The True Cost Of What We Eat

One thing I often hear when talking about proper nutrition is “I’d like to eat better… but it’s so expensive!”

What people overlook is it’s actually cheaper in the long run, and you get a better quality of life in the time in between.

To draw a crude analogy, at one point in my life I was making far more money than I do now. Back then I bought high quality clothing; even a simple solid colour T-shirt would set me back about $50. A decade later and many of those shirts still look new, while $10 ones fell apart a year or even just months after I bought them. In the short term one would be tempted to think “why pay so much more for this item, when that item does the job for less?”

Quality. When it comes to clothing, high quality stuff looks better and doesn’t break down as quickly. When it comes to food, high quality stuff often tastes better and you don’t break down as quickly.

As I’ve reported before on these pages, right now 2/3 of adults in North America are overweight, and 1/2 of those (or 1/3rd of the total adult population) are obese. Right now the US alone spends $125 billion treating the illnesses, symptoms, and pains brought on by all this fatness, and it’s only getting worse.

The US Military has seen obesity rates double since the invasion of Iraq began in 2003. "There's strong - and then there's Army strong" could become a slogan for durable waistband elastics.

The 800 pound twinkie eater in the room that no one wants to talk about is the fact that by 2020 the US will be spending about $344 billion in today’s dollars as more people get fat, and the fat kids and adults now get older while living with obesity.

$344 billion. Every. Year.

To put that in perspective, the entire military campaign in Iraq from the start of the invasion to present day is about $600 billion over seven years. That means the US is already spending more per year counteracting the effects off all the pork rind flavoured chips and deep fried beer they eat than they spend in the same amount of time on a full scale overseas war. And war ain’t cheap.

To think this cost is going to almost triple in 10 years is tough to wrap one’s head around, so let’s bring it down to human scale. When you’re far heavier than your body is biologically designed to be, you’re crushing joint cartilage, affecting blood flow, suffocating your organs in fat, and putting yourself at high risk for diabetes.

And that’s without mentioning outside costs, like paying more for clothing to fit around a larger waist, paying more for fuel to propel that extra mass around, likely buying a larger vehicle to be comfortable… I’ll stop now or we’ll be here all day.

The problem is we as humans have a highly refined sense of danger. It served us well when we were essentially naked apes wandering the savanna, but is so refined it has to do with dangers that are immediate or emotional. When we see something hunting us, or about to hit us with great force, our brain automatically sends a “there be owies ahead!” flash, and we respond. If the danger seems far off, we’re less likely to be worried about it because there seems to be a long time to react. That’s why people get hit by big things like trains; they seem a lot farther away than they really are.

Only on the emotional danger side that we seem able  to consider the long-term effects of a threat. Your lover is going to leave you? That’s going to suck. And likely for longer than physical pain.

When it comes to smoking, or the health consequences of being fat, or the costs of those health consequences, these unfortunately don’t fall within the normal emotional scope that picks up on danger. And, like trains, the problem doesn’t seem as big as it is until it hits you full-force.

Instead we rely on our rational mind to warn us of these types of dangers – the very same rational mind that is capable of rationalizing.

Something I often hear from overweight people, including myself when I was 240 lbs. is “I don’t look that much different than I did when I was [insert age or weight here]“. We’re lying to ourselves when we say that – but because it fits what we want to believe, the lie it appears to be true. Kind of like half of anything said by Gretchen Carlson or Keith Olbermann.

The only thing we can do is to train our rational mind to recognize the real dangers of being overweight and, instead of rationalizing away the problem, admit it and do something about it.

Yes, fresh veggies might cost a little more on the price tag than pizza pockets… but the real price tag comes later. And yes, if you’re used to high salt and high sugar content natural foods taste bland by comparison… but once you star eating right your palate will reset and the craving for the synthetic stuff will go away.

The best part is you’ll have more energy, you’ll move easier, breathe easier, bet a better night’s sleep, and be around longer to enjoy all of it.