Feeding Your Family Healthy Food on a Budget

By feeding your family healthy food you help your family and save money on health care costs.

According to a 2013 UCS report, The $11 Trillion Dollar Reward, increasing our consumption of fruits and vegetables could save more than 100,000 lives and $17 billion in health care costs from heart disease each year.

Here are some of the more eye-opening findings from the report:

• Medical costs of treating heart disease and stroke were estimated at $94 billion in 2010, and this figure is projected to nearly triple by 2030.
• If Americans ate just one more serving of fruits or vegetables per day, this would save more than 30,000 lives and $5 billion in medical costs each year.
• If Americans were to follow current USDA recommendations for daily consumption of fruits and vegetables, those numbers would go up to more than 127,000 lives and $17 billion saved.
• According to methods commonly used by economists, the increased longevity that would result if Americans ate the recommended amount of fruits and vegetables is worth over $11 trillion.

Investing in Healthy Food Will Save Lives and Dollars

These numbers are alarming and yet most parents don’t know how much they can affect their child’s health and create healthy habits that will continue well into adulthood.

I can remember when I was about 8 or 9 years old sitting down to dinner and the meal on the plate was usually chicken or beef, rice or potato dish, and a vegetable. The food was much simpler at that time. The packaged foods did not contain a lot of ingredients and they definitely did not contain the additives that we see in most of our foods today and the word organic did not even exist. As I grew up and was living on my own I always made sure to follow my Mom’s model for a healthy meal chicken or beef, rice or potato, and vegetables.

Choose My Plate

That model worked for me for a couple of years until I began eating more fast food and that is when I starting coming down with allergies. After a couple of years working with doctors who suggested shots and allergy pills which never solved the problem. The only thing that eliminated my allergies was to avoid eating at fast food restaurants and eliminate processed foods from my diet.

If you knew the food you were feeding your family was harmful you would want to know, right?

If you could learn some simple techniques or easy ways to get your family to eat healthy foods and include more fruits and vegetables in their diet and save money it would make a big difference wouldn’t it?

Some people think that all our food is screened and protected by the Food and Drug Administration and therefore don’t want to look at the ingredients, they just accept what it says on the package as truth. But other people have found a way to save their family from multiple doctors visits and many of the health issues facing families today like: