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.

Learn more

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

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

Learn more

Corn, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, crystalline fructose, HFCSPundit George Will has joined the ranks of those who have noticed that the U.S. government’s treatment of corn is wrecking the health of Americans.

Ever since Nixon, government policy has been to sell large quantities of calories as cheaply as possible — especially calories coming from corn. Now, a quarter of the 45,000 items in the average supermarket contain processed corn, often in the form of high-fructose corn syrup.

The result?

Rates of chronic diseases like cancer and Type 2 diabetes are much higher today than they were in 1900. Type 2 diabetes is a $100 billion a year consequence of, among other things, obesity related to a corn-based diet. Four of the top 10 causes of American deaths — coronary heart disease, diabetes, stroke and cancer – have well-established links to diet as well.

Making matters worse, by now you may have seen “crystalline fructose” as an ingredient in beverages.

If you’ve been wondering what it was, it turns out that crystalline fructose “is produced by allowing the fructose to crystallize from a fructose-enriched corn syrup.” This information is from the sugar producers themselves. So, it is made from corn syrup, and not only corn syrup, but “fructose enriched” corn syrup. Sounds like another name for high fructose corn syrup.

Fructose and glucose are metabolized differently in the body. Glucose is metabolized in every cell in the body, but all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. When a diet includes a large amount of fructose, then it creates a fatty liver, and even cirrhosis. Crystalline Fructose contains a 99.5 percent minimum of fructose assay, which is an even higher percentage of fructose than regular HFCS!

Another ingredient of crystalline fructose is arsenic. Additional chemical compounds that make up crystalline fructose are heavy metals, lead, and chloride.

Sources:

Smokinchoices March 10, 2009

Cleaner Plate Club May 23, 2008

The Fit Shack March 28, 2007

Restaurants that refill your cup every time you empty it might not be offering you such a great deal after all — not when you count the calories that you consume from the beverage bonanza. For instance, each large glass of commercial iced tea contains about 180 calories. One refill brings you to 360 calories — more than six oreo cookies.

It’s easy to ignore the calories in drinks for the simple reason that drinks tend not to fill you up. One reason so many diets fail may be that dieters don’t restrict the liquid calories they consume. Although sugary and alcoholic drinks can make you fat, they don’t necessarily make you feel sated, so you just keep drinking while eating, taking in almost as many liquid calories as you do calories from food.

In fact, studies show that while food calories “register” in the brain, limiting the amount of food you desire, liquid calories somehow don’t register. As you eat solid food, nerves in the stomach and intestine release regulators that tell the brain you’re full, while hunger hormones (called ghrelin) become suppressed. But liquids move more quickly through the digestive system and fail to trigger the same signals.

“When the number and type of calories are the same, the calories in liquid form won’t suppress ghrelin as effectively as if the same calories were in solid form,” explains Dr. David E. Cummings of the University of Washington.

As I’ve written before, overall caloric consumption has been steadily increasing over the past three decades, with a concomitant increase in obesity rates. By 2003, the average person consumed 523 more calories on a daily basis than the average person consumed in 1970 — and beverages account for about half of those added calories! Consider that drink portion sizes have increased from an average of 13 ounces to 20 ounces. Look at the explosion of high-calorie sweet drinks — especially coffee drinks — the lattes and cappuccinos that so many of us unthinkingly down daily. Consider all the sports drinks and flavored vitamin waters that seem so innocent — but that add plenty of calories and not much else. (The Center for Science in the Public Interest has a current suit filed against Coca Cola for making “unsubstantiated and deceptive” advertising claims that Vitamin Water offers health benefits.) Think about the fact that red wine has become standard daily fare in many households that eschewed wine a few decades ago. It’s not just about soda anymore.

When people drink more, they usually don’t compensate by moderating the amount of food they eat, according to a 2007 study. The study found that when served an 18-ounce drink, subjects drank more than when served 12 ounces — in other words, they drank what was given to them no matter the size and no matter what type of drink it was — and they ate the same amount of food no matter the calorie-count or volume of their beverage. Similarly, the Harvard Nurses’ Study of 50,000 women found that when subjects drank one sugar-sweetened beverage per day, they didn’t regulate their food intake to compensate, but rather, consumed an average of 358 extra calories daily and gained a significant amount of weight.

Here are some calorie facts about popular drinks:

A bottle of vitamin-water contains 125 calories
An 8-oz glass of red wine has 170 calories
A 16-oz café latte has 260 calories
A 12 oz fruit smoothie has 300 calories
A Starbucks frappuccino contains 470 calories.

Of course, not all liquid calories are created equal. Some drinks, particularly sodas and sports drinks, add not only calories, but typically also deliver nasty amounts of sugar, sodium, high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colorings and preservatives, pesticides (a 2008 study in the UK found that soft drinks contained 300 times the level of pesticides allowed in tap water), phosphoric acid, chemical additives such as benzene (known to cause leukemia), and caffeine. The cumulative effect of drinking such beverages extends far beyond expanding the waistline — soft drinks expedite the development of diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, hypertension, kidney disease, and so on.

While diet sodas may look like a better deal with their zero-calorie offerings, the dangerous artificial sweeteners they contain have been linked to a host of malignant conditions including breast cancer, lymphoma, shrunken thymus glands, enlarged liver and kidneys, miscarriages, Parkinson’s, fibromyalgia, lupus, seizures, memory loss, and tremors. They offer you nothing nutritionally, plus, as I’ve written before, they ultimately make you fatter than their sugared counterparts, in spite of the lack of calories.

Fruit and vegetable juices, on the other hand, contain over 100 calories a glass, but if they’re freshly squeezed and organic, they’re a boon to your health, a marvelous way to get nutritious calories. And fruit smoothies, while laden with calories, fill you up because of their thickness, so they don’t necessarily have the same fattening effect as, for instance, a mocha latte or even a glass of lemonade made from concentrate (with a startling 791 calories per 12-oz glass). A smoothie can be a satisfying lunch, but not so much a glass of lemonade.

Ultimately, it’s best not to drink with meals at all since excessive liquids dilute your digestive juices and enzymes. But when drinking between meals for hydration, pure water is best — especially if you’re watching your weight. The point is that it pays to remain aware of what you drink and in what quantity you drink it if you want to remain svelte and healthy. Keep in mind it only takes 12 extra calories a day to add one pound a year — a frightening concept if you’re having a 470-calorie frappucino every day.

Jon Barron