Valuing Your Health Is a Key to Eating Healthy & a Major Tip to Good Nutrition

I would like to give you some more tips to eating healthy. These keys to good nutrition begin with how much you truly value your health and are willing to spend to protect it and preserve it so that you can live a long healthy life.

A few days ago I was driving to Charlotte on Highway 77, and I saw a huge billboard: CIGARETTES CHEAP

I immediately started thinking about what the real message was behind that sign, and I wondered how it related to people's health.

Here we had an agricultural product that has been the cause of millions of Americans getting lung cancer and dying prematurely. Here we had a product that has been proven over and over again to be a deadly killer of Americans. Here we had a product that has been shown to be extremely addicting because of the nicotine it contains, resulting in millions of Americans being addicted to this "chemical drug" found in cigarettes.

Sadly, the billboard was somehow overlooking all of those extremely harmful negative effects and trying to promote cigarettes on the basis that they were "cheap." In other words, it was saying something like this: "Stop and buy our cigarettes because they're cheap. Don't worry about the fact that they will make you addicted to nicotine, and that they will cause cancer to start taking over your lungs and kill you prematurely. We want you to buy our cigarettes because they're cheap. We sell them to you cheaper than anyone else. We will save you money, so buy them from us."

The billboard message is also communicating the message that to lose your health is cheap. Getting lung cancer and mouth cancer is cheap. Your health isn't really worth much because you are willing to give it up in order to smoke our cheap health-destroying cigarettes.

If you simply replace the word "cigarettes" with another word that represents what cigarettes are symbolic of, you will see what the true message behind the billboard is. For example, "Lung Cancer Cheap," or "Premature Death Cheap," or "Incurable Physical Health Problems Cheap," or "Expensive Health-Destroying Addiction Cheap." This is basically what the message is behind the billboard words, "Cigarettes Cheap."

Now, let's take a minute and think about how this billboard's message relates to health. If you asked most people, they would tell you that they value their health. Unfortunately, most people really don't value it enough until after they've already lost it.

This billboard makes me wonder why people buy cheap food that is unhealthy, loaded with bleached refined processed flour, sugar, fat, and salt, and filled with preservatives and toxic additives like aspartame, high-fructose corn syrup, and MSG. Why do people spend their hard-earned money to buy highly processed supermarket food that is not good for their bodies? Why do people spend money on unhealthy and addictive junk food and fast food that makes them fat, destroys their bodies, and loads their systems with dangerous and harmful toxins that cause all kinds of physical health problems? Why do people shop for the lowest priced items like white bread, or refined sugar, or white flour, or soda?

I'm sure there are many reasons for this kind of behavior that include the way that they were raised, what they have been taught, what they have been modeled by their parents and friends, and what they have been misled to believe by the advertising lies of the food manufacturers. There's still one more important reason...

I believe one of the biggest reasons why so many Americans buy and eat unhealthy food day after day - is because it is CHEAP. In other words, what they buy and put into their bodies is determined by the cost of the food. The cheaper the food, the more of it they will buy. The more costly the food, the less of it they will buy. That is to say, that their buying and eating decisions are based primarily on the cost of the food. The billboard that most Americans are paying attention to says something like this: "FOOD CHEAP."

Now, what exactly does that billboard message "Food Cheap" communicate? The message is that as long as the food is "cheap," then you should buy it. Your buying decisions should not be based on true nutritional value of the food, but rather on the cost of the food. This means that food manufacturers can focus on producing the cheapest "foods" possible because there are millions of Americans that will buy them just because they're cheap.

What's the deeper, unspoken message in the billboard, "Food Cheap?" It would have to be that your health is cheap, therefore buy unhealthy food. To put it another way, since you place no true value on your health, we will make it easy for you to buy our products for the simple fact that they are cheap. The real meaning of the sign could be rewritten to this: "Cheap Extremely Unhealthy Food That Will Destroy Your Health & Cause You To Die Prematurely."

Let's do a little comparison. "Food Cheap" versus "Food Expensive." "Unhealthy Sickness-causing Food Cheap" versus "Nutritious Health-promoting Food Costly." Or better yet, let's look at the overall long-term costs of cheap food. "Health-destroying Sickness-causing Unhealthy Food Cheap Now But Will Cost You Years of Doctor & Hospital & Pharmacist Bills and Eventually Your Life" versus "Nutritious Health-promoting More Expensive Food Now But Will Not Cost Your Life or Future Health Bills Later." When you look at it from this perspective, you will see that there really isn't any "cheap food" for people to buy. It may seem "cheap" when they buy it, but in the long run it will cost them much much more when they spend untold thousands of dollars on doctor bills, hospital bills, surgery bills, pharmacy bills, lost wages from work, etc.

Daily Quotes: "Up to 90% of deaths annually are self-inflicted by unhealthy lifestyle!" - Paul Bragg

"A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings!" - Hippocrates, Father of Medicine 400 BC