Oops!

This is definitely trickier than one might think. Constructing a healthy meal is one thing but orchestrating all the moving parts of nutrition and cost across three meals and three people does not happen by chance. With so many tasty good-for-us foods in the house the forces of gluttony kicked in. Here are the results:

ED

Breakfast            

Latte (12oz)

Granola and Milk

Lunch   

Chicken patty sandwich with Cheese on Wheat

Steamed asparagus in milk

Coke zero

Dinner 

Grilled Pork loin

Green Beans, Bell peppers and Onions steamed with Beef broth

Tomato Slices

Brown rice

Total Daily Expenditure: $11.21

               

JAMIE

Breakfast            

Latte (12oz)

Peach

Coffee

Lunch   

Spaghetti with Shrimp Sautéed in Olive Oil

Peach

Milk

Dinner 

Grilled Pork loin

Green Beans, Bell peppers and Onions steamed with Beef broth

Tomato Slices

Brown rice

Milk

Total Daily Expenditure: $12.97

               

CELIA

Breakfast            

Apple & Cinnamon Oatmeal

Banana

Milk

Lunch   

Spaghetti with Shrimp Sautéed in Olive Oil

Raisins

Apple

Grapes

Dinner 

Grilled Pork loin

Green Beans, Bell peppers and Onions steamed with Beef broth

Tomato Slices

Brown rice

Milk

Total Daily Expenditure: $9.79

Lessons Learned and Observations

Wow!  We totally blew the budget today. At first I couldn’t figure out how we’d done it but there were a couple wiley characters hiding among the day’s bites, namely, the orange bell peppers, heirloom tomatoes, grapes and peaches. We belong to a community supported agriculture project (www.bewiseranch.com) which provides us with spectacularly fresh organic produce but, for the purposes of this experiment, I ascribe standard Vons non-sale pricing to all our produce - even veg picked from our garden. Turns out orange bell peppers are worth their weight in gold! $2.19 each and I used three for dinner. Ug! And the 2 peaches that I ate in response to my pitiful fruit performance over the past two days were $0.79 each. Double ug! Unaware of my extravagant ways, I also bought a drip coffee from Panera ringing up another $1.99. Ed ate a serving of last night’s dinner for lunch but washed them down with a Coke Zero bringing his lunch total to $4.34. Ditching the Coke for water or even milk from home would save a dollar or more. Celia squeaked in with 3 cents to spare but her day-long produce smorgasbord of banana, tomatoes, grapes, apple and orange bell pepper totaled $4.74! 

Nutritionally, we are still spiking too high on the sugar arm of the radius chart. Ed didn’t hit his fruit goal, none of us hit our vegetable goal and I still can’t seem to consume whole grains. I blame it on years of eating lo-carb. Bread and pasta scare me. On the up side, we are doing really well on the no-no side of the radius chart (the right). Our calories, fat, sodium, carbs and cholesterol numbers are great.

So my take-away for the day is that there can be too much of a good thing – at least from a cost perspective. We didn’t need all the food we ate (Celia’s 4 servings of fruit), we paid for items we certainly didn’t require (Ed’s Coke and my Coffee) and we consumed expensive foods that, at least not on sale, aren't viable for Eating in 3D.

Back to the drawing board!