Rather than indulging in what’s cheap, convenient, and addictive, it serves us to reach for real food. This can become a slippery slope toward obsessive clean eating, so I want to caution you to keep it simple: eat real food, avoid fake food, listen to your body, and keep life easy and pleasurable whenever possible. Real food doesn’t mean eating only chia seeds and kale. Real food includes well-sourced, pastured meats, wild fish, carbs from starchy tubers, every vegetable ever, plentiful healthy fats (e.g., grass-fed ghee, coconut oil, avocado oil, fatty cuts of pastured meats), and eating fruit when you’re craving sweets. Even though this is not how most of us typically eat, if you want to be healthier than the average person (who suffers from chronic inflammatory conditions and mental health issues), it’s worth making counter-mainstream food choices.
If you feel like real food is too expensive (and I agree, it’s $$$), look at it this way: being sick is WAY more expensive than eating well. You pay at the farm or you pay at the pharmacy. If you’re too stretched to afford real food, consider rearranging your budget slightly so you can allocate some funds for better food. And if all else fails, real food can be as cheap as frozen veggies and a pot of rice and beans.
