SCIENCE: Trying to Eat Healthily on a Zero-$ Budget is Worse than Puberty

Back when I was just starting puberty, I had what I never knew was the luxury of all luxuries. A well-balanced diet.

Every day, my mom would pack me a half-sandwich made with some sort of protein, a piece of fruit, maybe snack crackers, a dessert-y item, like pudding, gummy snacks, or what have you, and a bottled water (this was back in the 90s, my global-warming guilt slash concerns hadn't kicked in yet). With no effort of my own at all (stay-at-home-moms making lunch for you is CLUTCH), I ingested a healthy number of both vitamins and calories, followed later by a healthy(ish) snack and a hearty dinner WITH vegetable sides.

I would say on an average day now, when it's up to me, I eat a bowl of oatmeal at breakfast, bacon/egg/cheese sandwich for lunch, and tuna salad for dinner. One of those sandwiches can be rotated out with a gardenburger, maybe, or bologna and cheese.

There are no vegetable sides.

This guaranteed-scurvy is due to a number of reasons, with two major ones heading the list a.) my poverty and b.) my laziness. What I failed to realize is that fresh fruit and vegetables...are PRICEY. Some of them aren't, but then you'd better eat up, because they rot. Watching something that I equate directly to my money wither, pucker, and eventually die is like a knife in my stomach (though that could be the steady diet of cheese products...)

And the constant grocery shopping! Assuming I do get my money's worth by scarfing all these "fresh foods," that means going to the grocery store two, maybe three times a week to keep up with my own demand. Only recently have I learned that, as a non-working woman, that is exactly what my mother did the ENTIRE TIME I was growing up. Holy hell! I got things to DO.

Things like visit the doctor...something is making me feel so run down lately, just like my body isn't quite in peak physical condition, know what I mean? I wonder what that could possibly be...

-Posted by Jilly