparison.
The researchers found that healthier
diet patterns—for example, diets rich in fruits, vegetables, fish and nuts—cost
significantly more than unhealthy diets (for example, those rich in processed
foods, meats and refined grains). On average, a day’s worth of the most healthy
diet patterns cost about $1.50 more per day than the least healthy ones.
The study authors suggested that
unhealthy diets may cost less because food policies have focused on the
production of “inexpensive, high volume” commodities, which has led to “a
complex network of farming, storage, transportation, processing, manufacturing,
and marketing capabilities that favor sales of highly processed food products
for maximal industry profit.” Given this reality, they said, creating a similar
infrastructure to support production of healthier foods might help increase
their availability—and reduce their prices.
“This research provides the most
complete picture to-date on true cost differences of healthy diets,” said
Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, MPH, DrPH, the study’s senior author and associate
professor at HSPH and Harvard Medical School. “While healthier diets did cost more,
the difference was smaller than many people might have expected. Over the
course of a year, $1.50/day more for eating a healthy diet would increase food
costs for one person by about $550 per year. This would represent a real burden
for some families, and we need policies to help offset these costs. On the
other hand, this price difference is very small in comparison to the economic
costs of diet-related chronic diseases, which would be dramatically reduced by
healthy diets.”
Breakfast Birds Nest
You
know that curbing your carbs will help you lose weight and tone up, so try this
low carb breakfast. It's a great way to eat some veggies with breakfast.
Servings: 4
Here's what you need...
- 4 large, round tomatoes
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 1 small onion, finely chopped
- 3 slices organic, nitrate-free turkey bacon, chopped
- dash of dried oregano, plus more for garnish
- optional dash of salt (added salt is not in nutritional analysis)
- dash of pepper
- 4 organic, omega-3, free range eggs
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Wash tomatoes, slice off the tops and scoop out the insides.
Place tomatoes on a pan, and bake for 5 minutes.
- In a skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add garlic. Add
onion. Add chopped bacon. Saute for 5 minutes, until mostly cooked. Add
the spices and mix well.
- Turn oven to broil.
- Fill each tomato with the bacon mixture, leaving about 1/2 inch
of space at the top of each tomato. Crack an egg into each tomato then
sprinkle with oregano. Place in the oven under broiler for 5 minutes.
Remove from oven once the top has set, and you'll have perfectly done over
easy eggs.
- For well done eggs: change oven temperature back to 400 degrees
F, and continue to bake for an additional 10 minutes.
Nutritional
Analysis: One serving equals:
98 calories, 5g fat, 162mg sodium, 3g carbohydrate, .6g fiber, and 9g protein.
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