The “Healthy Eating Is Expensive” Myth
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If you’ve ever said “I’d eat healthier, but it costs too much,” you’re not alone. Most Americans report that the rising cost of healthy food makes eating well harder.
The belief that healthy eating must be expensive is also extremely convenient for the modern industrial food system…When you feel priced out, you stay dependent on the biggest, most scaled supply chains and the most processed foods. And those systems are built to win on convenience and volume, not on nutrition, transparency, or local resilience.
This post is about pulling back the curtain on the propaganda and showing how eating better can be simpler and more affordable than people think, especially when you shift even a portion of your food spending toward local. (Pew Research Center)
The real trick: redefining what “healthy” looks like
A lot of the “healthy eating is expensive” narrative relies on human nature. It frames “healthy” as specialty products: trendy snack bars, imported superfoods, protein everything, and overpriced “wellness” branding in plastic tubs. If that’s your definition, yes, it can get expensive fast.
But when “healthy” refers to the fundamentals of a proper diet, it changes everything. It becomes seasonal produce, beans, oats, eggs, potatoes, rice, frozen vegetables, simple proteins, and cooking at home even a few times per week. That version of healthy is not a luxury category, it’s just normal food.
Even public nutrition and food budgeting guidance acknowledges that cost differences often come down to choices like planning, cooking at home, and selecting minimally processed staples rather than packaged convenience items. (USU Extension)
Why the myth sticks: the system is designed for it
Big food sells a worldview.
The scaled food system has an enormous incentive to convince you that “real food” is either inaccessible or inconvenient, while ultra processed food is “cheap.” That’s not an accident. It’s the result of a supply chain optimized for shelf stability, freight efficiency, and year round uniformity.
And on the institutional side, there’s an additional layer: distribution giants that dominate how restaurants, schools, hospitals, and corporate cafeterias buy food. Sysco is the largest player in foodservice distribution and explicitly talks about continued market share gains and scale advantages. That scale is why so many kitchens default to the same catalogs, the same products, the same “heat and serve” inputs, and the same pricing logic. (SEC Sysco Annual)
This is where companies like Sysco and US Foods (along with other major distributors) shape what food looks like in public life. You might be trying to make healthier choices at home, but the broader system is constantly pushing the opposite direction through convenience, standardization, and purchasing power.
The “healthy is expensive” myth thrives in that environment because it keeps you from imagining alternatives.
Local food is easier than people think
Eating local does not mean you have to churn butter in a cabin and befriend a goat.
It usually looks like small, doable shifts:
buying a portion of your produce from a farmers market
joining a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) for part of the year
shopping seasonal
using frozen local or regional produce when available
choosing one local protein source you rotate regularly
CSA programs are a great example of how local can be both practical and cost competitive. Research and program models show that cost offset CSA approaches and voucher programs can reduce barriers and improve access, particularly when paired with subsidies. (Springer Nature)
And for many households, the most immediate affordability unlock is not a boutique program. It’s incentives.
Local produce can be cheaper with incentives
If you receive SNAP benefits, there are programs that match your dollars when you buy fruits and vegetables, effectively cutting the price of produce. USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service highlights farmers market incentive approaches, and programs like Double Up Food Bucks are designed to make fresh produce more affordable by matching spending on fruits and vegetables. (USDA)
Recent evaluations show these programs operating at meaningful scale with documented participation and economic impact.
Even if you are not on SNAP, the existence of these programs points to a bigger truth: the “healthy is always expensive” idea collapses quickly when you shop closer to the source and take advantage of the structures that support local produce.
What you are really fighting is convenience pricing
Most people are not actually priced out of healthy food. They are priced out of convenient healthy food.
Convenience is what costs. Pre cut produce, single serve packs, prepared meals, beverages marketed as wellness, snacks marketed as protein, and all the branding that makes it feel like a lifestyle.
Meanwhile, the most budget friendly foods in the store are often the exact foods that build a healthy diet: legumes, grains, eggs, in season produce, frozen vegetables, canned fish, yogurt, and basic spices.
Local adds another advantage: less packaging, less marketing markup, less middleman cost baked into the final price. You are paying more directly for the food itself, not the story.
A realistic game plan
If you want a strategy that works in real life, aim for partial replacement, not perfection.
Pick one or two categories where you can make a local shift without blowing up your routine. For example, commit to seasonal produce locally once per week, or a CSA share for one season, or eggs from one local farm if that is available.
Then use the “staple foundation” approach at home: build meals around low cost basics and let the higher cost items become accents, not the base. That is how healthy eating becomes sustainable financially.
Finally, remember that conglomerate food systems win when you feel overwhelmed. The moment you learn how to feed yourself with simple ingredients and local options, the propaganda stops working.
The bottom line
Healthy eating can be more expensive if you define it as specialty products and convenience items. But “healthy” as real food, simple cooking, seasonal produce, and local sourcing is often more achievable than people think.
The industrial system wants you to believe you have only two options: pay more for wellness branding or settle for cheap processed food.
You have a third option. Build a relationship with your local food ecosystem and let your kitchen do more.
🧀🐻💛,
CATB