Healthy food no more costly than junk food, government finds

Spanishchef.net recommends these products

Healthy food no more costly than junk food, government finds

In fact, carrots, onions, pinto beans, lettuce, mashed potatoes, bananas and orange juice are all less expensive per portion than soft drinks, ice cream, chocolate candy, French fries, sweet rolls and deep-fat fried chicken patties, the report says.

“We have all heard that eating a healthy diet is expensive, and people have used that as an excuse for not eating a healthy diet, … but healthy foods do not necessarily cost more than less healthy foods,” says Andrea Carlson, an economist and co-author of the report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

“The price of potato chips is nearly twice as expensive as the price of carrots by portion size,” she says.

Some of the least expensive foods and beverages by portion size:

Corn tortillas
Onions
Pinto beans
Coffee (brewed at home)
Lettuce
Peanut butter

Multigrain bread
Small chocolate chip cookie

Carrots
Orange juice
Popcorn
Eggs

Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service

Carlson and and her colleague Elizabeth Frazão gathered national pricing data on more than 4,000 foods and then ranked the foods by price based on calories, weight and portion size.

They placed the foods into the five food groups — grains, dairy, protein, fruits and vegetables. They added a category for unhealthy foods, which included items that did not fit the other categories or were high in sugar, sodium and/or saturated fat such as cookies, candy, desserts, granola bars and many ready-to-eat cereals.

When using weight and portion size as the guide, many healthy foods were not any more costly than unhealthy ones, Carlson says. You can always find healthy foods that are cheap and healthy foods that are expensive. The same is true of less healthy foods, she says.

She says one of the best ways to think of food costs is to consider portion size: “How much do you have to pay to put something on your plate?”

Overall, the economists found:

•When considering portion size, the ranking from least to most expensive is: grains, dairy, vegetables, fruit, protein and less healthy foods. Protein and less healthy foods are very close in cost, Carlson says.

•Grains, such as bread, oatmeal, pasta and rice, are the cheapest foods no matter how you measure by portion, weight or calories, Carlson says.

•Protein, such as meat, chicken and fish, is the most expensive food by portion size, but there are low-cost proteins such as beans and eggs.

•When looking at price per portion, fruits and vegetables are lower in price overall than unhealthy foods. “Like every food group, there are cheap veggies and fruits, and pricey ones. Cheap unhealthy foods and more expensive ones.”

•When trying to eat a healthy diet based on the government’s dietary guidelines, protein and vegetables are the most expensive recommendations to meet, followed by fruit, she says. One of the reasons: The vegetable recommendation has high amounts, about 2½ cups for someone eating a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet, and so it takes a lot of food to meet that goal, Carlson says.

Previous research has just looked at price per calories and found that healthy foods are more expensive, but Carlson says price per calorie isn’t a fair measure. For example, non-fat milk has a higher price per calorie than 2% milk but most health experts recommend drinking non-fat or 1% milk, she says. “Whole milk and skim milk are about the same price per gallon at the grocery store.”

Another example: a half cup of broccoli has 27 calories while a one-ounce bag of potato chips has 154 calories. To consume 100 calories of broccoli, you’d have to eat almost two cups and that’s more than what most people normally eat in one sitting, she says.

If you eat a chocolate-glazed doughnut at 240 calories or a banana at 105 calories, you get more nutrients from the banana and probably spend less on it, she says.

Most people allocate only about of 20% to 25% of their food budget to fruits and vegetables, but the government recommends that it should be more like 40%, Carlson says.

Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian in Chicago and author of The Flexitarian Diet, says that the report “is great information to help bust the myth that it costs too much to eat healthy.”

Cynthia Sass, a registered dietitian in New York City and author of S.A.S.S.! Yourself Slim, says, “Many of my clients are surprised to find that their grocery bills don’t go up when they swap processed goods for fresh foods, especially when they buy in-season produce and they’re eating ideal portions, meaning three ounces of cooked chicken, rather than six.”

Just giving up soda to drink fresh-brewed hot or iced tea, or water with a wedge of in-season citrus fruit can be a huge cost savings, she says. “And many of the healthiest superfoods in the market are inexpensive, such as beans and brown rice.”

Healthy Lifestyle – with Bill & Sheila

If you require a high quality printout of this article, just click on the printer symbol next to ’Share and enjoy’, and we will do the rest.

Get the best website builder available anywhere –SBI! Click here for more information

Return from healthy to Home Page

If you want to increase your site popularity and gain thousands of visitors – check out these sites THEY ARE FREE. Spanishchef more than doubled its ‘New Visitors’ last month simply by signing up to these sites: