My fascination with what magazine and television experts say I should eat began while I was pregnant.
In order to have been the perfect pregnant momma, my meals would have looked something like the following: oatmeal with nuts and fresh berries for breakfast, low-carb pita sandwich coated with hummus and stuffed with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes and cucumbers for lunch, and once a week (but no more since pregnant women should limit fish intake!) a meal with fresh-caught grilled salmon.
Though no longer pregnant, my fascination continues.
Each time I catch a snippet or two of some diet expert on a talk show or news featurette, they say that we should all eat the following foods:
handful of fresh blueberries . . . every day!
handful of raw nuts . . . every day!
salmon . . . at least once a week!
kale, kale, kale!
olive oil . . . but (heaven forbid!) not grocery-store quality olive oil (Where do these people shop anyway?)
I genuinely would enjoy following these guidelines if only I didn't have the following obstacle: budget.
Out of curiosity, I ran the following numbers:
Here in Utah, blueberries are pretty expensive per handful. On sale, fresh blueberries would run me about $1 per handful. That would be about $30 if I were to eat a handful every day. A handful of raw nuts, assuming I don't just go for peanuts (since those are blacklisted by many experts), would probably run about .75 cents per handful. That would be another $22.50 per month. Salmon is usually around 8.99/lb. Assuming the USDA-recommended 3 oz portion size, one could theoretically get five servings out of a pound of salmon. So theoretically one pound could last for the whole month for one person.
Now I'll take these numbers and times them by two, since Jonathan should also be eating these same healthful choices: $122.98.
I hate to say it folks, but that's over half our monthly food budget spent on two daily snacks and a weekly protein. And that's not taking into account Sammy's growing appetite.
That being said, I am a fan of eating nuts and berries and salmon. I just think that there's also something to be said for nutrients that are also found in less-trendy but more budget-friendly options. Things like carrots, raisins, lentils, frozen berries (since we can't always afford fresh), and canned tuna (or canned salmon when it's on sale).
One day perhaps, I will have a small farm where I could grow all my produce, milk my own little goat and make cheese, gather eggs from my own chickens, and fish for salmon in a nearby freshwater stream, but until then I'm afraid dearest of tv experts, I'm going to have to find nutrition in whatever ways I can afford it.
(Hail the proletariat!)
2 comments:
I was telling my husband a few days ago how I really liked you but how I didn't know you super, super well. He laughed at me, but then tonight I told him, "How can you not like someone who ends her blogpost 'Hail the proletariat?'" He agreed. :)
I think the healthy trends are so delicious, but I totally agree about budget. Gwen's preschool had a field trip to WholeFoods last week and I tagged along as a chaperone... and was both delighted by the wonderfulness of the beautiful varieties and colors of the food displays... and seriously just laughing at the prices. Who pays that kind of price for produce that they can get for 1/2 that at Meijer or Kroger and 1/4 that at Aldi? Being healthy is great, but the 'fashionable' healthy fads are just laughable!
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