Quality Food Or The High Cost of “Health Care” – Which Do You Choose?
You can pay less now, but you will definitely pay more later
It’s no secret that food prices have skyrocketed in recent years. And it can be truly frustrating when quality food costs more than crappy junk food that leaves you craving more. It can be so tempting to just give up, and give in, and by that pasta with the ready-made sauce or canned soup, or a meal kit.
But cheap and easy meals also come with a huge price tag that doesn’t bite you until much later. You may be saving time and money now, but make no mistake that you will be paying later with health care costs, medicines, treatments, and their associated pain and suffering.
Getting sick is not inevitable. You actually get to choose with every meal. Take a look at this.
Blue Zones and what they show us
Last night I watched the latest Netflix documentary on Blue Zones - Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones. Like all documentaries, it tries to break down a complex subject into easy-to-understand parts and in the process over-simplifies things. It does have some interesting points to consider.
For those who don’t know what a Blue Zone is, it’s an area (village, town, city) where many people are living past 100 years old while maintaining vibrant health. Many believe that the lifestyle of these centurions can teach us more about healthy eating and living than studying individual foods or activities.
It is beautiful and intriguing to see the vibrant faces of these amazing individuals. And it is no real surprise that while the details differ culturally from Blue Zone to Blue Zone, there are themes and similarities that lead to a long healthy life.
In every case, the centurions were not taking bottled supplements, following elaborate diet plans, or enrolled with a fitness guru. They were leading meaningful lives, surrounded by family and friends, and eating whole foods. Much of their food was from their own gardens and communities.
Gardening as a way of life
The deep connection between living a strong life and gardening is unmistakable.
People who remain healthy long into their elder years are people who remain connected to quality local food.
The details of that local diet differ from place to place. You might go so far as to say the details of the diet are close to irrelevant to their story. What matters is the food they are eating is growing in high quality soil (there were no bags of fertilizer; no bottles of Round-Up) and moves from their yard to their table. This is the way humans have eaten for thousands of years.
Foundationally there were foods any one of us could have guessed – beans, squash, corn, sweet potatoes, greens, grains, nuts - a familiar list to anyone who has considered what belongs in a list of healthy food.
A healthy diet is not a mystery. . . .unless you are a company trying to sell a meal plan.
Quality Food = Quality Life
I think the message of the Blue Zones is pretty loud and clear – local food leads to longer life. It is by no means the ONLY factor, but it is a consistent factor in longevity stories.
One of the backstories of this series is that these Blue Zones are dying out as “modern” Western culture invades their areas. This is an invasion we have witnessed across the globe. The spread of fast food and ultra-processed food-like meals destroys human health in every country and culture it invades. Why are we surprised? Why do we allow it to spread?
You cannot separate your “health” – the fundamental question of are you emotionally and physically well – from the food you consume to fuel your mind and body. The separation between mental health and physical health is an artifact of reductionist science. It does not exist in the real world. We are whole human beings and the mind does not exist without the body and vice verse.
Pay now or pay later
I would be being overly simplistic myself if I tried to tell you that food can cure everything wrong with you.
We know there are diseases that run genetically in families. We know there are environmental triggers for disease.
But so much of our wellbeing is actually within our control. The simple truth is that you get to choose with every meal.
Take this as an example. A friend of mine mentioned crab cakes over the holidays and my eyes lit up. It’s been AGES since I have had crab cakes – like not since a 2019 trip to the west coast of Vancouver Island. They are not hard to make, I thought.
On my shopping trip I first looked at the frozen food aisle – yup I was looking for a short cut. There was a bag there. But I paused and thought, seriously these are not hard to make. All I actually need that I don’t already have is a can of crab meat. I went to buy a can.
In the canned fish aisle there were a couple of brands of canned crab. I started reading the label. I expected crab, water and salt on the list. What I didn’t expect was an additional 4 to 6 preservatives listed including sulfites which I am allergic to. WTF? It is canned seasfood! Canning already preserves the food so why so many additives?
I could not find a single can of crab that wasn’t loaded with preservatives. The commercial point of this is to make the can last longer (years longer) on the shelf. Yuck.
In the end this turns out to be an example of why local is better. Because to eat crab where I live, I have to buy canned crab. And now, thanks to corporate greed, there isn’t a single can of crab meat that is not hopelessly full of preservatives.
Spoiler alert – I didn’t buy that crab or make crab cakes. What I will do, the next time I venture to the city (which won’t be any time soon), is visit a fresh fish shop there to get frozen crab.
Our food choices are both simple and not simple now. Anything processed needs to be eyed carefully for the damage it can do to our bodies vs the short term pleasure of eating a favorite food.
We need to start thinking of our food bills in terms of long term health care costs. Because we don’t have a health care system in North America. We have a sick-care system. And we have a food industry hell bent on making sure each one of us becomes a client of that sick-care.
Outlook for 2024
Here’s the thing. You get to choose what you eat.
Creating wellness. Creating vibrancy. Creating energetic bodies. Each one of us can do that within whatever cultural flavors we prefer.
In 2024, I plan on focusing The Naturalized Human on finding ways to help you bring that healthy food and healthy life into fruition.
Here’s what’s coming:
- More on starting a garden
- More on how to use your garden to create more of your very own local food
- A seed saving workshop for paying subscribers
- Completion of the mind-body-food connection for paying subscribers
- The latest research broken down into actions you can take
- More stories that illustrate how all of this comes together
I hope you will join me as a subscriber. Your support ensures I can deliver on all of that and much more.
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I have always said that hospitals cost a lot more than organic food!
Great post, as usual. I pay close attention at the grocery store and I'm pretty confident that it's LESS expensive to eat healthier, as long as you don't buy fancy, boxed and processed "healthy" foods. At least in my experience and observation.
Really it comes down to effort, not cost. People are unwilling to put in the effort. And that's fine sometimes. Tonight we're ordering pizza because we don't want to put in the effort to cook like we do, at least, five nights a week.