"Healthy food is too expensive. My budget can't handle it."

"Healthy food is too expensive. My budget can't handle it." I can't tell you how many times I have heard this and it is simply not true. While the price of a salad may be more than the price of a double cheeseburger at fast food restaurants, the price of healthy food at the grocery store (if you watch your portion sizes) is not much more (if it is more at all). Since I started watching my calories and eliminating processed foods from my diet, I have noticed that I do not choose to go to fast food restaurants. If I have to eat out, I would prefer a sit down restaurant where they have more healthy choices and fresher foods. However, I don't eat out much at all. A great way to save money is to bring your lunch to work and eat at home as much as possible. Once I began eliminating the processed foods and fast foods, I noticed a huge improvement in the way I felt. "Why is healthy food so important to me now??" When I started looking at the high number of people that I know who have been diagnosed with issues such as cancer, diabetes, Attention Deficet Disorders- all issues that were no where close to being as prevelant 10 or 15 years ago, as they are now, I started to wonder why that is.... I believe it has to do with our food choices! I believe that our nation, as a whole, has sought the "quick fix" for everything, including our food. Emphasis has been taken off of what we are eating and how important the choice of food is to our bodies and has been placed on "how fast can I get this done and move on to the next thing on my To Do list." We have strayed away from cooking a nutritious meal from real foods and we seek the meal-in-a-box that can be thrown in the microwave. If you spend 5 minutes looking into the nutritional values associated with microwavable and other boxed meals- even those that are labeled as healthy diet foods- you will notice that the calories, sodium, and sugar are far higher in the small portion of food that is contained in that box than would be in a whole meal cooked from scratch using whole real foods. Additionally, when I used to eat those boxed meals, I would still be hungry and have to eat one or two other things to feel full- packing on the calories. You will also notice that the ingredients inside of that boxed meal are, for the most part, unrecognizable. They do not even resemble any food source that is raised on a farm or grown from the ground. Most of the ingredients are chemicals or a genetically modified food (soy and corn are the most genetically modified (GMO) foods in the USA). I believe that these chemicals and GMO foods are directly contributing to the higher incidents of disease and disorders in our society. For these reasons, I decided that my family and I would begin eating pure whole foods that I can recognize as having been raised on a farm or grown from the ground and that do not include added preservatives and chemicals. I mainly shop only the outside aisles of Kroger or Walmart and buy organic as much as I can. If there is any way to reduce the risk of my son, my husband, or myself contracting a deadly disease or disorder, I want to know that I did everything I could to reduce it.