Do we have the healthy eating option?
Today's post is somewhat inspired by one of the prompt posts, and I think it's a genuinely important question that we need to ask ourselves and try to answer. Though the original prompt consisted of two questions, "Is healthy eating too expensive ?" and "Is healthy eating complicated ?". To answer these questions when I started comparing the healthy options, the first thing I realized was that,do we really have healthy eating options in the first place? They are expensive and complicated is the secondary question to answer. I am not sure how it is going around the world, but place where I live, the primary question is to have access to healthy options.
Factors that are affecting healthy eating options.
1. Adulterated Food.
If you are buying a product from the market that is processed food, then you will never be sure what is mixed in the processed food. Mixing of the other foreign elements in grinded spices is most common. Better Oils are mixed with substandard oils and list can go on. All this adulterated food material is not cheap as it is also sold on the same price as the pure food.
2. Altered food.
Maybe I am not using the right word here, but there are lot of food items that are produced by applying injection. Medicines/are injected in food items to get them bigger, or look brighter, or have more produce. In the end, these chemicals are also consumed by us when we consume the food.
3. Synthetic prepared food.
Have you heard that rice is made of plastic? So this is not even the edible material at all. One of the items i.e Indian Cottage Cheese that is created by chemicals and no edible materials. Did you know that even milk is created synthetically? These are the some of the common examples I know, and who knows what else is getting created synthetically.
4. Confusing Labels and advertisements.
What do you think about tagline like this "Better than Butter" in Butter Spread? The product that is much inferior than butter, priced almost what butter cost and getting advertised as "better than butter". If you are not reading the ingredients yourself and researching about them , I guess you might start eating butter spread as healthy alternative to butter.
5. Confusing food advice.
There are so many self-proclaimed nutritionist and dietician that can give advice on what should be eaten and what should not be eaten. I guess there advices are ased on their gut feeling and social media is good in spreading all kinds of information or misinformation. When you get advice that food "X" is not good, people replace it with "Y". Now "Y" is also unhealthy, since nobody talked about "Y" , now "Y" seems to be a healthier alternative. Think of replacing butter (because it full of fat and calories) with Jam i,e full of sugar and calories. Since no one told Jam is also not healthy so people think it is good alternative.
6. Finally, taste matters.
Sometimes we know that fruits are good but our taste buds go for cookies. We know soft drinks are not good but sometime we go for them instead of water. In some scenarios we ourselves are picking up the unhealthier choices to satisfy our taste buds.
My 2 cents.
It is hard to get the "healthier" food in pure form and in top of it one should be knowing about them is another challenge. If you able to eat fresh , able to get local produce that can be great. Local produce is not only cheaper than the healthier advertised labels in the market but it might be also cheaper than it.
So it is not like healthier is expensive in all cases , it is more of knowing that what is healthier and from where it can be sourced.
Posted Using INLEO
