Why it's so expensive to eat healthy

What’s the true cost of eating the typical American diet; a witch’s brew of heartrending, wallet-busting diseases, and incapacitating obesity? No one possesses the stones however, to cop to the naked fact that we support the health care crisis with our unfocused dietary choices; pure and simple. Food illiteracy simmered with our addiction to Big Food’s twaddle is the stone we should overturn. Our nation’s health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture – a culture where it’s deemed perfectly acceptable, almost Patriotic to spend money on dead nutrition then eat it sedentarily whilst vegetating in front of computer or TV screens, foregoing any semblance of physical exertion.

Most everyone suffers from the dreaded Italian disease, Mafundsalow and descend on cheap foods like paparazzi onto Paris Hilton. Due to disproportionate costs, poor folks and the middle class struggle mightily to eat healthy. It’s mind-bending that this can happen in the greatest country on the earth. Pure, fresh food should be freely available to everyone, not just the Fat Cats. If you only have $3, you want the most for your wrinkled dead president. We’ve seen the ad for a complete meal consisting of a artery-clogging burger, fries and coke for only 2.99. Then Meijer, Marsh, and Kroger executives pat themselves on the back because they offer diabetes and obesity causing low-grade ‘white boxed’ food on the cheap. Alas, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Eating healthy can be, but doesn’t need to cost more. The problem lies in the fact that scores of folks loathe cooking and end up buying pre-made health foods, which are costly because you paid someone to cook it, package it, and then ship it hundreds of miles to your microwave. Cooking from scratch is the joyous answer. For example, you could by 2 medium sweet potatoes for the same $1 you spend on small French fries from a burger joint. Or you could procure 2 red peppers brimming with heavenly antioxidants for the same amount you pay for sugary soda pop that causes triglycerides to soar. You could enjoy a healing bowl of Steele cut oatmeal for $2 or a chow a bag of oily chips. A large bag of oatmeal is $3.50, or 4 chocolate bars. Six chicken breasts can cost $10, or what you’d pay for a sub combo from a fast food shack. Or how about $3.50 for 18 local farm fresh eggs up against a $5 dead bovine burger. Two salmon fillets can cost $15; the same as a large pizza. Consider homemade chicken or tuna fish salad verses a $3 box of cookies. It’s all about perspective; being honest with yourself.

As empty calories get cheaper, the healthy fruits and vegetables that protect the temple are becoming more and more expensive; become luxury goods. Calorie for calorie, junk foods not only cost less than fruits and vegetables, but junk food prices are less likely to rise as a result of inflation. The Center for Public Health Nutrition found a 2,000-calorie diet would cost $3.52 a day if it consisted of junk food, compared with $36.32 a day for a diet of ‘real’ food. Of course choosing to eat dead calories over nutritious food might save money, or “fill you up”, but the true cost ends up being repaid through bad health and shorter life expectancies. So, realistically, it’s more expensive to eat lousy disease-causing food since ultimately, you pay the medical bills.

As one who has been devising and publishing healthy recipes for years, I honestly feel if we slow down and return to the joyous act of cooking, we will most certainly overcome our plagues of illness. There’s absolutely no reason why we cannot eat in a healthy fashion just as cheaply as we can consume the chemical stodge that ultimately destroy us. Life is really not that hard; we reap what we sow.

Tag: Follow Wendell Fowler on Twitter with your questions and concerns

The Amazing Curative Apple; Forbidden Fruit?

How ‘bout them Forbidden Apples?

Eve had a devil of a time persuading Adam to eat forbidden fruit, however, since their ensuing expellation, the apple has reigned supreme. In ancient Greece and Rome, apples were a symbol of love and beauty. Cleopatra was rumored to have placed one in Caesar’s chariot lunch box before battle. Apples were so prized armies took cultivated apples with them into England and then proceeded to make applesauce out of the country. About 1629, both the seeds and trees were brought to America by John Endicott, an early governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Johnny Appleseed promoted apples as he carried seeds with him wherever he traveled, and planted then in thinly settled parts of the country; mostly for distilling strong-drink. In 2010 America, the apple remains sovereign.

Most Americans consider the white meat most delectable. Apples contain a gargantuan 30 thousand protective antioxidants; paradoxically, the skin contains bushels of the heavenly, healing nutrition. Orchards of studies prove a daily diet of real, not GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) contain .78 grams of pectin per 100 grams of edible fruit, ranking them fourth in pectin content among twenty-four common fruits and vegetables tested. This only applies when one leaves on the skin, which settles the debate, ‘to peel or not to peel’? So put on your big boy pants; the skin stays on. The apple’s soluble fiber reduces the amount of cholesterol produced in the liver, slows digestion, and the rise of blood sugar, making it ideal for diabetics. Adding two large apples to your daily diet is shown to decrease total cholesterol. Apple's insoluble bran-like fiber gloms on to LDL cholesterol giving it the bums rush.
Eating un-peeled, albeit washed apples reduces risk of colon, breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers, heart disease, type II diabetes, obesity, and tooth carries. A study on mice at Cornell University found that the quertecin in apples may protect brain cells from the kind of free radical damage leading to Alzheimer's disease, a.k.a., Mad Cow disease.

Apples that rust have the most curative powers. Have you observed how apple these days don’t brown? It’s because today’s commercial apples have no semblance to the apples our universe created. That’s because they are GMO (Genetically Altered Organism) ergo, missing original heavenly components. What happened to Winesap, McIntosh, and Rome apples we relished in our youth? Royal Gala, Fuji and the new generation of apples are man’s egotistical manipulation of God’s gifts to us. The National Cancer Institute reports the antioxidants in apples may reduce the risk of lung cancer by as much as 50%. A Cornell University study indicated apples inhibited colon cancer cells reproduction by 43%, and A Mayo Clinic study indicates the quertecin in apple’s skin prevents oxygen molecules from the damage that encourages growth of prostate cancer cells.

For your temple to absorb the biggest bang-for-your-buck, choose locally grown varieties which brown easily, such as puckery Granny Smiths. I gently encourage you not to substitute insipid, sugary apple juice for raw apples. Grocery store sugar-laden apple juice contains next to none of the beneficial pectin, potassium, antioxidants, quertecin and colon-cleansing fiber. Instead, forage seasonal, un-pasteurized apples from your local orchard. However, ask the grower if they wash, sanitize, and filter the nectar to prevent E. coli or salmonella. Some orchards make use of the fallen apples because they are sugary ripe and easy to harvest, but pathogens lurk. One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, girl.

Apologetically, the true ‘forbidden’ ones, Caramel Apples don’t count. Add sliced apples briefly cooked in Smart Balance and cinnamon to your morning Steele cut oatmeal which you’ve cooked in apple cider, not water. Chuck in some walnuts, fibrous flax seed, and fruit, and your colon will return the a,..umm…favor.

Snacking Alternatives to Dead Food

We spend over-busy days scurrying around in cars running numerous errands or becoming one with the computer. It is here that humans continually nibble on whatever’s within reach. There are umpteen reasons why we snack: comfort, boredom, a quick energy fix, or just because of the desperate 'I want it now or I’m gonna rip someone’s face off!' feeling.

With beguiling vending machines every 10 feet, fast food and convenience stores of bar-coded death at every stop light sucking the life right out of you, it’s easy to be brought over to the dark side of American nutrition, or the lack there of. If you intend to compete with the pink Duracell bunny, it’s very important to eat foods that supply decent fuel. A new study carried out by researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School concluded that vended, prepackaged foods and sugary, faux colored beverages may be linked to diabetes, obesity, cancer, ADHD, ADD, and coronary artery disease. OMG!

Could we be squandering a golden opportunity to endow our family health equity? One way or another, everything we place into our Holy Temple affects health. As sure as I’m never going to have hair again, you’ll not find whole, restorative, socially redeeming fresh foods at a convenience store. I’ve seen freckled bananas, wrinkled oranges, and pulpy apples at the checkout of a few of them, but their existence depends on the demands of the local culture. Remember when they used to sell just gas?

May I turn you on to my fast food connection? Whenever the munchies attack, I head for the local grocery, waltz past the prepared hot food, then make a bee-line to the produce section where I grab containers of cut up fresh fruit or vegetables. You may want to cut your own the night before to avoid the MSG used to preserve them. Ack!! Then I truck to the deli for a container of humus, tabbouleh, sushi, guacamole, marinated olives, salsa, and some whole grain chips or crackers. One day I might snag a small bag of dried fruits, bulk granola, pistachios or walnuts to keep within arm’s length at work or in the car. Read labels, however, since some granolas have nefarious added fats. "All natural” fruit juice drinks and sodas, a meaningless term, can be saturated with sugar, which is a colossal contributor to the health care disaster. I’m wondering when moral authorities are going to connect the dots between chronic disease and the foods we worship.

In short time you’ll gain confidence as you note there is vastly more variety at the grocery store plus you’re getting up off your expanding, gelatinous, glutious maximus. Find strength within yourself and waddle past the potato chip, gooey thingies, cookies, and fried bits. If you take time to read labels, you’ll discover that major grocery stores carry healthful versions of your favorite treats. You’ll acquire increased energy and mental clarity. Science has deduced that eating junky, processed foods makes us ‘stoupid’.

Besides what I’ve already mentioned, my favorite snacks are raw veggies spritzed with low-calorie salad dressing, Kashi Go Lean cereal, Boca burgers instead of dead cow burgers, almonds, soy cheese and Wheat Thins, banana bits dipped in dark chocolate then frozen on a sheet pan lined with wax paper. Zip-lock them up for a sweet treat reward because you’ve been so good. God forbid you make popcorn from scratch. After all it’s so exhausting having to shake that darned pan while the colonels pop and ping against the lid.

Obesity: Public Enemy #1

Sandi and I take pleasure in entertaining out of town friends. Besides feeding them fresh, local Farmer’s Market foods, we shanghai them into the car; hold them hostage while flaunting Indy’s beauty. Straight away, they notice our conspicuous preponderance of obese men, women, and kids. “What’s with that”? I elucidate Hoosiers innate resistance to change; a mysterious reluctance to let go of macho meat and potatoes, gravy, and a god-like devotion to convenience, and rampant covetousness for deep-fried bits of meat or cheese dipped into of a vat o’ Ranch Dressing.

It’s no mystery why nearly 65 percent of Americans are corpulently porky; the American diet. The estimate, including direct medical costs only, not costs such as missed work, is higher than the annual medical bill for smoking. In other words, becoming obese is causing the same health care costs everyone’s bitching about to increase even more. Get it?

Obesity is the #2 cause of preventable death in the United States. You’d need to be buried under a pile of Little Debbie’s wrappers not to know obesity ramps-up the threat of breast cancer, coronary heart disease, low self-esteem, type II diabetes, knee-replacement, sleep apnea, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, colon cancer, and hypertension. So, why can’t Midwesterners wrap their taste buds around the simple concept? Is it predatory marketing and baffling labeling or do we just lack self control? America’s dollar-driven marketing gurus have mastered the concept that the human appetite is elastic: give them more and they’ll eat more; keep them fat, sick, and come back for more. In many ways we can also blame the obesity epidemic on the impressionable advertising footprints left on our brains.

Humans have a natural proclivity for full-flavored, yet highly caloric, easy to digest foods. Just as it it’s natural for gorillas to love leaves, it’s innate for human mammals to love funnel cake. Americans eat more processed dead foods than any other country. When eating machine cuisine, the temple doesn't have to work as hard to digest the food’s energy. Add the socially acceptable sedentary work habits of Americans and people will naturally store additional pounds for energy. If Hoosiers ate rawer, harder to digest, whole, unprocessed foods and added more movement to their everyday lives, they could lose the excess chunk in their proverbial trunk.

At nearly all of my lectures, someone expresses only the affluent can afford to eat healthy, which leads me to conclude poverty causes obesity. The fact that more and more American families can't afford fresh fruits and veggies or good cuts of meat could be part; another component is sloth. Short-sighted authorities have taken PE out of schools and don't send children out to play for 15 minutes in the nurturing sun, fretting they might become victims of skin cancer. No one needs reminding of the low-grade food served in the public school system; a prescription for weight gain, diabetes, and undernourished, foggy little brains

The only home you have, the holy temple, works pretty simple. There are a certain number of calories your temple requires every day for it to maintain its current weight. If your diet is made up of fewer calories than this maintenance level, you’ll lose weight. If it's made up of more calories, you’ll gain weight. It's really simple, actually.

Remove all bar-coded foods from your house and desk at work to control junk food cravings. It works for my weaknesses if the dead, caloric food is not in sight, because you’ll be less likely to craving it. Out of sight; out of mind.

Don’t beat yourself up. You’ve had some help from Big Food. Follow any "cheat" meal with at least five healthy meals and snacks. That ensures you'll be eating right more than 80 percent of the time. If you make a mistake, remember, you are above all, human; and a groovy, worthy one at that.

The 'White' Cause of Diabetes and Obesity

How can anything white be wrong?

Our arduous eating journey and future health blueprint begins early in life deeply rooted in cultural dietary traditions. Americans are unknowingly eating an unbalanced diet high in snarky saturated fats and low in fresh fruits, vegetables, and grains, but plum full of icky processed high-carb white foods.

Growing up a preacher’s grandkid, life revolved around after-church dinners on filigree-topped dining room tables moaning under the mass of chicken fried in shimmering pork fat, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, au gratin potatoes, potato salad, mashed taters, warm cloverleaf rolls, iced cakes, cookies; a carbohydrate blitzkrieg. Salt, flour, sugar, gravy, lard, shortening, white bread, white rice, marshmallows, Alfredo sauce, full-fat ice cream, half and half, and high butterfat cheese like Brie, mayonnaise, and mayo-based salad dressings chip away at the crispy edges of your family health equity. You know why they call it shortening? It shortens your life. 911! 911! Thud!

If you have a death wish to see the ‘white light’, white foods exacerbate diabetes, obesity, cancer, and heart disease. My admonition doesn’t suggest avoiding these white foods, but a gargantuan family of foods derived from the nefarious white stuff. The Price is Right host Drew Carry recently lost 80 pounds and got his diabetes under control by eating nothing but lean protein and fresh vegetables; no carbs at all.

It’s more coo-coo than Coco-Puffs to believe we can totally dodge harmful ingredients lurking virtually everywhere in the food system. Big Food made sure of that. However, one excellent way to hedge these dead foods to remain healthy and energetic is to embrace edibles from nature, not a factory assembly line.

For decades, red meat’s been worshiped as a deity for its white marbling. Each year the average American gulps down more than 50 unctuous pounds of gushy fat. Less in this case, is more. Iconic Uncle Ben had good intentions when he ‘perverted’ his instant rice. Paradoxically, the bran and germ he removed are outstanding sources of minerals, fiber, and vitamins. Instant white rice lacks even the essential nutrients after “enrichment.” This doesn’t mean to completely avoid white rice. Try taking 15 minutes of your time and learn to cook Basmati rice.

Fizzy soft drink lovers may or may not be conscious that the fructose portion of refined sugar is a building-block for cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Also, just 10 teaspoons, the amount of sugar in one soft drink, incapacitates your immune system by an astounding 33 percent. Thirty teaspoons shut down the immune system for a day. Abundant sugar in your temple sends out chemical signals that attract bacteria like moths to an open flame. It’s been recently discovered that high fructose corn syrup is cancer cells favorite food. Charming, eh?

Salt overkill increases the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, heart failure, kidney disease, diabetes, cataracts, brittle bones, asthma, dementia, and early death. The American Heart Association says one teaspoon a day is the maximum.

Studies explain Alloxan, the chemical that makes all purpose white flour look clean and beautiful destroys beta cells of the pancreas encouraging diabetes. White bread, an uber-refined wheat product, has been plundered of 11 known vitamins, half a dozen nutritionally significant minerals, as well as essential fatty acids. It’s a ‘wonder’ anyone buys it. Way back in 1943, the erudite editors of Nutrition Reviews were distressed at the government’s decision to proceed with enriching flour; a startlingly bad decision.

Even too many good complex-carbohydrates like brown rice, millet, grits, oats, quinoa, and barley can be a factor. Reduced-fat dairy products, probiotic yogurt, and fortified rice milk are cool in moderation. When you add beans, white-fleshed fish, skinless chicken, ‘real’ turkey breast, and fresh fruits and vegetables to the menu, you’re hitting stride.

Be unyielding and don’t give up. You can do it one step at a time. With the heartening progress I see Hoosiers making, I’m truly excited about the future.

Condiments: Illusory Foods not so Innocent

How Long Should I Hold the Mayo?

Would you sacrifice quality of life to defend your right to dollop hollandaise over asparagus or to asphyxiate crisp, steamed broccoli with molten cheddar cheese sauce? Since ancient times, Chefs created sauces and condiments to display their talents. Once a savvy chef presented me with a point to ponder, “Why would anyone wish to disguise the true taste of perfectly cooked food?”

When Sandi and I converted to the green side, it required condiments on vegetables to make them appetizing. Eventually, we learned to dig the clean, fresh taste and texture of produce in its God-given state. If you’re the boss of your health destiny, then you know at home or away, condiments present a dietary challenge. Everyone’s favorite is mayonnaise composed of a fatty emulsion of oil, raw egg, vinegar, and spices. For me, switching to mustard was a huge health-plus. Commercial condiments explode with sugars, wheat gluten, phantom calories, high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and trans fats directly connected to heart disease, diabetes and obesity

Ever-present condiments are illusory foods which innocently appear as insignificant addendums to any meal, but realistically, they’re subtle delivery systems for massive amounts of calories to sneak into the temple. The word "sauce" is French meaning a relish to make food appetizing. Gravy, the grand-daddy artery-clogger of all, is generally derived from greasy pan renderings and supposedly makes foods look, smell, and taste better. Before the advent of refrigerators and preservatives, as a necessity, sauces and condiments were created to cover up the smell of rotting meat. Today we still see this practiced in grocery meat and fish counter ‘Petri dishes’ brimming with colorfully decorated, albeit aging raw fish, chicken and kebobs with alluring monikers. They take this economic risky measure to rid their inventory of ‘old’ meats.
Don’t insult a verdant salad with goopy bottled salad dressings burdened with less-than-ideal ingredients. Select vinegar or lemon juice, and EVOO. I recently praised my plump lunch companion’s choice of salad bar; however, I was astonished watching her decant a cup of blue cheese dressing onto the crisp, nurturing greens. (The ‘broccoli and cheese sauce’ syndrome). To flourish, you don’t need sauces compromising your health, such as Alfredo Sauce, sugary ketchup, BBQ sauce, mysterious sandwich spreads, chicken nugget dipping sauces, or flavored coffee creamers.

Like placing kerosene into a gas tank, you can only dupe the Temple so long. By existing on un-holy, factory foods, you put the pedal to the metal on the aging process and destabilize your birthright of good health. Give serious thought to returning to nature, and then begin to prepare your own ‘scratch’ food. If your home-made foods need condiments, perhaps you should consider a cooking class. As a family learn to enjoy the real flavor and texture of foods in their God-given state.

Tips:

• Top baked potatoes with plain low-fat yogurt, low-fat sour cream, or salsa

• How about a crowning a baked sweet potato with Smart Balance and a drizzle of real maple syrup, not Aunt Jemima which is pure HFCS.

• Hot sauce can be added to a variety of food providing big flavor.

• Honey is an excellent alternative to sugar

• Soy sauce is associated with Asian cooking but can be used in everything from Mexican fare to traditional French.

• Salsa is an excellent alternative to crappy nacho cheese.

• Hummus is a delighful veggie dip

• Avoid foods named au gratin, Alfredo, gravy, creamed, or sauced

• Make scratch salad dressings. Regular salad dressing is expensive and has about 120 calories per tablespoons.

• Use flavored mustard or yogurt-based dips for chicken strips.

• Try Meijer’s Organic Peanut butter

• Have low-fat cottage cheese with a drizzle of honey, sprinkle of ground flax or chia seeds, and cut-up seasonal fruit.

• And finally, try a Honeymoon Salad: Lettuce alone with no dressing, but I really, really, digress.

The Power of Produce

In 1988 an emotionless cardiologist uttered in monotone, “Get prepared, Mr. Fowler, you’re going to die…soon”.
Two decades ago, my diet was KFC, double-cheeseburgers, and Krispie Kreme’s flushed down with beer and ciggy-butts; a 300 pound poster child for self abuse. Fruits and vegetables were interlopers necessitating gravy to make them edible. Slothful, under the influence of cozy family traditions and repetitive advertising, I’d squandered the first half of my life eating foods not intended to enter the temple.

I nearly paid the ultimate price. Using produce to sustain health was not programmed into my Midwestern mindset. Since childhood I’d been encouraged to eat specific comfort foods. Over time, like most Americans, I was shanghaied from the path of nutritional righteousness by Betty Crocker, commodity brokers, bankers, and repetitive advertising that left tiny footprints on my malleable mind. Advertising frequency exerts a mighty influence over what you choose to eat. It generates awareness, creates interest, and arouses taste buds. I’ve pondered if the mass confusion, conflicting headlines, contrary opinions and such is by design. I'm a seeker of truth not a conspiracy theorist, but, keep in mind, it’s highly profitable to keep people fat, and sick, and coming back for more.

Motivated by the proposition of death, I began eating more fruits and veggies containing essential vitamins, minerals, and fiber and less man-made nonsense. Subtly, new skills surfaced. Not feeding my temple the innate heavenly diet designed for humans had blunted my God-given skills. The American Cancer Society, the CDC, National Kidney Foundation, American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, and scores of health authorities are screaming in unison, “American must increase the fruits and vegetables they currently eat”. Produce from the celestial apothecary contains substances called phytonutrients; defenders of human health that battle cancer, heart disease, GI inflammation, diabesity, and blood pressure.

A vast body of research fruits, vegetables and plant foods were on the original menu of foods the Universe designed for its creations. Genesis 1:29. Instead, Americans are corporately swayed to consume synthetic creations from man’s inventive mind, brewed in his laboratories, having no counterparts in nature, ergo the health care catastrophe. Fruits and vegetables are your heavenly source of sustaining energy and give the temple the nutrients needed to ‘have your health.’ Alas, only one-third of Americans eat two or more pieces of fruit per day and 25 % don’t eat vegetables at all.

Forage for foods natural to your evolutionary lineage; fresh foods most apt to promote health. Today, a nation drools when offered health destructive foods; foods that diminish your fitness and quality of life. The Five-A-Day program recommends five to nine servings of fresh fruits and vegetables per day to ward off diseases. That’s 2.5 cups, friends. One trip to the salad bar could take care of that in a jiffy; nevertheless summon the strength to resist the urge to asphyxiate the green salad in copious amounts of Ranch or Bleu Cheese Dressing. Opt for Olive oil and either wine vinegar or lemon juice.

• Support your community Farmer’s Market. Ask questions then shake the hand of the hard working family farmer

• Pre-cut vegetables into small portions then place in the refrigerator for easy access. Make vegetables as convenient as any other snack food and you’ll eat more of them

• Create a home-salad bar with healthy dips and vegetable you cut into interesting shapes. Dips include low fat salad dressing, guacamole, humus, low-fat cottage cheese, and salsa

• When serving cow burgers, Sloppy Joes, cheesy pizza or any other kid-pleasing fare, sneak in shredded carrots or broccoli. Just a small amount will blend into a red sauce and boost the nutritional value

• Grill kabobs. Cut bite-size pieces of vegetables and grill them on skewers or alternate with chunks of lean cuts of dead animal meat. Add a tasty marinade.

A nickel's worth of fresh produce beats a five dollar doctor visit on any day.