A familiar comment heard at nutrition programs is “I can’t afford to eat healthy.” While healthier diets do cost more, the difference is smaller than many people might expect. On average, a day’s healthy diet pattern costs about $1.50 more per day than an unhealthy one. That $1.50/day would increase food costs for one person by about $550 per year, which does represent a financial burden for some families. On the other hand, that price difference is very small in comparison to the economic costs of diet-related illness.
To illustrate, look at the cost of medical interventions for some chronic diseases that are diet-related. These are national averages, according to healthcarebluebook.com:
• Aorta-Iliac-Femur Bypass — $36,439
• Coronary Artery Bypass Grafting — $39,572
• Gastric Bypass — $18,468
• Cardiac Stent — $20,510
• Cystoscopy (stent insertion) — $2,676
• Colon Surgery — $17,794
• Stroke — $6,582
Like the old Fram commercial suggested, consistently choosing lower quality food items will cost you more financially in the end. “You can pay me now, or pay me later” was how an auto mechanic explained to his customer that he could (1) pay to replace the oil and filter now, or (2) pay a far larger sum for the replacement of the vehicle’s engine later.
In the same way that oil and gas are fuel for a vehicle, food is fuel for you. You would never throw grease into your car’s engine or pop into the gas tank. But we think nothing of throwing those same two foods into our own personal engines. 2010 dietary guidelines challenged Americans to eat less sugar and saturated fat and more vitamin D, calcium, dietary fiber, and potassium, which is present in high amounts in fruits, vegetables, and beans. People who spent the least amount on their food, an average of $6.77 a day, were the furthest from hitting the government’s daily guidelines.
Two suggestions for making healthy food more financially viable are to:
1–Plant a garden (you knew this was coming). Gail Langellotto, Oregon State Master Gardener Coordinator recently published a blog on the cost of starting a vegetable garden versus yield and cost saving. She came up with six studies that reported eight observations. With each garden, she looked at the difference between yield and cost (difference = yield – cost).
Altogether, the gardens in those studies had an average value of $0.74 per square foot of garden area, and a median value of $0.62 per square foot of garden area. For a modest-sized garden, that’s a return of $148 in the first year, and for larger gardens, a return of $370-$518. The plant foods that generated the greatest cost-savings if you grew them yourself were salad greens, tomatoes, beets, broccoli, potatoes, and strawberries.
2—Choose plant foods at the grocery store that give you the most bang for your buck. Watermelon, bananas, apples, pears, pineapple and peaches are fruits that tend to run less than the national average of $0.28 per serving. Lower cost vegetables (under $0.21 average) include potatoes, lettuce/salad, eggplant, prepared cooking greens, summer squash, carrots and tomatillos.
Bottom Line
In the same way that it’s hard to convince a twenty-something that they should be putting money away for retirement, it’s difficult to convince people that days/months/years of poor food choices will one day affect their health. If the consequences of bad eating were more immediate, we would all take heed. But health outcomes that are decades in the making don’t scare us. We think because we look OK on the outside that everything is copacetic on the inside.
Solutions to this problem can be found at both the individual and government level. Congress needs to find a way to offer subsidies or financial support for growing and buying vegetables and fruits. And then we need to choose to eat them.
