Good Food Costs More

After learning I had high blood pressure and hearing a stern warning from my doctor, I embarked some time ago on a quest to accomplish three dietary goals; 1) a reduction in weight, 2) elimination of all spurious salt and 3) a farewell to all my favorite meats, eggs and poultry in an effort to get my cholesterol under control. This didn’t leave me with much to eat. Maybe a limp stalk of celery and other assorted vegetables. I was amazed at the amount of salt in everything I had taken for granted. Breads, chips, canned soups and even most packaged goods have liberal amounts of sodium. My new dietary guideline for salt restricted me to just 1500 milligrams of salt per day. Imagine my consternation when I began to actually read the nutritional labels on food. A cup of tomato soup can easily contain 900 milligrams of sodium. That’s well over half my daily allowance right there! Bummer. Maintaining my cholesterol intake to below 100 milligrams per day also proved to be difficult. (I’m genetically disposed to be a meat and potatoes kind of guy). In looking for alternatives, one of my friends had pointed out that there are all kinds of low salt, low cholesterol products out there. I would just have to ferret them out.

It didn’t take me long to figure out a couple of things concerning packaging. Labels may say the food is low fat, low sodium, sodium free, fat free, heart health, zero trans fat… Well – you get the picture. You have to become a nutritionist just to figure it all out. The second thing that became apparent is this; healthy food costs more! A lot more! Even though it may be cheaper to make, you the consumer, will pay through the nose. It’s like the food industry could care less about health if it threatens profits. The sad truth is that foods do taste better if they are full of fats, sugar and salt! Big corporations know this, so that is what they place on the shelves and that is what we buy. When absolutely forced to, they may begrudgingly offer a healthier substitute, but will charge exorbitant fees in the process. (A case in point is an 8 ounce bag of salt free potato chips that sells at a local store for $3.19 versus an 11 ounce bag for $3 bucks)! Hey, the only difference is the lack of salt. Right?

My final gripe is the way many stores will attempt to hide the good stuff around the store. I would be all in favor of some form of label, a bright orange color perhaps, that shouts ‘Low Salt’ or ‘No cholesterol’. This would make my weekly ordeal so much more painless. OK. I’m through for now. I have to go shopping.