Eating healthy on the cheap can be tough, but if you stock your kitchen with the healthy cheap essentials it should save a great deal in the long run.

I buy certain staples like organic cheese and organic butter when they are on sale and keep them in the freezer.

Consider buying your organic meats, eggs, and fish in bulk and store in a larger freezer out in the garage.

Remember we have to pay for our health one way or another. Prevention is key. The food that graces your kitchen table is the best disease prevention money can buy. President Obama thinks that we will never fix the National Deficit until we fix the Health Care Crisis, I think we will never fix the Health Care Crisis until we fix the crisis at our kitchen tables.

Here are my favorite cheap health foods:

Flax seeds
Oatmeal
Brown Rice
Apples
Yams/Sweet potatoes
Broccoli
Spinach
Canned tomatoes
Carrots
Bananas

Tips I have learned from the Whole Foods School of Hard Knocks:

-Avoid buying a bunch of healthy stuff you don’t know how to prepare. Nothing is more wasteful than a bunch of rotting random veggies in your fridge. Instead, commit to making one new healthy recipe per week, experiment with new ingredients and recipes gradually to avoid wasting valuable grocery dollars. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the different grain options, make friends with them one recipe at a time.

-Drink a smoothie in place of one meal each day. You can easily get two servings of fruits out of the way by doing so. Buy frozen fruit when it is on sale, or save money each summer by picking and freezing your own.

-Shop at Farmer’s Markets for produce once weekly when possible. Plan meals around the foods that are in season, rely heavily on fresh herbs, pepper, garlic, and onions to season your food in lieu of organic sea salt.

-Buy frozen chicken breasts and fish on sale.

-Shop organic when possible, buy “The Dirty Dozen” organic, and save your organic dollars on the “Foods Least Likely to Contain Pesticides”.

-Avoid canned foods and opt for frozen. Always keep a little frozen broccoli, spincach, cauliflower, and mixed veggies in the freezer. You can quickly dress up any recipe by adding some steamed frozen veggies. Add one cup of frozen veggies to every frozen meal you prepare, most veggies will mix in nicely with the sauce. The fiber in the vegetables will keep you feeling full longer.

Remember that eating healthy is an investment in your current and long term health.

By Dr. Nicole Sundene

Thanks to MSN Health & Fitness contributor Jean Weiss, a list of the most medically questionable and harmful additives in everyday foods has been compiled to educate the masses. There are several that may be recognizable due to news reports and popular opinion, but others may be new to some and worthy of notation.

1. Sodium nitrite
2. BHA & BHT
3. Propyl gallate
4. Monosodium glutamate
5. Trans fats
6. Aspartame
7. Acesulfame-K
8. Food colorings (Blue & , Red , Green , Yellow )
9. Olestra
10. Potassium bromate
11. White sugar
12. Sodium chloride

There are many reasons that some people choose to shop and eat a completely organic range of foods, but the primary reason seems to center around the additives in various non-organic food items. Those additives have been studied and linked to various diseases, and instead of taking the chance that unhealthy preservatives and flavorings might be integrated into grocery store items, people often opt for the strictly organic route so as to avoid them altogether.

But everyone cannot afford the prices of organic foods or the time it takes to shop at specialty markets for them. Thus, becoming informed about the additives in everyday food items can make for an easier shopping experience and healthier items being ingested by everyone. In addition, a mass boycott of foods that contain such additives could prompt food manufacturers to remove such harmful ingredients from their products in the future.

HealthNews Dozen
Top 12 Food Additives to Remove From Your Diet
By Jennifer Newell
Health News, June 29, 2009
Straight to the Source

“We demand the systematic publication of the results of these tests, which we could only obtain on a case by case basis by taking legal action… It [the study] brings to light a significant underestimation of the initial signs of diseases like cancer and diseases of the hormonal, immune, nervous and reproductive systems, among others… The health crises may be more important than the international financial crisis because of the lack of transparency of the regulators.”

Source: An alarming study published in the Journal of Biological Science this week points toward serious health hazards from genetically engineered foods and pesticides. The research, conducted by scientists from France, Italy, New Zealand, U.K. and U.S., corroborates the decade-long criticism by public interest organizations such as the Organic Consumers Association, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth that European Food Safety bureaucrats and the U.S. FDA have used unreliable tests to assess the safety of food and products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs). GMOs are now found in more than 80% of (non-organic) foods sold in conventional grocery stores in the U.S., as well as the majority of animal feed in the EU.

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Summer means strawberry season throughout the northern United States. Fresh, juicy and sweet berries can be readily found in markets and farm stands. They make excellent snacks and desserts.
Strawberries are rich sources of phenolic antioxidants that can help:
1. reverse inflammation
2. aid in weight loss
3. reduce the risk of chronic disease.

Strawberry extracts may have direct anti-inflammatory effects, helping to inhibit the activation of genes and enzymes that promote inflammation.
Most of this benefit is due to another group of phenolic antioxidants called anthocyanins, which give ripe strawberries their lush red color. Anthocyanins may decrease the risk of heart disease and stroke by protecting blood vessels from the effects of wear and tear.
The ellagic acid and anthocyanins found in strawberries may aid weight loss in at least three ways:
1. Chronic inflammation blocks the hormones involved in keeping you lean. Foods like strawberries help restore normal function to weight-reducing hormones.
2. Anthocyanins can actually increase the body’s production of a hormone called adiponectin, which stimulates your metabolism and suppresses your appetite.

3. Both ellagic acid and anthocyanins can slow the rate of digestion of starchy foods, controlling the rise in blood sugar that follows a starchy meal. This effect can help control blood sugar in people with adult-onset (Type 2) diabetes.
You can eat fresh or frozen strawberries as a snack or dessert anytime. Add plain, fat-free organic yogurt for a creamy topping and chopped walnuts or ground flax seed for crunchiness.
I recommend organically grown strawberries, besides the fact that conventional strawberries have one of the highest amounts of herbicides and pesticides, organic strawberries have been shown to have higher levels of vitamin C.

The Pesticide Action Network has launched a new online searchable database designed to make the public problem of pesticide exposure visible and more understandable. Whether you want to find out what’s in your apple juice, milk, peanut butter, or bottled water, this innovative tool links pesticide food residue data with the toxicology for each chemical, making this information easily searchable for the first time.

Bookmark this link! and share it with everyone you know!

My nutritional philosophy is, “If it has a label, don’t eat it.”

That said, I realize that’s not always realistic for all of us all of the time. We like to have convenience foods to help us deal with our time crunches, and that’s OK. But I recommend that you read the labels. Choose packaged foods made with real-food ingredients over those with factory-created components.

Be a smart consumer and look for things that are going to help your body thrive. When you pick something up, ask yourself the question: “Is this something my great grandmother would have eaten?” If the answer is “no,” you should probably put it back. Things like frozen blueberries or canned black beans can still be good for you, as long as they don’t contain a bunch of unhealthy and unnecessary ingredients.

STOCKING A HEALTHY PANTRY

Now that you know what to avoid, go to your cabinets, refrigerator, and freezer and toss out any foods that contain the ingredients on the avoid list.

Here’s a list of foods that you can replace in your pantry with healthier foods.

· Refined White Sugar – replace with stevia, agave nectar, honey, brown rice syrup, or Rapadura Whole Cane Organic Unrefined Sugar

· Margarine – replace with organic real butter

· Table Salt – replace with natural Celtic Sea Salt

· Skippy, Jif or other Peanut Butter – replace with natural peanut butter with only two ingredients: peanuts and salt.

· Canned veggies/fruit – eat fresh fruits and veggies

· Soft drinks – good clean water, sparkling water, herbal teas

· Pasta – replace with brown rice pasta, quinoa pasta, or whole wheat pasta if your not sensitive to gluten or wheat.

· White Flour – replace with 100% whole wheat flour, or whole wheat pastry flour or other non-gluten flours.

· White Bread – replace with a good 100% whole grain bread. The ingredient list should be short with only a few ingredients such as whole wheat flour, yeast, honey, salt.

· Crackers – replace with whole grain crackers – try Ak-Mak, Mary’s Gone Crackers, or Back to Nature Harvest Whole Wheats

· Breakfast Cereals – Go with a whole grain one, look for short ingredient lists.

Written by Dee McCaffrey, CDC

One of the most widely used pesticides in the world has been linked to brain, intestinal and heart defects in fetuses, according to the results of a scientific investigation released Monday. According to the study authors, the doses of herbicide used in the study “were much lower than the levels used in the fumigations,” and so the situation “is much more serious”.

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Monosodium glutamate (MSG) is one of the most common and hazardous food additives on the market. MSG is reportedly more toxic than alcohol, tobacco and many drugs. MSG is an excitotoxin, so it tricks your brain into wanting to eat more and more foods containing the ingredient, even if you are already full. Side effects of MSG include: obesity, eye damage, headaches, depression, fatigue and disorientation. Food manufacturers know that health-conscious consumers try to avoid MSG, so it is oftentimes not listed in a product’s ingredients. MSG is banned in organic foods.

Here’s a list of ingredients that ALWAYS contain MSG:

Autolyzed Yeast — Calcium Caseinate — Gelatin Glutamate — Glutamic Acid — Hydrolyzed Protein — Monopotassium Glutamate — Monosodium Glutamate — Sodium Caseinate — Textured Protein — Yeast Extract — Yeast Food — Yeast Nutrient

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