How To Be Healthy When You’re Broke

Celebrities and the media are constantly spouting about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, one we can all aspire to.

Unfortunately for some people, that’s a dream that is way out of reach thanks to their bank balance.

It turns out that although money might be the root of all evil, it sure makes life easier. This means that when you’re battling just to make ends meet it’s hard to consider the quality of the food you’re putting on the table. To be honest, all you care about is the fact that you’ve managed it at all.

There is so much more to the challenge of staying healthy than meets the eye, but today we wanted to talk a little about the increased challenges of this when you’re also poor.

Society has a tendency to judge those who aren’t healthy, are overweight, or who are perceived as allowing their children to develop healthy lifestyles. But there’s more going on here than you think. Here are some of the problems that people from a lower socio-economic background face in the fight for health.

They Don’t Have Time

One of the reasons that some people are poorer than others is because they simply make less money. There are lots of reasons for this. They might be from higher unemployment areas, not have had the money to gain qualifications, or simply not be able to find a better job. Whatever way you spin it, the truth is that when you work for minimum wage, you need to work maximum hours just to get by.

So if you’re getting up at the crack of dawn, working an enormous day at something that’s likely very tiring, the last thing on your mind when you get home is cooking a meal for your family. That’s why so many lower-income families fall back on ready meals, microwaveable snacks and takeout. They feel like they have few other options.

Healthy Foods Cost More

We all know that there’s a step up in cost from normal vegetables to organic ones, but there might another cost increase you haven’t noticed. While cheap foods like 2-minute noodles, cup-a-soups, chips and similar are very cheap, vegetables, meats and healthy grains are much more expensive. For a family struggling just to get by it’s a challenge to even think about buying anything but the basics. Of course the problem with basic food is that it’s not really that healthy, which means that it’s not going to make it easy to feel good or lose weight.

There Are Other Hidden Costs

Takeout food might not seem like a smart choice for people on the surface, but it makes sense because it’s takes all the additional costs of cooking out of the equation. For families living from hand to mouth, one pay to the next, there are so many other costs to consider in cooking and eating healthy food. We’ve already talked about the cost of the food itself, but we also want to draw attention to the things you might not think about.

Ingredients that many people already have in their house like spices, oil and grains can really ramp up the cost of a grocery bill. So can investing in cooking appliances, pots and pans and even a decent stove.

When parents are trying to just keep a roof over their family’s heads, they’re less worried about all the other details, and that’s hardly something you can blame them for.

Next Page: Cooking Healthy On A Budget