who can afford to be healthy?

i went shopping today.

it’s something i do on a regular basis, but when i got home i realised i had come home with virtually nothing i’d gone to the shop to buy. to start with, all i wanted was something for lunch, and something for dinner. with my wife away, this is a daily challenge for me – one you might very well laugh at but it’s been a long time since i had to buy just for myself.

i went there with a simple shopping list: some bread and salad for a sandwich and some fruit for snack and follow this with some vegies for dinner. being a vegetarian, that’s not a hard list, really.

however, when i got there i was rummaging around the vegies and quickly realising this wasn’t as easy as i thought. not so much that they were all difficult to choose, but i can’t for the life of me see why i need to pay $1.50 – $2.00 for a single apple or banana. that just seems absurd. and what’s with a half a rockmelon costing more than a tub of icecream?

i thought i might just go with the spaghetti and leave it at that, but the cost of the spaghetti sauce (one without corn starch which for me always conjures images of unwashed men scraping up jellied leftovers from large rusty pots – i don’t know why), fair boggles the mind and that’s before you start looking at cheese. to purchase a dab of mozzerella, i’d have to prostitute myself for a few weeks and perhaps sell a kidney. i could go with bocconcini, but i’d have to buy a tub the size of my fridge just to use a few balls in my pasta. i looked at getting some stir fry vegetables, but i’d have to buy everything by the bunch and it would be easier to wander down to the thai restaurant and get them to cook it up for me for half the price.

do you see where i’m going with this?

i can’t understand why it’s so cheap to buy junkfood, or processed food (with corn starch added for extra thick goo to coat your veins with), while buying fresh produce of which these processed foods are supposedly made of costs more. somehow i don’t think i’m paying so much for a few vegies simply beause they are “special” vegies. i don’t think those vegies which ended up in processed tins were less vegetably than those vegies delivered to the supermarket for me to buy unprocessed – though hardly fresh these days as they’re often kept refridgerated for quite some incredible lengths of time, apparently.

and is that what i’m paying for? the freezing of vegies which were fresh a few weeks ago but which rot faster than an infected tooth when i get them home? i bought a stack of chinese vegies the other week and by the next day they were limp and unusable. and, because they were an asian vegetable, it cost me three times more than simple cauliflower – which came with free frozen grubs.

so. i buy the vegies i need for one evening (not including the fruit and the lunch), and it can cost me around ten dollars.

or, i can buy a microwave dinner for under six bucks, mcdonalds for under five, and two-minute noodles and a stack of chocolate and snacks for under ten. junk food is both simpler to cook and cheaper to buy – yet it is made of the very vegies i’m not able to afford! how can this be? explain it to me, please!

it’s no wonder that western countries are growing fatter and fatter. we’re unable to get fresh fruit and veg without re-mortgaging our homes. we end up eating garbage, and because it’s not very nutritious, our body sends us messages saying we need to eat some more. so we do. and we keep on eating. it’s an insane little system. i just can’t get it wrapped around my head.

i sometimes go through these little health moments. i look to getting fit, and actually doing something more active than sitting online all the time. but then i see the cost of getting fit and i realise i just can’t afford it. you can’t accuse me of not doing enough walking – i stand up all day – but sometimes you feel you just need something a little extra. i always wanted to do tai chi or something. but the cost of this kind of thing can be quite staggering. no way you’re going to get me into a gym, but even if you did the costs look quite reasonable until you realise that to use any of the good facilities, you have to fork out more than what it seems, so that’s going to crack your credit card even more.

and i could drink some 100% fruit juice, or even juice it myself. i could drink some healthy tonics or whatever the trend is, but quite frankly sugar-filled cordial is even cheaper. lots cheaper. and it supposedly has “real fruit juice” in it anyway. coca-cola is a lot cheaper than all of these drinks.

i’ve decided i simply can’t afford to be healthy and active. i will sit here instead and wait for my stomach to explode.

Tags: health, lifestyle, ranting