Time and Money Costs of Fast Food Addiction
One of the arguments against stopping a fast food addiction has to do with money, finances and time-savings. So it’s important to address this facet of fast food addiction head-on with real facts. We are what we eat, as they say, and if we eat fast food, that means that our bodies suffer health-wise, so in order to speak about the cost of eating fast food versus the cost of eating healthy food, we have to consider the cost of healthcare and how our healthcare expenditures in terms of time and money are affected by an addiction to fast food.
The Real Cost of Fast Food Addiction
Fast food recipes vary from country to country depending on the laws in each of those places. For example, bromide in foods and drinks is outlawed in most developed nations of the world because it is so harmful to human health, but in the United States, bromide is still legal. In fact, bromide and bromine-containing foods and drugs are ubiquitous. There’s bromide / bromine in the water supply in some places in the United States. Bromine is used to disinfect swimming pools (in place of chlorine, a much safer and healthier option) and worst of all, it’s used in bromide-containing insecticides that are sprayed on food crops. Click here to read more about over-the-counter cough syrups and prescription drugs that contain bromide.But why is this fact important when we’re talking about fast food cost vs. the cost of healthy food?
The United States is the only developed country in the world that does not have a subsidized healthcare system. This means that health is a commodity that can be bought and sold. The government does not mediate on behalf of the healthy of its people in the U.S. Rather, healthcare is paid for completely out-of-pocket by U.S. citizens. Let me say this in a different way: healthcare is not regarded as a sacred thing that is priceless by the U.S. government. Health costs something and health is for sale. In a country where sickness is profitable because health can be bought and sold without government restriction, industries like Big Food and Big Pharma work hard to recruit people (children and babies especially) into the healthcare system as early as possible.
In all other developed nations, the burden of healthcare costs is carried at least partially by the government. This motivates the government to pass laws to ensure that its citizens are reasonably healthy. Governments in countries where healthcare is subsidized want to keep healthcare costs as low as possible. So fast food in some countries is not as toxic as it is in the U.S.
This doesn’t mean that fast food in Australia or Canada isn’t still horrible for human health, but in order to really understand the financial ramifications of eating fast food, you have to look not just at the cost of the food, but also the cost of healthcare in the country you live in. Healthcare, after all, tends to be a high cost, even in countries where healthcare is subsidized. If you aren’t paying directly for at least a portion of your healthcare every month, then you probably have to wait a lot of time to see a doctor and get treatment when you’re really sick. There’s always a trade-off like that in conventional medicine and if you’re eating fast food, you’re directly tethered to conventional medicine. Fast food is where people purchase or buy into “sickness” in the name of convenience. Clinics and hospitals are where people can then purchase “health” or at least the semblance of health. The fast food machine and the healthcare machine are both located in the same factory and they work together. You can’t eat fast food and expect to not end up in place for sick people at some point.
As we noted above, in a country like the U.S. where healthcare is not subsidized, health can be bought and sold without restrictions and without any kind of protection for consumers. Health can be withheld or delayed in favor of producing profits from a population of people. Health can be manipulated in a population of people so that the companies that sell health can make more money. So now, think about Big Food and its relationship to fast food restaurants. Big Food and fast food are essentially the same thing. And Big Food and Big Pharma work together closely. So you can imagine how these industries might be able to manufacture profitable diseases through something addictive like fast food.
So again, in order to think about the actual cost of eating fast food, you have to think about how it will impact your health. The impact on your health, though, needs to be considered in terms of lost work hours, inability to achieve goals and dreams, as well as the cost of healthcare itself. How much time will you “lose” as a result of being ill, feeling tired, laying awake in the middle of the night worrying about having a major health issue, not able to think clearly, being a bad mood, or just sitting in a doctor’s office waiting to be seen? You might need to consider not just the cost of your health, but the cost of your family’s health if you all tend to eat fast food. You have to consider how much time you’ll have to dedicate to your child’s health needs or your spouse’s / partner’s health needs if they’re also eating fast food. It’s a substantial cost in terms of dollars, but also in terms of time? Do you really save time by eating fast food? And what would you do with all the time that you lose as a result of eating fast food?
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Does it save time to eat fast food?
As we mentioned above, if you live in a country where your healthcare is totally subsidized, you probably have to wait a long time to receive specialized, life-saving treatments. In the time that you wait for treatment, your body gets sicker and the riskthat you’ll die or be seriously hurt by disease gets higher. In other countries, where the government subsidizes part of healthcare costs, you probably also have to wait to see a good doctor, but that depends. There’s a balance in these countries between the out-of-pocket cost of healthcare and the amount of time you have to wait to get good treatment. In countries where healthcare is totally subsidized and paid for by the government, healthcare can be hard to access. So basically, if you can’t pay for your own healthcare out-of-pocket without some form of insurance or government subsidies, you rely completely on the healthcare system that’s headquartered in the United States – we call it “conventional medicine” – and it was designed to make you sick and keep you dependent on the system so that you’ll regularly pay dividends into Big Pharma.Fast food is essentially its own realm of existence. In this realm, you belong to the healthcare system. Big Pharma and Big Food have you on a leash and if they wish to make more money off of your body, they simply change the ingredients in fast food. Big Food and Big Pharma are supported by the FDA. In fact, the FDA exists primarily to support the interests of Big Food and Big Pharma. Big Ag belongs to this realm too, but let’s keep things simple and just focus on Big Food and Big Pharma for now. In order to escape from this realm of fast food hell, you have to stop eating at fast food restaurants. If you want to disengage from this realm of feeling sick mentally and physically, of being poor because you can’t trust your body to stay healthy and you can’t trust your mind to come up with viable solutions for your life’s issues, you have to start by changing your diet.
I’m not just talking about staying away from places like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Arby’s, Carl’s Junior, and other fast food restaurants but also places like Applebee’s, the Black Eyed Pea, and all of those big franchises that buy and use frozen junk foods in bulk so that they can pay a lot less to feed customers. You have to wake up and realize that this realm of fast food and sickness isn’t for you anymore. Find real hamburgers made from organic, grass-fed beef and happy cows or stop eating beef. Find chickens that are fed quality food themselves and raised in a humane way. Seek out real food and where you find real food, you’ll find a very different world both inside of yourself and outside of yourself.
Fast food and Big Food are essentially the same beast. Fast food is where Big Food distributes its most profitable products. Big Food works closely with Big Pharma to make sure that the final result of both industries is profits. So you might do well to think about each moment that you spend waiting to receive a fast food order and each moment eating that fast food as roughly equivalent to sitting in a hospital or doctor’s office. Every human body is different so it’s hard to say exactly how much time that your fast food habit will cause you to spend at the doctor’s office, but you should know that this is one of the most important purposes of fast food. Fast food is designed to make you sick. You go and spend money on fast food and you spend time on fast food and then you go to the doctor and spend time sitting at a doctor’s office worrying about what kind of illness you or a family member has. Is it worth it? Is this really what “convenience” looks like and feels like?
We all know that waiting for a doctor can take a lot of time. And we also all know that we might be in a lot of pain and agony as we wait. So you can’t really just tally the time when you’re thinking about the so-called “convenience” of fast food. Not every second of your life is made of the same perception of time, after all. If you have a bleeding ulcer, for example, every second that passes will seem like an eternity until the blood loss is under control is set and the bloody vomit and diarrhea stops. On the other hand, if you’re eating hamburger from a fast food restaurant, you might really enjoy it, but only for about 2-3 minutes. Those 2-3 minutes might be really orgasmic, but – is the pleasure worth the 2-3 minutes of agonizing pain and worry? Are these two experiences of pleasure and pain equal in the sense that the pleasure is worth the pain?
How much time does it take to prepare a healthy meal?
It doesn’t take long. There are billions or trillions of recipes for healthy foods, but if you’ve never really cooked your own meals, you need to find easy recipes with just a few ingredients at first. Set aside about 20 minutes to prepare healthy meals every day. If you have a very busy schedule, prepare all of your meals at the same time each day and then use tools to make it possible to heat them up or throw the ingredients together just before a meal.Your work schedule will play a role in how you prepare healthy meals. Slow-cookers, for example, can be used to prepare a meal in the morning that you’ll eat later at night after you’ve returned home from work. You might also want to learn how to prepare salads with fresh fruits and vegetables. Smoothies and fresh fruit juices can also simplify your initial efforts at making healthy meals. Having a deep freeze can make it possible for you to spend a weekend making frozen, healthy, homemade meals for yourself and your family.
Start with simple recipes if you’re new to cooking.
How much does it cost to prepare a healthy meal?
When my husband and I took our first steps toward breaking a fast food addiction, we ate a lot of dried beans and brown rice. Organic dried beans and brown rice are extremely cheap and yet healthy. They’re the basis for a lot of Mexican dishes which tend to be easy to prepare. If you figure out how to make dried beans (it’s easy) and brown rice (also easy), you can take these ingredients and prepare a wide range of dishes. If you don’t like dried, cooked beans, or cooked rice, then consider working with a healthy, non-brominated pasta and make Italian dishes instead. If you like Asian dishes, work with rice noodles and fresh vegetables as the basic element in dishes. Start simple and start cheap. These are cheap ingredients that can be used to make a multitude of dishes.In many areas of the world, produce is expensive. The United States is definitely a country where the cost of fruits and vegetables is high in comparison to the cost of fast food. But you have to remember that the cost of fast food is not the only cost associated with eating fast food. If you eat fast food, you’re also going to spend more on healthcare. The entire system is designed to produce big profits by getting people hooked on fast food so that they end up sick and dependent on chronic care through conventional medicine. Plan to spend more on high quality foods, but if you don’t have the budget for that at first, buy ingredients like beans and rice in bulk. Make your own Mexican salsas at home using fresh ingredients. This way, you can easily avoid refined sugars and use honey or stevia as a sweetener instead.
A healthy meal will cost more than fast food meals if you live in a developed country. The United States is the worst country in terms of its support of healthy choices because the government doesn’t have to pay anything when citizens make unhealthy choices. So the cost of preparing a healthy meal varies from country to country according to whether or not the government is harmed by poor food choices by its citizens.
As you begin to break a fast food addiction, you’ll have more energy overall which will make it easier to prepare your own food at home and also to make money to buy healthy food at the grocery store. I speak from experience on this fact as someone who had fibromyalgia and who couldn’t even walk for part of my 20s, but who feels quite healthy and energetic as I near my 50s. A person in her 20s should have more energy than a person in her 50s, shouldn’t she? Yes! But today, I eat healthy and I limit my exposure to toxic chemicals as much as possible. It makes a huge difference in terms of the amount of energy that I have and how healthy I am. When you have more energy and greater clarity in terms of your ability to think and reason, money problems become easier to solve. Prioritize healthy food choices over “convenience” and your life will change in a dramatically positive way.
