Really another news headline that catches my attention: ‘1 in 6 people can’t afford healthy food’. Wow, intense! Of course, that statement is a bit more nuanced if you read the whole article, but it is something that has puzzled me for some time as well.
The simplest pizza margerita costs about €1.15 and 500 grams of broccoli is €1.24.
There are countless more examples, but the conclusion remains the same: eating varied and healthy is not always feasible. If you have a grocery budget of €50 a week, you have to choose between eating every day or a few days of healthy eating with fruits and vegetables. Certain products recommended in terms of health are already not at all within reach of a smaller budget.
So are the opportunities in the Netherlands (I don’t know about other countries) equal for everyone? Is it mopping up when a healthier lifestyle is promoted from the government?
We often get the response “money doesn’t make you happy, health and kind people around you do. True, but apparently money does buy a healthy and varied diet which in turn contributes to your health.
So we end up in a catch-22 anyway, because no money means you have fewer resources for a healthy diet, but money problems also provide less headspace to make good long-term decisions. Then the offer for unhealthy food still looks more appealing, but that in turn causes you to be or feel less healthy and it may well take more effort to start making more money. The outcome of one, affects the other and vica versa.
But where does the solution lie? Making healthy food cheaper? Better education and outreach? More money? It is probably a combination of the above, which again makes it incredibly complicated to solve this problem.
Still, I hope someday we also read an article where it’s the other way around: one where a healthy lifestyle is achievable for everyone and there might be brocolli on the pizza 😉.
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