You Are What You Eat Part III

Actually, before moving on to your next new food, let’s start by upgrading a food that you are already eating, with a fresh or frozen alternative.

You may be wondering, “Is ‘real food’ (nothing added or taken away) too expensive?” It all depends on how you look at it.  

Calculate the amount of money spent on habits you already know are unhealthy, replace them with healthy habits, and apply the money to your new healthy food habits. Lose the cigs and save your lungs. Lose the pop and save your liver. “Liver?!?” Yes. Fatty liver is a precursor to cirrhosis. Also, ingredients originating in laboratories cause the liver, your internal Environmental Protection Agency, to ask, “Red Dye #4? What am I supposed to do with Red Dye #4?”

I cannot deny that fresh/frozen food does cost more than canned. Two of my favorites are big expenses. A 48-ounce bag of frozen blueberries is just short of $11 at Walmart. I eat 12 ounces of blueberries a day. That is nearly $3 a day, around $1000 a year. Five percent of my income. And the same expense for my fresh broccoli! OMG! On the other hand, I spend zippo, “nada penny” on pop, nicotine and other drugs. I save a lot of money on gas and wear and tear on my vehicles by riding my bike whenever possible.

Also, those blueberries and broccoli reliably show up on most “superfood” lists and tend to satisfy hunger better for having met my body’s nutritional needs. Blueberries also appease my sweet tooth. In the case of broccoli, it also assuages my hunger by filling my belly with a low-calorie, nutrient-dense food per the principles of the Volumetrics plan.

Another consideration as you calculate the “cost” of real food: More important to me than money, the older I get, the more precious my time becomes to me. A few years ago, there were a number of articles on the rate of chronic illness, the kind that requires frequent “doctoring,” being cut in half for those folks who were Fit at 50. As fascinating as I find typical clinic waiting room literature,

 I don’t want to spend my Golden Years leafing through it, surrounded by crying babies and sick people coughing out aerosols of disease, while my doctor is at the hospital trying to stave off the “death spiral” for another chronically ill person.

 “Move it or lose it” and power that motion with real food. Healthy food for a healthy life. 

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