Could You Eat Healthily on $3.37 a Day?

Source: lewrockwell.com

By Joseph Mercola

Mercola.com

January 6, 2015

By Dr. Mercola

While food assistance varies from state to state, a typical family using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the official name for food stamps, will have about $3.37 per person, per day, with which to buy food.

Many families run out of food stamps after the first two weeks of the month and rely on food banks to fill in the gaps. On a budget this tight, fruits and vegetables are often purchased only if there’s money to spare, and often there isn’t.

In the documentary film Food Stamped, in which the filmmakers attempt to eat a healthy diet on a food-stamp budget, they visit food stamp enrollment clinics and tag along with low-income shoppers who tend to opt for the cheapest, most filling foods, such as white bread, factory-farmed ground beef, and ramen noodles.

In interviews with members of Congress who also took the food stamp challenge, even the elected officials – when forced to eat on meager budgets themselves – likewise fell prey to the allure of cheap convenience foods.

But while cost is one of the most often-cited obstacles to eating a healthy diet, there are low-cost superfoods available that contribute priceless benefits to your health. Further, research from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) found that eating a healthy diet costs only $1.50 more per day…

Healthiest Diets Cost About $1.50 More a Day Than Least Healthy Diets

Researchers from HSPH conducted a meta-analysis of 27 studies, evaluating the differences in prices per serving and prices per calorie for different types of food. Eating a healthier diet (defined as rich in fruits, vegetables, fish, and nuts) was found to be significantly more expensive than an unhealthy diet (rich in processed foods, meats, and refined grains).

However, the difference between buying food for the most healthy diet pattern or the least healthy diet pattern came out to about $1.50 per day. Part of what makes the processed food diet cheaper is the fact that the US government is actively supporting a diet that consists of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), soybean oil, corn oil, and grain-fed cattle, a direct result of their flawed farm subsidy system.

The junk foods are made even cheaper through the use of unhealthy filler ingredients and preservatives that prevent spoiling, with the end result being that the very worst foods for your health are often significantly cheaper to buy. The HSPH researchers reported that US food policies focus on:

“‘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.'”

Adding to the problem, many on the most limited food budgets, such as those who receive food assistance dollars, live in “food deserts” – areas without grocery stores, and perhaps only a convenience store or a fast-food restaurant where they can purchase their food.

So while it’s certainly possible to eat healthy on a limited budget, this first requires that you understand what constitutes a healthy meal, and then that you have access to such foods, which is not always the case.

And as for cost, an extra $1.50 a day is a major hurdle for many, but for others for whom the cost can be readily absorbed, the extra investment will yield great returns for your family’s health. The researchers explained:

“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.”