Eating Healthy Too Expensive?

Not one day has gone by without the news media discussing the overweight problem in the United States. Not only that, Mississippi has a bill, Bill no. 282, that if passed would make it illegal for state-licensed restaurants to serve over weight people. In the meantime, the United States government is urging people to eat more healthy foods such as whole grain breads and to cut back on carbohydrates, fats, red meat, and fast foods, such as the great American cheeseburger. Sounds fine, right? However, has anyone seen the prices on the healthy food that we should be eating? All that I can say is "I wasn't planning to buy the farm."

So I decided to start out eating healthy by buying a loaf of wheat bread. What, almost $4.00 a loaf, well perhaps it would be cheaper to bake my own. I'll use one of the recipes from the internet.

· Wheat Flour $5.29 a bag

· Vegetable Oil $2.19 a pt

· Yeast 3/$1.29, well that's reasonable

· Molasses $2.99

· Sugar, $2.69 a 5lb bag, need it anyhow

· Salt, have already

· Milk $ 4.28 a gallon

· Bread pans have

Total cost: $ 18.73 Forget It. I could buy 4 ½ loaves of whole wheat bread for the price of making my own; I think I'll buy a loaf of whole wheat bread. Wait! I'll purchase the white bread instead; it's only $.84 a loaf.

Perhaps, I could start by serving one healthy meal a week that should satisfy the government, besides I would be doing my part by encouraging good eating habits. I think that I will have marinated chicken, ride pilaf, fresh green beans, and a tossed salad for supper tonight. Hum, the chicken dish calls for cooking sherry. A friend of mine told me to use regular dry sherry in any recipe that called for cooking sherry. Regular dry sherry would work just as well and is not as salty. Since I only need one teaspoon of cooking sherry, I think I'll purchase the regular dry sherry which cost $4-5 a bottle. If I get regular sherry, then I can drink what is left, instead of placing the sherry a shelf or letting it go to waste. Total cost for the one meal is approximately $25.00. (I don't think so!)