Low-carb on a tight budget

Eric's comment made me want to bring up the subject of doing low-carb on a
budget:

"Eric" wrote i
We're talking at least six dollars a
day if you try to eat 2000 calories in meat and fish with some level
of variety. That adds up to some serious bread, doesn't it?


Rather than blather, I thought I'd just open up the topic to see what
everyone has to say.

"em" wrote in message ...
Eric's comment made me want to bring up the subject of doing low-carb on a
budget:

"Eric" wrote i
We're talking at least six dollars a
day if you try to eat 2000 calories in meat and fish with some level
of variety. That adds up to some serious bread, doesn't it?

Rather than blather, I thought I'd just open up the topic to see what
everyone has to say.

The budget for our family of 3 is $75/week. I buy one "variety pack" of
meat from a local butcher that contains 45# of chicken, beef, and pork of
various cuts and sorts, for $74.95. The rest goes into fresh and frozen
produce, dairy (including eggs), fish, spices/seasonings/condiments mostly,
with the occasional - approx. monthly - package of sweetener, jar of the
coffee substitute I drink, and nuts/seeds. We don't eat fruit for the most
part, but I do have frozen berries in my "shop" (a big kitchen, actually,
out of which I run my business) and will sometimes take a half-cup or so for
a sauce or dessert. If the budget allows, when one of our foods goes on
sale, I buy as much as I can even if it means buying less of something else.

When we ate packaged, prepared, and carby foods, I couldn't shop for
$75/week. Low carb is cheaper for us.

--
Sherry
lowcarb.owly.net

UsenetID wrote:
"em" wrote in message ...

Eric's comment made me want to bring up the subject of doing low-carb on a
budget:

"Eric" wrote i

We're talking at least six dollars a
day if you try to eat 2000 calories in meat and fish with some level
of variety. That adds up to some serious bread, doesn't it?

Rather than blather, I thought I'd just open up the topic to see what
everyone has to say.


Eric appears fixated on the all meat approach to Atkins and low carb.

Beef and pork average around 400 to 600 Cals per 6 ounce serving, so the
2000 Calorie intake would require 30 to 20 ounces of beef/pork or call
it roughly 1.5 pounds of meat per day.

Fattier cuts of meat would reduce the required daily poundage by 20 to
40%. Vegetable oil fats are a pretty cheap form of calories, also.

The price range of this much meat can range from $2 / lb to $10 / lb so
this could be $3.00 / day to $15.00 per day.

The basic answer on expense as raised by Eric is "it depends".

I tend to now ignore much of what is claimed about reasons to support
oddish forms of low carb diets.

On Nov 11, 10:58 pm, "UsenetID" wrote:
"em" wrote in ...
Eric's comment made me want to bring up the subject of doing low-carb on a
budget:

"Eric" wrote i
We're talking at least six dollars a
day if you try to eat 2000 calories in meat and fish with some level
of variety. That adds up to some serious bread, doesn't it?

Rather than blather, I thought I'd just open up the topic to see what
everyone has to say.

The budget for our family of 3 is $75/week. I buy one "variety pack" of
meat from a local butcher that contains 45# of chicken, beef, and pork of
various cuts and sorts, for $74.95. The rest goes into fresh and frozen
produce, dairy (including eggs), fish, spices/seasonings/condiments mostly,
with the occasional - approx. monthly - package of sweetener, jar of the
coffee substitute I drink, and nuts/seeds.


How much of that stuff do you get for $.05?



We don't eat fruit for the most
part, but I do have frozen berries in my "shop" (a big kitchen, actually,
out of which I run my business) and will sometimes take a half-cup or so for
a sauce or dessert. If the budget allows, when one of our foods goes on
sale, I buy as much as I can even if it means buying less of something else.

When we ate packaged, prepared, and carby foods, I couldn't shop for
$75/week. Low carb is cheaper for us.

--
Sherry
lowcarb.owly.net


Yes, I was going to bring that up too. If you're an out of control
blivitt eating everything is sight, you're going to eat a whole lot
less when you're on LC. Not sure it will entirely offset the higher
cost of real food, but it certainly is a factor. And it also depends
on what kind of carby stuff you were eating.

You can also reduce the cost by using more chicken and less beef,
fish, etc. Chicken is on sale here for 40 to 50% off at one
supermarket or another every week.

em wrote:
Rather than blather, I thought I'd just open up the topic to see what
everyone has to say.

It depends on how you were eating before; if you were eating a lot of
processed junk, going low-carb with real food is cheaper.

But that's really not about it being low-carb, that's about eating whole
foods. And it's actually cheaper to eat high-carb whole foods... wheat
berries are darned cheap; you can get 100 lbs of them for under $10 and
that would stretch anyone's food budget. Grain is cheap; there's no
getting around that - cutting it from your diet raises average food cost.

On the other hand, there's some seriously expensive costs associated
with not eating well. Even one day in the hospital more than wipes out
a year's worth of carefully frugal grocery shopping; it gets a lot worse
if you're out-of-work for health reasons.

Even on high-carb, you need to get sufficient protein and the only
really cheap source of protein is eggs whether you are low-carb or
high-carb.

IMO, the primary thing to save money low-carbing is a freezer; if you
buy meats in bulk, you can save a LOT of money on them. I will have 3
or 4 turkeys in my freezer before the holiday is over as this is the
cheap time to buy them.

I have been trying hard not to care about food cost since my heart
attack, insisting on buying pasture-raised animal products which are
more expensive, preferring organic fresh produce over regular, using
avocado and coconut oils, etc. Some of the individual prices of stuff I
buy freaks me out, but I've not been spending more overall.

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

Jackie Patti wrote:
I have been trying hard not to care about food cost since my heart
attack, insisting on buying pasture-raised animal products which are
more expensive, preferring organic fresh produce over regular, using
avocado and coconut oils, etc. Some of the individual prices of
stuff I buy freaks me out, but I've not been spending more overall.

Jackie, I hope you don't mind me asking, but did you have your heart attack
before eating low carb? If not, how did you change your diet?

O

Ophelia wrote:
Jackie Patti wrote:
I have been trying hard not to care about food cost since my heart
attack, insisting on buying pasture-raised animal products which are
more expensive, preferring organic fresh produce over regular, using
avocado and coconut oils, etc. Some of the individual prices of
stuff I buy freaks me out, but I've not been spending more overall.

Jackie, I hope you don't mind me asking, but did you have your heart attack
before eating low carb? If not, how did you change your diet?

I've been low-carbing for over a decade for bg control, but lost bg
control subsequent to a pancreasitis attack, then had the heart attack,
an unsuccessful angio and thus a bypass. I have changed my diet in a
number of ways since then.

First being that I record the carbs, protein and calories of every meal
in order to dose the insulin. Insulin makes me much more aware of what
I eat and cuts the snacking back a lot since I rarely am hungry enough
to want an extra shot.

I doubled my vegetable intake - I now buy 10-15 lbs of fresh produce
every week and race to eat it before it goes bad. Most of what I buy is
organic, considerably more expensive.

I eat more fruit too, pretty much a serving of berries, melon, kiwi,
half a pomegranate or such once or twice a day.

I cut out eating quite so much low-carb junk food like the tortillas and
rather make more things out of flax and almond meal.

I've reduce the overall saturated fat in my diet because I am buying all
pasture-raised meat and dairy now, which has healthier fats. It's more
expensive, so I eat a bit less of this stuff.... though every meal still
starts with a base of protein: meat, poultry, fish, eggs, yogurt,
cottage cheese, raw hard cheese - all from pasture-raised animals so a
lot more expensive than I'm used to.

I've been pushing myself to eat fish more often. Mostly tuna and
tilapia, rarely scallops cause they're expensive. I also take 6g fish
oil daily.

I threw out all the vegetable oils except olive oil and started buying
avocado oil as well.

I quit the Lindt 85% chocolate and started making coconut bark instead
(I've posted the recipe here, so you can Google for it). This gets me
coconut oil in my diet for it's purported health benefits without
increasing my saturated fat since it's replacing cocoa butter.

I used to drink a pot of coffee and at least 2 liters of Diet Pepsi
daily, if not more. Now, I drink one cup of real coffee, then switch to
decaf for the rest of the day. And for cold drinks, I drink
stevia-sweetened lemonade or limeade. Sometimes dilute cranberry juice
(real juice, not the "cocktail" stuff which is full of sugar).

I also take a multivitamin, B-complex, pantothenic acid and niacin daily
now aside from my prescription meds. I count the supplements in my food
budget, though not the medications.

The thing that doesn't quite make sense to me is that I *know* I am
buying more expensive meats, veggies, fruits, dairy products, eggs and
buying more supplements, but am not spending more money overall than I
was doing before. It's hard for me to believe I was spending *that*
much on Diet Pepsi and low-carb tortillas...

--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

Jackie Patti wrote:
I've been low-carbing for over a decade for bg control, but lost bg
control subsequent to a pancreasitis attack, then had the heart
attack, an unsuccessful angio and thus a bypass. I have changed my
diet in a number of ways since then.

Was the heart attack directly attributable to the pancreasitis? When you
say you had been lcing for the bg control, are you diabetic?

Sorry if I am being too blunt but this fascinates me. If you prefer not to
repond I will undestand.

I don't have a clue what my bg is. Ought I to know, or would know if there
was a problem?

First being that I record the carbs, protein and calories of every
meal in order to dose the insulin. Insulin makes me much more aware
of what I eat and cuts the snacking back a lot since I rarely am
hungry enough to want an extra shot.

I doubled my vegetable intake - I now buy 10-15 lbs of fresh produce
every week and race to eat it before it goes bad. Most of what I buy
is organic, considerably more expensive.

Quite! We buy everything we can, organic.


I eat more fruit too, pretty much a serving of berries, melon, kiwi,
half a pomegranate or such once or twice a day.

I cut out eating quite so much low-carb junk food like the tortillas
and rather make more things out of flax and almond meal.

I've reduce the overall saturated fat in my diet because I am buying
all pasture-raised meat and dairy now, which has healthier fats. It's more
expensive, so I eat a bit less of this stuff.... though
every meal still starts with a base of protein: meat, poultry, fish,
eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese, raw hard cheese - all from
pasture-raised animals so a lot more expensive than I'm used to.

Hmm... we don't have that recorded on our food, although I always choose
organic. I wonder if that has anything to do with pasture raised? I had
thought saturated fat was the healthy one, although you have cut it down,
not out.

I've been pushing myself to eat fish more often. Mostly tuna and
tilapia, rarely scallops cause they're expensive. I also take 6g fish
oil daily.

I threw out all the vegetable oils except olive oil and started buying
avocado oil as well.

I quit the Lindt 85% chocolate and started making coconut bark instead
(I've posted the recipe here, so you can Google for it). This gets me
coconut oil in my diet for it's purported health benefits without
increasing my saturated fat since it's replacing cocoa butter.

I shall search for it, thank you


I used to drink a pot of coffee and at least 2 liters of Diet Pepsi
daily, if not more. Now, I drink one cup of real coffee, then switch
to decaf for the rest of the day. And for cold drinks, I drink
stevia-sweetened lemonade or limeade. Sometimes dilute cranberry
juice (real juice, not the "cocktail" stuff which is full of sugar).

I also take a multivitamin, B-complex, pantothenic acid and niacin
daily now aside from my prescription meds. I count the supplements
in my food budget, though not the medications.

I don't know what the latter two are, but we take a multivit, B complex, and
Cod liver oil.


The thing that doesn't quite make sense to me is that I *know* I am
buying more expensive meats, veggies, fruits, dairy products, eggs and
buying more supplements, but am not spending more money overall than I
was doing before. It's hard for me to believe I was spending *that*
much on Diet Pepsi and low-carb tortillas...

I can only think that the junk doesn't feed you and you need more to feel
satisfied.

Well done Jackie. I think you are very clever to do all that. I hope it
means your health is improving or at least stable.

Many thanks

O

Ophelia wrote:
Jackie Patti wrote:
I've been low-carbing for over a decade for bg control, but lost bg
control subsequent to a pancreasitis attack, then had the heart
attack, an unsuccessful angio and thus a bypass. I have changed my
diet in a number of ways since then.

Was the heart attack directly attributable to the pancreasitis? When you
say you had been lcing for the bg control, are you diabetic?

Yes, I've been a T2 diabetic for almost 2 decades now.

I am the one who has attributed the heart attack to the diabetes being
uncontrolled. Diabetics have the same chance of having a heart attack
as someone who has already had one. High bg gycosylates serum proteins,
making them sticky and causing plaque buildup. And high bg screws up
your lipids... I had elevated LDL and trigylcerides in the hospital
until my bg was controlled, then they were cut in half and my LDL came
in at under 60.

I'm a 45-yr-old woman, so having a heart attack was kinda not in the
odds for me yet, which is why I think it was the elevated bg as that is
my primary risk factor.


Sorry if I am being too blunt but this fascinates me. If you prefer not to
repond I will undestand.

I've already discussed it all over Usenet. In short, my heart attack
likely occured because I was scared of insulin and didn't treat my high
bg - so it was caused by stupidity.


I don't have a clue what my bg is. Ought I to know, or would know if there
was a problem?

It's hard to say.

If your bg is very out-of-control, you tend to have certain symptoms -
you're thirsty a lot and also need to pee a lot. There's also a
tendency towards infections like boils and yeast infections and such.
You have to be pretty seriously elevated to have those symptoms though.

Doctors tend to screen by testing fasting blood glucose. The problem
is, the way the diseases progresses is by losing blood glucose control
after meals first, so the fasting numbers don't get high until you're
already fairly screwed up. Most diabetics already have damage due to
diabetes before they're diagnosed as it's symptoms that cause a doctor
to look further.

Lots more info about diabetes he http://www.phlaunt.com/diabetes/

If you are concerned, you can buy a cheap meter and test for a week or
two to see how you do. In general, the meters are cheap, often free,
it's the test strips that are expensive. Walmart has a very cheap
storebrand meter with cheap strips.

Well-controlled diabetics test after meals to see what foods raise their
bg. There's a good page about testing he
http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/NewlyDiagnosed.htm

Given that the main thing that lowers bg and improves insulin resistance
in most T2s is a low-carb diet and exercise, you're likely doing most of
what needs to be done anyways.


I've reduce the overall saturated fat in my diet because I am buying
all pasture-raised meat and dairy now, which has healthier fats. It's more
expensive, so I eat a bit less of this stuff.... though
every meal still starts with a base of protein: meat, poultry, fish,
eggs, yogurt, cottage cheese, raw hard cheese - all from
pasture-raised animals so a lot more expensive than I'm used to.

Hmm... we don't have that recorded on our food, although I always choose
organic. I wonder if that has anything to do with pasture raised? I had
thought saturated fat was the healthy one, although you have cut it down,
not out.

I think many organic regulations require the animals to have *some*
access to pasture, but that's not necessarily pasture-raised.

I have a freezer so can mostly buy meat from farmers. With cheese and
other dairy products, I've had to research to find out which brands are
pasture-raised. It's usually tiny organic brands no one's ever heard
of.


I also take a multivitamin, B-complex, pantothenic acid and niacin
daily now aside from my prescription meds. I count the supplements
in my food budget, though not the medications.

I don't know what the latter two are, but we take a multivit, B complex, and
Cod liver oil.

The latter two are specific to heart disease; they're higher doses of
two individual B vitamins.

I tried the cod liver oil as it would've replaced 6 fish oil tablets and
2 vitamin D tablets. But it makes me retch; I can't stand the stuff.


The thing that doesn't quite make sense to me is that I *know* I am
buying more expensive meats, veggies, fruits, dairy products, eggs and
buying more supplements, but am not spending more money overall than I
was doing before. It's hard for me to believe I was spending *that*
much on Diet Pepsi and low-carb tortillas...

I can only think that the junk doesn't feed you and you need more to feel
satisfied.

Could be. Before the heart attack, I could eat two small pizzas,
spaghetti sauce, mozzarella and pepperoni baked on a low-carb tortilla.
When I started recording things, I discovered those suckers had a
thousand calories each. I still have them now-and-then, but one is
quite sufficient!

I found when I started eating more veggies, I was craving more and more
veggies for a while. It got kind of ridiculous how much vegetables I
was eating while still wanting more - so I do suspect I might have had
some sort of deficiencies.


Well done Jackie. I think you are very clever to do all that. I hope it
means your health is improving or at least stable.

I doubt I can credit the diet; I'll improve as time passes anyways as it
takes time to heal up from surgeries. But I'm rather motivated to do
everything that will help right now, so have made lots of dietary changes.


--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

"Ophelia" writes:

I don't have a clue what my bg is. Ought I to know, or would know if
there was a problem?

I think it's a very useful thing to know. If you're overweight, there's
a good chance that your blood sugar isn't well controlled. If your BG
doesn't come back to normal within two hours after eating, that means
either A) your pancreas isn't producing as much insulin as it should, or
B) it's producing insulin like crazy, but you're insulin resistant
enough that all that insulin isn't able to convince your cells to pull
the glucose out of your blood. The latter may eventually wear your
pancreas out to the point of Type II diabetes.

A doctor can do a fasting BG test, but for $50-$100 in equipment and
strips you can test yourself multiple times: fasting, when waking up,
one hour and two hours after meals, after exercise, etc. That'll give
you a much better picture of how your body handled glucose than a single
test will. You can also test after foods like sugar alcohols, which
seem to cause a BG spike in some people and not others, to see how they
affect you.

When I started testing, just seeing the numbers was the shock to my
system that I needed to make me realize what I was doing to my health.
I could no longer tell myself it wouldn't hurt to have one more pizza
binge, that I could put off the diet tomorrow, because it wasn't just
about weight loss anymore, but about quality of life and making sure I
won't be getting anything amputated or going blind. When you look at
that meter and see 190 two hours after a carby meal, knowing that
anything over 140 means organ damage is occurring *right now*, that's
hard to brush off. On the other hand, seeing a nice healthy 89 two
hours after a great low-carb lasagna (with Swiss chard for noodles) is
really gratifying.

Hmm... we don't have that recorded on our food, although I always
choose organic. I wonder if that has anything to do with pasture
raised? I had thought saturated fat was the healthy one, although you
have cut it down, not out.

Saturated fat isn't bad for you like we've been taught, but it's not
especially good for you either. It really depends on what else you're
eating, which is why some studies made saturated fats look bad: people
were eating them in combination with too many carbs and not enough
omega-3 fatty acids.

Your body knows how to convert saturated fat into unsaturated, which is
good, because saturated fats aren't very flexible (think butter compared
to olive oil), so you don't want a lot of them making up your cell
membranes. However, this process requires certain enzymes, and the
production process that leads to those enzymes begins with omega-3 fatty
acids. If you're eating the typical modern diet that has an
omega-6/omega-3 ratio of twenty or more to one, you may not produce
enough of those enzymes, and your cell membranes will be stiffer than
would be best. This can worsen insulin resistance, among other things,
because it makes it harder for the receptors in the membrane to move
around and do things.

So if you're eating right otherwise, saturated fats aren't a threat the
way they are to the grain eaters, because you'll be able to use them
well. If you're eating low-carb, you're almost automatically going to
have a better omega-6/omega-3 ratio than "normal", because most grains
are very high in omega-6. Fish oil and sardines can improve the ratio
even more, and as Jackie said, pasture raised animal products are better
than those from grain-fed animals.

Trans-fats are the only fat that's truly harmful in all cases. Like
saturated fat, they're inflexible, but unlike saturated fat, they
haven't been around long enough for us to evolve a mechanism for
converting them into a flexible form. So the body just plugs them into
the cell walls as-is and hopes for the best, especially if you're short
on healthy fats. You really don't want to consume *any* trans-fats,
ever, if you can possibly avoid it.

(Most of this is condensed from Protein Power Life Plan, by the way; so
grab a copy of that for a detailed explanation.)



--
Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz