eating well when they are trying to starve us

Whether it is a true conspiracy as some of these threads, (well worth the read)

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...'

www.abovetopsecret.com...

implies or just by design to make money, in a time of fast food everywheres and the rising food cost, I believe that one is going to have to start choosing wiser to keep from starving. The above thread speaks about how people who are fat, are actually starving and suffering from malnutrition, due to their choices and what's available.

So I thought we could seek to educated one another on ways to get good nutrition and ways we ourselves seek to save money. No doubt about it the healthier stuff costs more and I am not talking about those packaged diet meals that are sometimes full of bad stuff for you and low calories.

If you have to have fast food which sometimes does happen due to time limitations and being in a situation where you can't cook, power is off at your house due to a storm or away from home seek to make healthier choices, such as subway or an actual family restaurant.

Cook brown rice instead of white, the brown does take more time to cook, but you will not get as hungry as you will afterward
if you eat white rice, brown rice takes longer to digest and you will feel fuller longer.

Eat whole grain noodles instead of white noodles, same reason as above and of course always choose whole grain breads over white, white breads have very little nutritional value whereas the brown whole grains does.

Switch to iced water or homemade iced tea sweetened with sugar (you know your favorite tea, hot water and sugar) and instead of soft drinks which are full of high fructose corn syrup as the sweetener, the real sugar in the homemade iced tea is immediately available to be used for energy whereas the high fructose corn syrup is metabolized differently and is immediately turned to fat where it is stored, stored fat is used only during times when your caloric intake is lower than your energy output.

High fructose corn syrup came into our diets in the 70's which is when the population started gaining weight and the incidence of heart disease and diabetes increased also. If you are not familiar with the cost of high fructose corn syrup on your body then do some research. And when you do the research and find studies that says it is not a bad thing, look up who paid for those studies. LOL

You must become a label reader and pay attention to what is in all of the fruit juices you buy, note where the stuff listed is, the higher up on the label the more of that stuff is in the product. It is ranked by the amount.

Many fruit juices which are supposed to be healthy for you are actually full of high fructose corn syrup and whether you believe high fructose sugars are bad or not, anytime any kind of sugars is one of the primary ingredients, that is not a good thing.

Seek to use fresh vegatables if available and you can afford it or buy frozen vegetables. I made frozen peas the other night and they were a lovely shade of green, the next night I fixed the canned peas (what can I say I love peas) and the canned peas were about 10 shades lighter green when I opened them, they had been cooked to death and the flavor seemed not as good to me.

Anyway if I am wrong on any of the above please inform me, I am not a dietician, but I did take some classes in college on the subject and raised three kids while poor, but I tried to make my food dollars count by trying to buy actual food. Hubby also raised a huge vegatabe garden every year and we gave away or sold the surplus.

My kids often felt deprived because they did not get too much fast food, but I could not afford it and I think due to that their healthier. Because I recognized that there would be a couple of days a week where I would not feel like cooking I would often bake two chickens and put one back in the freezer for later in the week or fix two pans of lasagna and freeze one, these small little things saved on the electric bill and helped a lot during those times when I was pushed and needed more convenience food.

Please share what you do to make healthier meals that have more nutritional value and keeping costs low. TIA







[edit on 16-4-2008 by goose]

hmm, buy locally is the best thing one can do, find your farmers market, luckily my city is close to several others including the largest one in Canada!, you can get lots of fresh fruits and veggies straight from the farmer / family themselves.

I don't really like the grocery stores despite myself working in one, most the food for lets say breaks and lunch are junk.