Finances: Healthy Eating is a Smart Financial Choice

In these times when economic factors are biting a hole in your pocket, there has never been a better time to cut down your waist size and bulge the wallet size at the same time. Bad or unhealthy food is notoriously expensive but surprisingly everybody continues feeding expensively just because they can afford to. Meat or fatty meat, pork, very tasty fried chicken, chips or fries or mafriti, burgers for the more well endowed financially, crisps, chocolate, biscuit, sweets – name it. The name of the game is simply more and more bad fat which means more lifestyle diseases like high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes etc, not to get carried away into a biology lesson. Now think instead of the variety of bright colours - the greens, the reds, the bright yellows, the oranges, even browns (brown rice is better than white rice though not so cheap) and you are in business. Sweet potatoes, grape tomatoes, blueberries, oranges, broccoli, spinach, carrots – the list is endless. First because everybody is running for the ‘fatty’ foods the price of these is very low or sometimes even free. Have you ever realized how many people have avocado tree in their home, worrying more about which fruit is going to hit their roofs on which night? If you want to eat dodo, you can go to any market in Kigali. You can even grow your own vegetables and fruits at home without a fuss (Try rearing goats and pigs in your back yard!) Sweet bananas can be found almost everywhere in town at an affordable rate. The point is it is by far not only cheaper in the short term to eat healthy it also keeps away the lifestyle diseases which in the long term become a drain to your savings. Scientific studies have suggested that long-term consumption of a high-fat diet is associated with weight gain. Heart disease over the course of a few days can affect the brain and body long before the extra kilograms on the body show up. Research also shows that in the 1970s people in many Western countries had diets high in animal products, fat, and sugar, and high rates of cancers. By contrast, individuals in developing countries usually had diets that were based on one or two starchy staple foods, with low intakes of animal products, fat, and sugar, and depicted low rates of these cancers. Also results of studies showing that people who migrate from one country to another generally acquire the cancer rates of the new host country. So it does not help to start swigging chips (or do you now call them fries) and a coca cola can every lunch just because you spend a few weeks in America. You might think you are showing your new class and American habits when you are just killing yourself. And before you think that financial intelligence has nothing to do with health; you have to note that most people in Africa cannot go to dig because they are sick of malaria or some other diseases. These are man-hours being lost. Always remember that health is wealth and that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. Ends

Lifestyle

Finances: Healthy Eating is a Smart Financial Choice