Does Healthy Eating Cost More?

Posted by Christy On Friday, May 7, 2010 0 comments

I was a single mom and I fully understand how after an exhausting day it IS easier to go through a drive-thru on the way home and grab fast food for dinner. It is convenient and cheap. But if you put it into perspective, how much is this fast-food lifestyle really costing us?

The CDC estimate that one-third of all American children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes as a result of poor diet and lack of exercise.
If Americans continue to pack on pounds, obesity will cost the USA about $344 billion in medical-related expenses by 2018
By 2018, 21% of health care spending will be due to obesity related problems
An obese person will have an average of $8,315 in medical bills a year in 2018 compared with $5,855 for an adult at a healthy weight. That's a difference of $2,460.
According to the USDA, Americans spend less than 10% of their incomes on food, down from 18% in 1966. Shouldn't that statistic be going up instead of down?
Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%.

I could throw up a million statistics, but really all we have to do is look around. We are a chubby nation! This is a huge problem (no pun intended) that is costing us a great deal.

We've kind of dug ourselves into a hole. School lunches are a joke, both mom and dad have to work and are tired so they choose to pick up food instead of cooking, a tight budget calls for a bag of 99cent burgers, and if you live in a bad neighborhood - forget about finding good food. We've created a big mess that we have to get out of. There is no quick solution, but if we start making small changes in our families we may just be able to start a FOOD REVOLUTION.

We need to get behind people like this lady.

Yeah, nutritious food does cost more money initially, but what is the 'Western Diet' really costing you? How do you feel? As I get older, I realize how true those old sayings are - "You are what you eat" "An apple a day will keep the doctor away." I wish I had this knowledge when my kids were little. I failed to teach them to properly respect food and how to care for the body they were given. I can't go back and fix it, but I can do my part to help bring this message to other families.

The message is simple. We need to give our bodies what God intended it to have in order for it work properly.

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