High cost of eating healthy

I meant to note this article the high cost of eating healthy in the NYT a while back but got busy. It reminded me of when we took the Food Stamp Challenge. It wasn’t impossible, but it took some planning and cooking. If we had tried it during a more hectic time it might of been impossible. Processed ready to eat is expensive and as the above study and many others show, its unhealthy. But going back to the real basics takes time to cook. Beans have to soak overnight, roasting a chicken takes time (though butterflying speeds it up some.) The real trick was I cooked two whole chickens on Sunday, which we then used over the course of the week. I also used the bones, trimmings and various vegetable cuttings to make chicken stock. Our general meal was an egg and a piece of toast for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and chicken for dinner. We had roast chicken, curried chicken, chicken burritos, stir fried chicken, chicken noodle soup. We also had spaghetti with tomato sauce and chili. Basically I tried to think of all the basic peasant dishes I could think of. (I know the term “peasant” is not exactly PC, but I couldn’t think of another term to accurately describe the types of meals I cooked.) Throughout the week we also had fruit, salad, beans, pasta and/or rice. So we ate nutritionally, but kept the calories at a more realistic level. The other thing about the challenge is it is much harder for a single person than a family of four. The economy of scale thing shows.

Take the challenge for yourself.