healthy living

Teach yourself to cook

Posted June 17, 2009 - 09:48 by Philip Brewer

Food and Drink

Piggy bank admires sesame beef

Everyone knows that cooking is cheaper and healthier than eating out. It's also better (i.e. more to your taste) than eating out, and easier than eating out (no driving, parking, standing in line, making reservations, waiting to be seated, dealing with hostesses, waiters, and busboys). Besides all that, I'm going to argue below that--even with shopping and cleaning up--it can also be quicker than eating out.

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Healthy, frugal eating

Posted April 30, 2008 - 06:46 by Philip Brewer

Shopping, Food and Drink, Health and Beauty

Healthy food at the farmer's market

Every so often, I get hit in the face with two facts.  First, Americans (even poor Americans) are unbelievably rich.  Second, Americans (as a group) utterly lack a cultural tradition that teaches us how to eat a healthy, frugal diet.

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The new face of poverty is fat

Posted December 21, 2007 - 08:40 by Philip Brewer

Shopping, Food and Drink, Health and Beauty

Depression-era family

Twenty years ago, I parked at a supermarket, near where a poor family had just parked. I knew they were poor, because they looked like poor folks are supposed to look: Their clothes were worn (but mended and clean). Their car was an aging sedan. They were recycling a trunkful of aluminum cans. As I locked my car, they took the handful of change they got for the cans, and headed in ahead of me. There were three of them--man, woman, child--and all three were skinny. It's unusual to see that now. The new face of poverty is fat.

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Get enough sleep

Posted December 15, 2007 - 00:10 by Philip Brewer

Health and Beauty, General Tips

I have a theory about sleep. My theory is this: everyone who routinely uses an alarm clock suffers from chronic sleep deprivation. Using an alarm clock a few times a year (to catch a plane or have a phone call with someone in another time zone) is fine. But routinely getting up before you wake up naturally is sleep deprivation, no matter how much it has become normal in today's world.

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Healthy recipes--with cost data

Posted November 17, 2007 - 08:34 by Philip Brewer

Shopping, Food and Drink, Budgeting, Freebies

Farmers market tomatoes

Want to eat a cheap, healthy diet? Want some recipes that use real food instead of packaged food products? Want to argue about how much it costs to feed a family a healthy diet? Here's a free tool, created by the USDA, that will help you with any of those.

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