WHY QUICK, CHEAP FOOD IS ACTUALLY MORE EXPENSIVE

I just read a very good article from the Huffington Post:

Why Quick, Cheap Food is Actually More Expensive

The concept here is basically that one cannot only consider the short-term costs of food.  It's not about how much you pay at the cash register, but what that food will "cost" you over your lifetime.  TIME Magazine actually ran an article that talked about this same concept about a year ago:

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food 

There are some great take-away points from both articles (which I'll include later in my FAVORITE EXCERPTS section), but each of these articles can be summed up in the following way:

You will spend both time and money on your health, and you get to choose whether your time and money are spent proactively or reactively.

Now I'm not going to steal credit for that quote.  I read it from one of Mike Boyle's blog posts, but I'm not sure if he was the creator.

FAVORITE EXCERPTS

The odd paradox is that food insecurity--not knowing where the next meal is coming from or not having enough money to adequately feed your family--leads to obesity, diabetes and chronic disease.

And most of those meals eaten at home are produced in plants, not grown on plants, are from a food chemist's lab, not a farmer's field.

Unhealthy food is cheaper because our government's policies support its production. We're spending nearly $30 billion a year to subsidize corn and soy production. Where do those foods go? Into our food supply as high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soybean oil (trans fats), that are the foundation of almost all fast food and processed foods that are "manufactured" by the food industry.

Corn and soy are also used to feed cattle for the production of meat and dairy. In fact, 70 percent of the wheat, corn and soy farmed in this country is used to feed animals used for our food. The world's cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people--more than the entire human population on Earth!

...one expert has estimated that healthcare costs related to obesity are $118 billion per year. That's nearly 12 percent of total healthcare expenditures--and more than twice that caused by smoking! Seventy-two percent of Americans are overweight and over one third are medically obese. One in three children born today will be diabetic in their lifetime and the life expectancy of our population is declining for the first time in human history.

As these numbers prove, the costs of eating fast, junk, and processed foods are often deferred until later. And that's the key point: When you go to McDonald's for a cheap burger and fries, you might immediately compare that lower price to whole organic foods which are more expensive in the short term. But the total cost isn't reflected in how much you pay for your meal in the immediate moment, it's the cumulative cost of what those decisions cost you over a lifetime.