Right next to the club where I play tennis is an amazing health food market. They have the most delicious smoothies, a fabulous bakery section chock full of goodies made without artificial colors, flavors, sweeteners, preservatives or trans fats. Their organic produce is beautiful and all the snacks for the kids are all natural with no crazy sounding chemicals in the ingredients.
For the past couple of months I have become a regular and I wish I could shop there for all my groceries. I love the whole experience, and I get a kick out of how mellow all the employees are. So Zen. They move slowly and with purpose as if they are filled with the peace and joy of the Buddha. My new pal Justin who works the juice and smoothie bar sees me walk in and my strawberry smoothie with soy milk and bee pollen is in the blender before I have a chance to utter a word. It's my own little oasis of calm, nestled in the heart of Jersey.
The only catch.... CHA-CHING!!
As I balanced the checkbook it became abundantly clear to me that my little healthy food addiction is going to put us in the poor house.
I did a little Google search and apparently I'm not the first blogger to write about this. (Damn, and here I thought I was so original and groundbreaking! )
There are a ton of great articles on the subject. Go ahead, do it, Google "high price of healthy food." About a million journalists and about 2 million bloggers have beat me to the punch.
One of the best and easiest to read articles I found was from Time Magazine, "Getting Real About the High Cost of Cheap Food."
The gist of the article is that it is just plain cheaper and easier to buy food that is bad for us.
Some possible solutions:
I could give up some things, like tennis, trips to Banana Republic or getting my hair highlighted every six weeks to finance my trips to the Health Fair, but I think we all know that I'm too shallow and selfish to do something that drastic.
I could get a job (doing what I don't know...maybe a stock girl at Whole Foods???) to pay for my new interest in pure, fresh, flavorful, cruelty free food.
I could build a greenhouse and a barn in the backyard and start growing my own veggies and harvesting my own milk and eggs.
or...I could get real and face the fact that I'm going to have to mix it up.
Some days we'll have to throw caution to the wind and eat chemically tainted apples, abused cows and piles of refined white sugar. We won't feel good about it, but at least we will be able to pay the mortgage every month.
When we start to get sluggish and chubby, we'll switch back to the healthy stuff.
There are tears in my eyes as I write this. I'm going to miss Justin and all the crunchy, easy going folks at the Health Food Market. Maybe it WOULD be worth it to have mousy brown grey streaked hair and STILL drink a smoothie every day. Maybe my neighbors would like the sound of mooing cows and clucking chickens waking them at the crack of dawn everyday. I'll bet they'd admire my commitment to healthy eating and would overlook the smell of manure wafting from my back yard. Maybe my new job could be farming my 50' X 150' lot and SELLING my bounty directly to the Health Fair.
This could be big. I wouldn't even need to play tennis because I'd be so buff from picking strawberries and bailing hay.
I think I'm onto something here.
To be continued....
For the past couple of months I have become a regular and I wish I could shop there for all my groceries. I love the whole experience, and I get a kick out of how mellow all the employees are. So Zen. They move slowly and with purpose as if they are filled with the peace and joy of the Buddha. My new pal Justin who works the juice and smoothie bar sees me walk in and my strawberry smoothie with soy milk and bee pollen is in the blender before I have a chance to utter a word. It's my own little oasis of calm, nestled in the heart of Jersey.
The only catch.... CHA-CHING!!
As I balanced the checkbook it became abundantly clear to me that my little healthy food addiction is going to put us in the poor house.
I did a little Google search and apparently I'm not the first blogger to write about this. (Damn, and here I thought I was so original and groundbreaking! )
There are a ton of great articles on the subject. Go ahead, do it, Google "high price of healthy food." About a million journalists and about 2 million bloggers have beat me to the punch.
One of the best and easiest to read articles I found was from Time Magazine, "Getting Real About the High Cost of Cheap Food."
The gist of the article is that it is just plain cheaper and easier to buy food that is bad for us.
Some possible solutions:
I could give up some things, like tennis, trips to Banana Republic or getting my hair highlighted every six weeks to finance my trips to the Health Fair, but I think we all know that I'm too shallow and selfish to do something that drastic.
I could get a job (doing what I don't know...maybe a stock girl at Whole Foods???) to pay for my new interest in pure, fresh, flavorful, cruelty free food.
I could build a greenhouse and a barn in the backyard and start growing my own veggies and harvesting my own milk and eggs.
or...I could get real and face the fact that I'm going to have to mix it up.
Some days we'll have to throw caution to the wind and eat chemically tainted apples, abused cows and piles of refined white sugar. We won't feel good about it, but at least we will be able to pay the mortgage every month.
When we start to get sluggish and chubby, we'll switch back to the healthy stuff.
There are tears in my eyes as I write this. I'm going to miss Justin and all the crunchy, easy going folks at the Health Food Market. Maybe it WOULD be worth it to have mousy brown grey streaked hair and STILL drink a smoothie every day. Maybe my neighbors would like the sound of mooing cows and clucking chickens waking them at the crack of dawn everyday. I'll bet they'd admire my commitment to healthy eating and would overlook the smell of manure wafting from my back yard. Maybe my new job could be farming my 50' X 150' lot and SELLING my bounty directly to the Health Fair.
This could be big. I wouldn't even need to play tennis because I'd be so buff from picking strawberries and bailing hay.
I think I'm onto something here.
To be continued....
5 comments:
is zen really a word? or a way to make us go oooohhh ahhhhhh LOL...I know what ya mean about eating healthier...I mean do i really wnna live on cucumbers and vadillas? but I will take your advice and google...yes I will...
yum - where ???
isn't is sad the the most easily available food is the worst for us? and it is because this is what our government has chosen to support.
also, i believe that all those healthy europeans we'd all like to be like spend waaay more on food than us americans.
of course you all know obesity is linked to SES. I say keep on treating yourself to those yummy smoothies and cut out some crap elsewhere.
i feel the same way....I want to buy every thing we eat at Fresh Market...however being healthy and living in a cardboard box under a bridge might get crowded....
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