The Cost of Life

Five-a-day?... More like Survive the day

Inflationary pressure has continually pushed the prices of food up over the years to the extent that now a third of Britain's adults are knowingly eating unhealthily.The British Heart Foundation, which polled 2,444 adults, found 39% sacrificed health benefits for cost when doing their grocery shopping. A quarter of adults openly confessed to not having a bought a single portion of fresh fruit or vegetables in the last week.

Two thirds said they wanted to eat more healthily, but nearly half of these said that the cost of a balanced diet was simply too inconvenient. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) claims that people can still eat healthily on a small budget but the average basket shop at one of the "big four" supermarkets suggest otherwise (£26.30). The BHF are concerned that some people are turning to cheap convenience foods instead such as ready meals. Their high levels of saturated fat and salt are deterrents against long life.

There are loads of meat substitutes out there such as tofu, tempeh, seitan, legumes, lentils and most notably quorn. But are these substitutes any much cheaper than ready meals? NO! That's just taking into account retail price and not the actual cost of consuming gas to cook these foods. This is why many adults have had to resort to the quick-fix solution of ready meals. Unlike, a good such as a watch, you can't wait for new affordable food to come out onto the market. You get hungry, craved food and those demands quickly have to be met.

The BHF says people should think about inexpensive ways to make healthy meal choices, such as using canned or frozen fruit and vegetables which may be cheaper alternatives to fresh produce.

Likewise, vegetables tend to cost less than meat so, the charity suggests, people could try adding more vegetables to meat-based meals. The meat will go further saving money and it'll help cut down on saturated fat too, it says.

These measures and this topic need to be taken seriously. Take the economy of the USA for example, cheap GM foods are made widely available for people of all different levels of incomes. These greater amounts of fats and salts are entering the Americans of tomorrow, making them prone to type 2 diabetes and heart disease. This has had a negative impact on US life expectancy in recent years.