“Food se­cu­ri­ty ex­ists when all peo­ple, at all times, have phys­i­cal and eco­nom­ic ac­cess to suf­fi­cient, safe and nu­tri­tious food that meets their di­etary needs and food pref­er­ences for an ac­tive and healthy life.”— The Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Unit­ed Na­tions (FAO), World Food Sum­mit, 1996)

Eat­ing healthy is not done in a bub­ble. Maybe you want to have a more healthy di­et, eat­ing all the fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles or even meats re­quired, but on your bud­get and in­come, this might seem im­pos­si­ble to do.

What if the Sun­day Guardian told you that you just might be able to eat healthy every day of the week while stay­ing on a bud­get? And that eat­ing healthy doesn't re­quire you to be wealthy. Chef and en­tre­pre­neur Son­ja Sinaswsee con­firmed this. She said the of­ten-re­peat­ed nar­ra­tive that eat­ing healthy is ex­pen­sive and on­ly re­served for peo­ple with large in­comes was mis­lead­ing.

“It is nor­mal for peo­ple to feel in­tim­i­dat­ed by things they do not un­der­stand or that take them out of their com­fort zone; the con­cept of eat­ing healthy is one of them. That con­ver­sa­tion is of­ten dri­ven by trend and what we're told is healthy to eat,” Sinaswsee ex­plains.

She said the sim­pler one eats, con­sum­ing more whole, un­processed food, the eas­i­er it is to stay healthy be­cause one can now have more con­trol about what goes in­to one's body.

At the same time, Sinaswsee not­ed this was in no way to dis­miss the chal­lenges of those with strict bud­gets or lim­it­ed in­come, as those chal­lenges were re­al and wide-reach­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

But even so, the founder of dash­fam­i­ly­meals.com, a food me­dia ven­ture that serves up de­li­cious, af­ford­able, sim­ple and healthy fam­i­ly meals on a bud­get, with week­ly shop­ping lists, recipes, prod­uct in­for­ma­tion and savvy shop­ping and nu­tri­tion tips, said there was al­so of­ten too much talk about eat­ing healthy in a bub­ble as if it were sole­ly de­pen­dent on eat­ing a par­tic­u­lar set of in­gre­di­ents and fol­low­ing a par­tic­u­lar di­et.

“This is where peo­ple be­come con­fused and frus­trat­ed, feel­ing that if they don't buy a cer­tain type of prod­uct, they can't have a healthy lifestyle. This is sim­ply not true,” Sinaswee says.

She said what was al­so mis­lead­ing is that peo­ple be­lieve it's best to eat fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles all the time. Again, this was sim­ply not true, Sinaswee re­it­er­at­ed

“Be­fore we had ac­cess to many fruits and veg­gies through­out the year or even when a par­tic­u­lar crop was in sea­son, we would pre­serve them to ex­tend their shelf life or to avoid wastage. Meth­ods would in­clude freez­ing, can­ning, even mak­ing jam.”

Frozen or canned, make it work for you

For the peo­ple who may have to sub­sti­tute fresh foods with canned or frozen foods, Sinaswee who has taught many sim­ple prac­tices for cre­at­ing healthy meals through her cook­ing class­es with Nes­tle, points out that frozen and canned foods are sup­posed to be har­vest­ed and processed with­in a few days and as such, they re­tain much of their nu­tri­tion­al con­tent once the orig­i­nal prod­uct is picked at their peak lev­els of ripeness or ma­tu­ri­ty and prop­er freez­ing or can­ning meth­ods are fol­lowed.

How­ev­er, she ad­mit­ted there is al­so a down­side to this, but noth­ing ma­jor that can­not be fixed, “The on­ly set­back with canned veg­eta­bles is the use of sodi­um but in many cas­es, ex­cess salt can be drained and washed off be­fore cook­ing or con­sum­ing."

Eat­ing lo­cal equals bet­ter nu­tri­tion

When it comes to fruits and veg­eta­bles, she said it must be not­ed they be­gin los­ing their nu­tri­tion­al val­ue the mo­ment they are har­vest­ed, so what's more im­por­tant than eat­ing fresh, is eat­ing fresh and lo­cal.

Ac­cord­ing to Sinaswee, choos­ing lo­cal­ly grown fruits and veg­eta­bles is a health­i­er choice than con­sum­ing pro­duce that has trav­elled thou­sands of miles to get to the su­per­mar­ket and changed hands four or five times be­fore one pur­chas­es it.

BOX

A plate of food from your kitchen in­clud­ing car­rots, plan­tain and lo­cal sweet pota­to will cost you ap­prox­i­mate­ly $42.82. Mul­ti­ply that by four and you'd find to feed a fam­i­ly of four, it will cost $171.28—a sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er cost than if you were to dine at a restau­rant or even buy a buck­et of your favourite fast food. And the best part yet, you can have more than one serv­ing.

The Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion's (NAMDE­V­CO), Na­tion­al Av­er­age Re­tail Prices list 2019, out­lines the sea­son­al­i­ty in pric­ing from Jan­u­ary to Sep­tem­ber in cat­e­gories of root crops, condi­ments and spices, leafy veg­eta­bles and oth­er veg­eta­bles, fruits and cit­rus.

By kilo­grams and bun­dles per pro­duce, in Jan­u­ary 2019, a pack of car­rots cost $6.01. In Sep­tem­ber the price in­creased by 27 cents with the high­est re­tail price oc­cur­ring in Ju­ly, sell­ing at $7.01.

Lo­cal Sweet pota­to per kilo­gram sold in Jan­u­ary 2019, at $12.67 and leapt to $22.40 by Sep­tem­ber 2019.

In leafy veg­eta­bles, let­tuce (medi­um) stood at $6.56 at the start of 2019 and fluc­tu­at­ed through­out the months, stand­ing at $7.44 by Sep­tem­ber 2019. (See full graph)