When convenience food is not convenient
Regina Murphy
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
A fat kid is not a healthy kid. Kids with poor nutrition are often obese, because what they are eating is not healthy. If you’re giving to the food pantry, please keep that in mind.
As was recently reported in the Kansas City Star, “Some studies show that nearly one third of the American children who are overweight are low-income.”
Why? Let’s assume you have ten dollars to spend on food. At the local burger joint you can get five junior cheeseburgers with fries and you don’t have to cook.
However, what if you took your ten dollars to the store and bought hamburger, buns, cheese and potatoes? Just looking at the sale papers from last week, I could get 1.5 pounds ground chuck, eight hamburger buns, a half-pound of cheese, ten pounds of russet potatoes and two tomatoes, make SIX larger cheeseburgers, with a slice of tomato on them and homemade fries.
I would control the fat content and freshness, and have 48 cents extra to buy a piece of fruit or an onion, as well as leftover onion, tomato, potato and cheese to go towards other dishes. Love that math!
Convenience food isn’t always convenient. It can be fast, it can be cheap, it can be reasonable as a limited part of your diet, but if you are eating on fast food three, four or even five times a week, you are probably doing damage to your body. You may think you’re saving money, but you don’t get the nutrition you need to stay healthy, and you don’t actually get as much food as you think. Eventually, your ten dollars requires a $200 trip to the hospital when your arteries clog up.
Let’s look at the innocent, thoroughly useful junior cheeseburger. On average, there are 16 g fat (7 of which are saturated), 45 mg cholesterol, 780 mg sodium (33% of your daily allowance, and that’s before you have french fries!), 31 g carbohydrates and 18 g protein.
The same burger made at home, according to calorieking.com, would be 13 g fat (4.6 g saturated), 73 mg cholesterol, 221 mg sodium (only 9% of the DRV), 14 g carbohydrates and 25 entire grams of protein. It’s a no-brainer!
Keeping that in mind, let’s look at what’s on sale this week so you can not only make great, healthy, inexpensive choices for your family, you can pick up some extra stuff for the Salvation Army or Abundant Harvest while you’re at it. Remember: “food insecurity” is just a nice way of saying “HUNGRY”.
Price Chopper and the Country Marts have some things that are really needed by the Salvation Army right now. Peter Pan peanut butter is $1.50 a jar and the same goes for Welch’s grape jelly. One jar of each will make about 18 sandwiches. Add a sliced banana for extra filler and nutrition. The ten dollars referenced above would buy two each of the peanut butter and jelly, two loaves of dollar bread at Dillons, a couple of pounds of bananas and make about 44 nutritious sandwiches. Save even more by getting the 99-cent jelly from Always Save.
Vienna sausages are two for 89 cents--they can be chopped into some pork and beans, or beans and rice to add protein and are great snacks for the backpack. Campbell’s Chunky soups are $2, which can be stretched with beans, rice or just about any canned vegetable. Best Choice salad dressing is $1.29, and the dinner mixes are 99 cents. What would be fabulous for the kids when they get home from school are the four-pack Kraft Handi-Snacks puddings at 99 cents each. That’s 25 cents a serving, they’re made with real milk and some are fat-free!
What about perishables? At those three stores, I see that Abundant Harvest could make do with a few of the 8 oz. Hiland Dairy sour creams at 79 cents apiece, the two-pound bag of carrots is a fantastic 59 cents, Olathe sweet corn is three ears for a dollar, and the yellow onions are 50 cents a pound. Salvation Army can handle some fresh products, too, if you want to take things there. Other fresh items that seem particularly well-priced are broccoli crowns (99 cents for 14 oz.), mushrooms (79 cents for 8 oz.), and celery for 79 cents, all at Aldi’s.
Dillon’s is having more “10 for $10” sales, including the 16 ounce Kroger sour cream, loaves of bread, cans of Manwich, Kroger frozen vegetables and Bar S Jumbo frankfurters. Although it’s not food, the 120 count of Kleenex for 88 cents is an absolute bargain, and very helpful with the kiddos.
I am excited to see whole fryers at Dillon’s for 87 cents a pound. You can do so much with a whole chicken! If you roast it from scratch, then you have whole pieces for one meal, slices for sandwiches, bits and pieces for salad and the bones and other bits to boil and make a rich chicken stock for soup. A three pound chicken could end up making four meals for four.
If you hit the sales, I estimate this dish would cost about $7.50 and feed six people. Add a pound of smoked sausage for $2.29. Why, that’s almost $10!
BROCCOLI CHEESE SOUP
2 chicken bouillon cubes
1 qt. water
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced carrots
2 1/2 cup diced potatoes
1 1/2 lbs. fresh broccoli
2 cans cream of chicken soup
1 lb. Velveeta cheese, cubed
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
Slowly saute carrots, onions, celery and broccoli in a little butter in a large soup pan. Do not brown. Add water, bouillon cubes and potatoes and cook until tender. Add cream of chicken soup and cheese. Heat until melted. Stir in Worcestershire sauce. If it seems too thick, stir in a little milk.
Our community has really helped keep the food agencies afloat during these lean summer months. We’re all in it together, so, good job!