This post is prompted by a post I saw yesterday on AngryTrainerFitness.com.  It's a blog/site I follow led by Alfonso Moretti Jr. His site is "the only site that’s dedicated to telling you the TRUTH and breaking down the fitness industry myths and lies" - Good enough for me.  There's a lot of crappy information out there from places trying to sell you something you don't need, something that won't work etc.  Alfonso does a great job of cutting through the BS and telling it like it is.

Anyhow, I often hear, and even think to myself that eating "healthy" is expensive.  I'm not getting into a post of organic vs non, free range vs caged etc.  Just the basics of eating what we know (or should know) is good for us vs. some of the crap that's out there.  I'm just going to take a look at a very basic meal I can make at home for super cheap vs. the "Mick"Double burger from a favorite fast food place.

As often as I can, I try to make my meals for the next day ahead of time.  I'll usually use what I can find in the house, but we almost always have on hand as staple foods some variety of lean meat and rice.  Last night I threw together the following three meals with items we had at home:  Chicken Breasts, Low-Sodium turkey breast, Brown Rice, Frozen Mixed Vegetables.  Out of the ingredients we had, I was able to make two meals consisting of 5.5oz of boiled chicken breast, 1 cup of rice and 2/3cup of mixed veggies and a third meal with 2oz chicken breast, 3oz of turkey breast and 2/3 cup of veggies.

These three meals took me about 25 minutes to put together from start to finish.  Each one has about 350 calories (the chicken, turkey & veggies has less since there is no rice), 35g of protein, 43g of carbs and only about 2g of fat.  Compare that to your favorite $1 burger that comes in at 390 calories, 19g of fat (more than 40% of the burger is fat), only 22g of protein and 33g of carbs.  Nutritionally they are pretty different, and when you factor in the amount of processing that goes into the burger vs cooking some basic food at home for yourself, the decision shouldn't be tough.

The cost of each of these three meals?  About $1.05 each (not including any salt/pepper, tiny bit of salted butter etc I might add).  The chicken breast is only $1.99/lb, the rice was insanely cheap on sale at just $0.09 per 1 cup serving and the veggies come in at about $0.42 per serving.  Cleary, this shows that eating basic, "healthy" food is really not very expensive in the grand scheme of things.  Of course I didn't factor in my time it took to cook, the amount of electricity used to cook and store the food, but I think you can get the point.  For me, it works and I'm willing to put in the time in the kitchen. 

That said, I'll have to remind myself of this next time I go out for a burger.  I do enjoy burgers, and we like to eat out once in a while.  Honestly, I don't worry about it much when we do, because I'm a huge believer in moderation when it comes to food.  I don't want to deprive myself of things I enjoy.  I just set reasonable limits and am perfectly fine with eating something "unhealthy" once in a while.  I just know to stop before it gets out of control and I wind up back at 300lbs :)