All:
First, a lot of folks are claiming that fruit & veg are expensive by citing expensive fruit & veg
. Strawberries are expensive, and they're also loaded with fungicides; red peppers, likewise, are pricey, and are among the
12 Most Pesticide-Contaminated crops. (Note that citrus fruits should also be on this list, and were only not included on the assumption that you would discard the peel -- which you may not want to do (see below)). By contrast, broccoli, cauliflower, oranges (again, see below), onions, and apples tend to be inexpensive (tho' not dirt cheap like grains, etc) and are extremely healthy.
While whole grains are cheap Calorie sources and are not
junk food, their nutrient density per Calorie is really dramatically lower than veg, and they contain nearly no important phytochemicals. They're also high-glycemic compared to veg, and have some
actual antinutritional properties. They're OK if yoiu're eating ad lib, but if you're on CR you really don't have the space in your diet to waste on them.
No one has mentioned buying
frozen veggies, which are often cheaper than fresh, are very convenient, and don't lead to wastage thru' spoilage. It's widely believed that frozen veg are nutritionally inferior to fresh, but this really isn't true: the comparisons contrast veg taken essentially fresh off of the fields to frozen, but in the real world nutrients are lost in the long chain from field to warehouse to supermarket to your plate. Unless you're buying straight from the field, the difference is negligible -- esp if your alternative is buying (ugh) grains instead.
Another really important suggestion that no one has mentioned is shopping at Asian grocery stores. You'll see a lot of exotic veggies, some of them extremely healthful, for cheap. Notably, look for
amaranth greens (sold as "Yin choy," "Een choy," or "Red sen/shen choy"),
yu choy/choy sum, a variety of turnip greens,
napa cabbage, and dried or fresh shiitake mushrooms. But heck, if you're eating ad lib, and if you're otherwise not going to eat veg, just
pick anything cheap and vegetable-ish. (It is somewhat sensible to be a bit more concerned about pesticides when buying Asian produce, but (a) increasingly the stuff in mainstream grocery stores comes from "riskier" countries anyway due to globalization, (b) FDA/CFSAN, USDA, and buyer pressure is rapidly improving this problem, © you can lower your risk by rinsing them off in very dilute, chemically 'clean' dishwashing liquid, such as
Nature Clean or
Seventh Generation followed by a pure water rinse, and above all (d) again, it is
much more important to eat lots of fruits and vegetables than to worry about pesticides! (That is: organic is generally to be preferred, but with the possible exception of the "dirty dozen" op cit, conventional veggies are much, much healthier than eating something else -- organic grain and grain products, eg.
Also, many people unthinkingly
throw out a lot of valuable plant food, senselessly decreasing the amount of valuable food per dollar expended (and wasting resources and filling up landfill). Eg, they buy salad greens, use the leaves for salad and then trim out and discard the stems. Instead, these can be cut up and used in stirfries, or microwave-steamed (save the water!) with a little lemon or lime juice and olive oil -- lovely! Another example: orange, lemon, and lime peels deliver a delicious, intense citrus flavor if eaten
with the fruit (ie, chop the whole orange in quarters or sixths, and pop a slice in your mouth), and they are packed with the phytochemical limonene -- which has great epidemiological and animal evidence as an anticancer agent, and would've been in OrthoCore except the company couldn't get a stable powder form thereof. However, these must be bought organic, as you're otherwise going to get a relatively high pesticide burden.
Better-quality salsas (low- to no added sugar -- not Tostito's or other crap mostly for nacho chips) should be counted as a vegetable (heck, their lycopene is more bioavailable than fresh tomatoes, and the epidemiology on cooked tomato products is stronger), and are a low-Calorie, nutrient-packed way to make salads more interesting. Safeway/Genuardi's sells big (1.89 L IIRC) bottles of pretty good stuff for $5, and have more exotic salsas (chipotle and cilantro, eg) in smaller (500 mL) bottles that often go on sale for ~$2.
Finally: shop at Trader Joe's! They have a lot of very cheap produce (fresh and frozen), much of it organic, as well as nuts, eggwhites (an extremely high-quality, versatile, zero-saturated-fat, zero-cholesterol prrotein source), organic milk, etc. Bulk stores (Costco, BJs, and even (ugh) Wal-Mart are also good sources for many cheap, common, conventional veggies and fruits.
-Michael
Edited by Michael, 30 June 2006 - 02:21 PM.
LongeCity
