Examining Excuses for Childhood Obesity: Healthy Food is Too Expensive

When I wrote Childhood Obesity: Are Parents Solely Responsible (Part 1) a couple of weeks ago, my initial plan was to make it a series of three to five articles, but I've decided, why bother? What's the point when the number one stated hurdle (even before the recession) both on and off the internet is..."Healthy foods are too expensive." Regardless of what I write, despite all the information available to us to prove the decline in the health of our Nation's children...finances will always be used as an excuse for not feeding our children and ourselves better.

While it may be hard to swallow, and my husband and I are guilty of allowing lack of money to be our number one excuse too, I'm going to argue that we CAN or COULD afford to feed our children and ourselves healthier...if we chose to.

Survival of the fittest takes on a whole other meaning nowadays. Early man use to scrounge, scrape and risk their lives for life giving sustenance. All that mattered to them was food and shelter. Both are still coveted by human beings, but the value of food has diminished. Instead, we are choosing to put having stuff and doing stuff above not just our own health, but the health of our children. I'm not referring to the poverty stricken, I'm referring to we who fall into the middle class America category.

We say we "can't afford" fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, grains and other unprocessed foods because processed foods like Hamburger Helper, chips and other prepackaged foods are cheaper. True, healthy foods are pricier, but could we afford them if we wanted? Yes. Look through your bills; aside from basic living necessities like electricity, phone, gas, auto, insurance, water, clothing, rent, and mortgage, what else is staring at you? Cable? Internet? Credit card debt for materialistic household goods, vacations, dining, etc.?

Do we need more than three television channels? No. Do we need the highest speed internet available? No. Do we need the latest and greatest gizmos and gadgets? No. Do we need to go out to eat? No. Do we need to go on vacations we cannot afford? No. We say we "can't afford" to eat better, yet we have money for cosmetics, magazines and the latest fashions. Somehow we're able to find the means to afford what we don't need, yes? How? By sacrificing our families physical well-being by axing quality foods.

Americans have big egos. We want the biggest vehicles and best homes money can buy, and that's fine. However, we're known for taking on more than we can handle. Instead of buying cars and homes at or below our means, we're willing to go over our heads and buy without regard to the possibility of having a lower income some day. We also love to fill our homes with STUFF (see video of George Carlin at the end of this article). There's nothing wrong with wanting a nice home with nice items on display, but again, do we really need so much? No.

Another area that hinders us from eating healthier is that we do not think about the future. We live too much in the here and now, which would be fine if we thought about our health later in life. We want our children to have the best life has to offer. We cannot imagine a life without Nickelodeon, the Cartoon Network, soccer moms and various extra-curricular lessons--we've forgotten how to be a family, we've forgotten how to live and be a community (how can we know our neighbors when after working hours are spent elsewhere)?

For the most part, gone are the simpler days when children and adults in neighborhoods gathered together for a game of street baseball, kickball and football on the weekends. Gone are the days when neighborhood kids came together to make mud pies and stare at the clouds or do nothing but be alone with their own thoughts. We've turned into people who feel the best in life must be paid for at the expense of neglecting our health. Our children will have fond memories of their childhood bought fun when they reach their latter years...while suffering in pain and forking out dough for their health problems, just like we are now.

We complain about the high cost of health insurance and doctor visits, but really, we deserve blame too. If more Americans were eating healthier, we wouldn't be so damn sick and medical costs would nary be a concern. Consider this: The China Study is a book about a twenty-year study done by Cornell University comparing the diet of Asian villagers to those in Western countries. While in America cases of heart disease, cancer and diabetes are skyrocketing, they are rare in Asian villagers. What do they eat? Plant-based foods, and fish once or twice a week. And, in villages where red-meat is consumed (even modest amounts), the percentage of cases of the same diseases that plague us, start to go up.

I'm preaching to the choir here, believe me. I'm not advocating an overnight radical lifestyle change. The whole point of this article was to give all of us an opportunity to think deeply about the excuse of not eat healthy because it's too expensive...are our excuses justified?

Photo Credit: Fitness Spirit