Food for Less
Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Isa. 55:2, NKJV.
THE UNITED STATES Department of Agriculture did a study to determine which foods provide the most nutrients for the dollar spent. For all the nutrients listed, potatoes and the cereal groups provide equally well the most nutrition for the money. Coming in next were legumes. And fourth, green and leafy vegetables. Notice that all of these foods were part of God's original diet.
The poorest buy for the dollar was sugar. Next to sugar-or the second worst buy for your money-was the meat and fish group. This is not to say there is not some good nutrition in meat or fish, but for the dollar spent, it was quite expensive.
In 1993 an analysis was made of the cost of food in India for the nutrients gained. In India beef is cheaper than chicken. Fish, however, is very expensive. The same number of rupees spent for lentils as for beef provided 3.5 times more calories, 3.5 times more protein, 19 times more calcium, 6.5 times more iron, 7 times more potassium, 12.5 times more vitamin Bl, 3.6 times more riboflavin and 1.2 times more niacin than beef.
On the other hand, beef provided unhealthy saturated fat and was loaded with cholesterol, while the lentils had little fat and no cholesterol. The beef also had no carbohydrate and no fiber, which are essential to a healthy diet. A similar study was done in Latvia in 1993. Chicken was inexpensive. Yet grains and vegetables still had a great advantage over the chicken nutritionally for the money spent.
In summary, throughout the world the relative cost for nutrients purchased is high for meat and low for most plant foods. If getting the best buy for your money is important to you, God's original diet is by far the best. It is not only superior from the economic standpoint, but ideal for disease prevention. Why is it, then, that so many people spend wages for food that is nutritionally inferior when if they would eat what is good for them, the chances are that it would cost them less?
God asks you to be a faithful steward of what He has given you. The next time you go to the market, perhaps you should consider getting the most nutrition for your money and select a wide variety of plant-based foods. TOP
JOHN A. SCHARFFENBERG
Reading from Fit Forever. Kay Kuzma, Editor, copyright 2005 Review and Herald Publishing Association Used with Permission.