Lean and Hard

It's very cool to discover some unexpected benefits of doing something good for you. I found one of those benefits when I started substituting complex carbs for simple ones: I started saving lots of money.

This won't work if you pay companies like Weight Watchers or Nutrisystem for your meals (which I think is crazy, by the way), or if you shell out your discretionary income on diet supplements that gain you nothing but benefit the snake oil salesmen enormously. But I found that by cutting out the Chinese takeout and delivery pizza and fast food burgers, and by spurning all the highly refined crap at the grocery store, my food bills were cut in half.

It's true. The refined stuff is actually far more expensive that the healthy stuff! (Another parenthetical is required here I'm afraid: I'm not talking about so-called organic foods! They're just more expensive versions of regular items and have not been shown to add one iota to your health or longevity.)

I'm talking about dried beans and fruit, vegetables and grains, things that are pretty much raw and unrefined, instead of pre-made mashed potatoes and canned vegetables. Doesn't it make sense that the more work people have to put into making and packaging the food, the more it will cost? As an experiment, compare the price per pound of a package of chicken breasts and a package of thin-sliced chicken cutlets. The cutlets cost more because someone had to cut them up like that.

Take a look at this op-ed piece, Is Junk Food Really Cheaper, from the New York Times:

In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home.

Another reason I'm saving money by eating healthy, besides the fact that eating or ordering out costs more than cooking it myself and that rawer foods cost less than processed foods, is that I'm eating less food! My shopping cart is much less full than it used to be.

And finally, there are the deferred but very real health costs of eating an unhealthy diet. From Dr. Mark Hyman's web site:

For example, when you eat unhealthy foods like these, the costs of medical visits, co-pays, prescription medications, and other health services skyrocket. There are other non-economic costs of eating poorly as well. You reduce your ability to enjoy life in the moment due to increased fatigue, low-grade health complaints, obesity, depression, and more.

Eating and being healthy is better for so many reasons, but saving money is a nice added benefit.

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