Is a healthy diet more expensive?

annieb64

I can remember sprouting broccoli being around at this time of year but not the other sort. In the winter we ate sprouts, cabbage, carrots and leeks every day until the sprouting broccoli appeared. Then the veg got more interesting with asparagus followed by fresh peas and beans. Courgettes didn't appear until the late 1960s . We had vegetable marrow instead.

YoungBlueEyes

I think if you take a very broad view of the question, healthy is cheaper. Years ago I used to work in a bakery and we had a woman with 2 wee boys come in every morning on the way to school. She bought them 3 cheese straws and a can of coke each for their breakfasts. Every morning. It made my heart sink. There's no way that was cheaper than a bowl of porridge or a couple of rounds of toast.

Depending on your starting point it'd be hard going for the majority of people to eat healthily and more expensively. If you're forever eating takeaways and JustEat nonsense it's a no-brainer. Meat and fish can be bought cheaper at times (reduced offers etc) and frozen. Make bigger batches of meals and freeze them. Eat the things that are in season. Get off the notion that everything should be available all the time just because. That's not helping your bills. Strawberries in January?! Aye right.

A further question might be - is it more time expensive to eat healthily? I'd say the answer is yes to that, too.

thriftwizard

The answer may depend on what resources you have available; if all you have is a kettle, which is the case for some in bedsits & emergency accomodation, take-aways, pasties & packets of noodles may seem to be your only options. You can improve their nutritional value a bit by adding some frozen peas - if you have access to a freezer - and an egg, maybe a chopped spring onion, and there's alway tinned veg though heating it might be problematic. But access to fridges, freezers & cookers (of any sort) not to mention the time & space to chop veg etc. are pretty vital in the quest to eat healthily without undue expenditure. 

Nelliegrace

I am reading Unprocessed by Kimberley Wilson.

If the highly processed food is the cause of so many learning difficulties and mental health problems, can we afford to eat unhealthily?
I think mine was the last generation to be raised on real food, before there was infant formula feed, and before the ideology of the high sugar, low fat diet was introduced, which has led to so much obesity.

MattMattMattUK

In general it is cheaper to eat healthier, cooking from scratch is cheaper than buying processed food, cooking at home is cheaper than takeaways or junk food, a 2kg bag of potatoes is cheaper than a 2kg bag of pre-made chips, one can make a lasagne that is both better and a fraction of the cost of a pre-made lasagne, even a whole chicken is cheaper than a whole chicken in one of those "ready to cook" bags or trays etc. There is a nuance though, fresh veg out of season can be expensive, especially imported fruit, but frozen veg is just as good in most cases and is far cheaper, cooking a whole chicken for works out much cheaper than chicken breasts, which is much cheaper again than pre-cooked chicken. 

The slightly more complicated factor is that cooking requires both multiple "store cupboard" ingredients, herbs, spices, oils etc. which are expensive when bought just for one meal, but when amortised over their total usage are very cheap. One also needs pots, pans, utensils etc. and those whilst once purchased last for many years do require an upfront cost, although it does not need a huge expenditure. 

I am slightly sceptical of the excuse of lack of skill, there are thousands of recipes online, from the basic to Michelin star level food, many with full idiot guides, accompanying how to videos etc. so it is not a lack of knowledge that holds people back. 

Cooking healthily and cooking from scratch are far cheaper, and for almost every quality level of food it will be cheaper to cook from scratch. One can also save significantly by minor variations, frozen veg or chicken breasts vs fresh chicken breasts, cooking whole chicken vs packs of breasts, not eating strawberries in the middle of winter etc. Some people choose convenience and/or a lower quality diet over cooking themselves, that is their choice, but if the consequence is obesity then the rest of us should not have to pay the associated costs (healthcare).

Blue_Doggy

If it’s possible for a person living with limited cooking facilities to obtain (via charity shop/local Facebook pages etc) an inexpensive slow cooker, or an air fryer, possibly even a tabletop freezer, the possibilities for “healthy eating” are increased.
 

It does depend very much on what is meant by “eating healthily”, and also if there are special dietary requirements. Also important is how much time and energy (human as well as from utilities) is available for food preparation. 

Frozen vegetables are often more nutritious than fresh: for freezing they go from the field to the freezing plant within hours, so the vitamins are preserved, whereas (shop bought)* fresh veg are often several days old when bought, and may then stay around in a kitchen or fridge for several days longer, losing their vitamins. Also with frozen vegetables it’s easy to take just the portion size required, reducing waste.
 

Space to store fresh veg is also important, the 2kg bag of potatoes referred to above needs to be stored cool and dark, else the spuds will start to sprout.
 

*Home grown vegetables taken from garden or allotment to pot are of course the best, but require space, time and skill to grow.

 

ch3shirecat4

I think that you would think eating healthy would be cheaper, as you're cutting out paying for less meat more likely but I do think that sometimes with healthier foods to make them substantial and yummy you end up buying more ingredients, so i feel like it might end up costing the same in the end as not eating healthy. 

buggalugs1

I think that the word Healthy is difficult to define, for me healthy means restricted carbs ( T2 diabetic) gluten free ( speaks for itself ) GF products are disgustingly expensive beside  non GF foods, bread, all sorts of things to make my diet healthy for my conditions are more expensive unfortunately

annieb64

Having spent a few days away from home staying with family and eating a diet of processed food and refined carbs I know that I would hate to eat like that for any length of time.I feel tired and bloated. 

At home we cook from scratch . I am lucky to have time to shop around and batch cook.My mother and grandmother were both good cooks and made everything apart from bread at home. 

Wraithlady

annieb64 said:

Having spent a few days away from home staying with family and eating a diet of processed food and refined carbs I know that I would hate to eat like that for any length of time.I feel tired and bloated. 

Slightly unrelated, but OH and I spent a long weekend at an event where the catering was limited to, effectively, burgers and chips. 

Neither of us are particularly veg-obsessed, but at the hotel afterwards (it was a 6-hour drive home otherwise), we had a simple meal of chicken with 'seasonal veg' and we not only wolfed down the veg, we ate every scrap of the salad garnish (usually picked at if touched at all)  and had 2 extra portions of broccoli.

But, it's my opinion that people are sold on an idea of 'healthy eating' which is one of 'superfoods' and fads, so obviously these are more expensive (BBC Good Food magazine, last year, didn't seem to have any recipes which didn't involve miso or kimchi - both expensive and not-widely-found ingredients)

It's interesting that one of the arguments used (outside this forum, I hasten to add) to shut down debate is the 'oh well, not every one can cook/has access to good shops/has the facilities to cook' as though that trumps everything - the implication is 'so lets not even try to make things better, and we definitely won't start to ask why these barriers exist and what we can do to change things'