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Try a couple of bananas i do it almost everyday.They are the among the cheapest of all fruits.
 
Can you still eat healthy on a low budget? I've always heard people blaming obesity for low income. Bad foods are supposedly cheaper and help keep you fuller for longer. But when you look at potatoes, rices and even pastas they give you energy and fill you up. So what is your opinion on the matter? Can you eat healthy on a low amount of money? Why and why not?

Before I write anything, please take a look at Mohamed Makkawy http://www.greatestphysiques.com/mohamed-makkawy/

Hot-Legendary-Bodybuilder-Mohamed-Makkawy-007.jpg

I apologise in advance if I'm writing or replying to the above question out of context. By "context" I'm referring to a country, a people, a culture, things of that nature. In other words, I'm replying without the need to restrict myself to a certain nation or culture. So why have I included Mohamed Makkawy here, or why am I using him in particular for my example? It's because of two points.

1. I knew of Makkawy when he was still in Egypt back in 1976, because I was living there myself for about a year before arriving in Australia in 1977. Mohamed won the 1976 IFBB Mr. Universe short class, and I saw an interview of him in Arabic discussing what he does.

2. As an 11 year old kid, I remember him talking about the way he used to peel the skin off broad beans/fava beans, the most popular food in the whole of Egypt. Fava beans belong to the legumes family, a cheap food anywhere in the world. Meat, chicken (and almost any fleshy protein food) was out of the reach of the common man in Egypt. A fleshy protein food was an accompaniment to a main dish instead of being the main dish itself. I remember people having government coupons, standing in line to get their chicken or beef and the like for the week. Dairy and eggs were affordable, but rice, legumes were the staples of the general population.

Putting that question in context now after writing the above. Is the legumes food group expensive in Australia? Absolutely not. In fact it's one of the cheapest foods money can buy (I'm not referring to canned beans but loose legumes cooked at home). Just as the fava bean and red lentil are the #1 legumes to an Egyptian, or a chick pea and brown lentil to a Lebanese, or the black bean to a Mexican, so (I believe) is the red kidney bean is to an Australian. Now I don't really know if Aussies actually eat legumes on a regular basis as some poorer countries do, and if not, then I wouldn't fully blame them for not doing so, and this has nothing to do with economics and all to do with the way (and here's where the different cultures come into it), our microbiome is designed, based on what we regularly eat. In other words, a man who eats plenty of meat and relies less on other foods, has a different (not better of worse but a different) gut flora than someone who focuses heavily on vegetable protein sources coming from legumes.

So now the discussion takes bit of a shift form focusing solely on economics, and a bit more on what can or can't this person's digestive system accept and tolerate without having some issues.

Does the government need to educate with some TV ads perhaps, on cheap yet highly nutritious foods? I don't know the answer to that. Is it more of a cultural issue than an economic issue? Maybe, because this question wouldn't arise in poorer countries where fleshy protein foods are only (or at least most of the time are only) an accompaniment to a main dish.

I'll leave you with an example of what I'm talking about with one Lebanese dish. Beans (be they red kidney or white beans or borlotti), are cooked in a very large pot with tomatoes/tomato paste, some fried coriander and garlic, and to that very large pot, (say) 1/4 of a kilo of diced meat is added. With that some rice is cooked on the side. That same family (like my family for example), would have a medium pot, with more than that 1/4 kg of diced meat in there, because meat is much more affordable here in Oz than it is in Lebanon for example. By the way, this pot feeds the whole family for that day's lunch, so the meat (whatever the amount) would be shared between all. Legumes, vegetables, and olive oil, play a big part in any Mediterranean diet.
 
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In the long term it's so much cheaper to eat healthy food over junk food. Getting sick from poor lifestyle and diet choices is very expensive! I think it all comes down to making informed decisions- education is key... unfortunately it's not this simple.
 
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