Do You Eat for Health or Taste?

When you eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, do you eat with your health in mind? Or do you eat food that tastes good and is filling? When you decide what you’re going to eat, do you focus on what will benefit your energy level and help you live longer?

There is a way to optimize your diet so you can get more done during the day and aid your personal longevity. It’s not by eating fast food for every meal or sitting in front of your TV at night binge-watching your favorite series while you’re munching on chips and drinking sugared drinks!

Probably the best way to choose foods is to ask yourself the question every time you go to the grocery store or open your refrigerator—is what I want to eat living or is it processed? We all can’t plant a garden and cut lettuce before dinner or pull radishes and eat them after we wash them off. We all can’t pick green beans, or pull out the carrots we’re going to slice, or pick the tomatoes we want to make sauce out of for spaghetti. But we can certainly purchase fresh, living fruits and vegetables at the grocery store!

But one thing you need to remember when you purchase fresh produce—all the lettuce, spinach, corn, beans, peppers, asparagus, mushrooms, potatoes, tomatoes, avocados, oranges, bananas, potatoes, and we can go on and on—are grown with all sorts of pesticides, herbicides and different kinds of fertilizers. Most, if not all, of these fruits and vegetables are washed before they’re sold in your grocery store’s produce department. But all of this fresh food still has traces of man-made chemicals. Who knows what havoc such chemicals will play on your body, especially after ingesting them for years?

One way to alleviate this concern about ingesting chemicals is to buy only organic food products. I can almost hear the complaints already—“But organic fruits and vegetables are more expensive!” This is indeed a concern, especially as prices keep climbing for everything we buy. If you make a careful check, however, you’ll discover that organic produce is just a little more expensive than the regular produce that’s sold. Here is a comparison of some common produce everyone buys from my local grocery store—

5 pound bag of regular carrots - $3.59

5 pound bag of organic carrots - $4.99

Regular bananas - $.59 per pound

Organic bananas - $.69 per pound

On the vine regular tomatoes - $1.79 per pound

On the vine organic tomatoes - $2.79 per pound

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So you can see that yes, organic produce is generally more expensive than regular produce, but not by much. You can eat this food with the confidence that you’re not ingesting chemicals that can cause problems in your body over time. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought organic food tastes better!

I know some people who are so serious about eating only organic, living food that they have gone totally vegan. They have even reached the point where they will eat only raw organic fruits and vegetables. That may be their thing, but it certainly isn’t mine. You also need to remember that if you don’t take supplements, there are certain vitamins that are very difficult to get with a vegan diet. I’m also aware of some folks who eat a vegan diet during the day but certain meats in the evening.

So what does your regular, daily diet look like? Are you willing to change? Do you want to feel better, have more energy, and possibly live longer?  There are ways to do such things, starting with what you eat!

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