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الأحد، 25 فبراير 2018
How Much Will It Cost Us to Switch to a Mediterranean Diet?
The Mediterranean diet can fix several of a consumer’s problems, but not their budget.
Incorporating dietary staples of many countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea, the Mediterranean diet places heavy emphasis on plant-based foods (fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts) and swaps in oils for butter, herbs and spices for salts, and fish and poultry for red meat.
When my wife proposed it this year — as we have a few weddings coming up and enjoyed a bountiful holiday season — my initial response was “of course, that’s what I always ate.”
Yet that isn’t at all how I ate – it’s how my grandparents ate. The Notte family traces back to what is now Albania, where we were simply Notes, but made their way to Naples after Albania’s battles with the Ottoman Empire took a turn for the worse. My maternal grandmother, a Ferraro, is descended from iron workers in Modena. When their descendants came to this country in the early 1900s, they brought simple peasant cooking with them: Every cooked recipe seemingly began with a thin coat of olive oil and garlic, every antipasto course featured a small bowl of nuts.
But U.S. culture had an influence. The Italian bakeries in Northern New Jersey still use bleached flour for their best-selling loaves and baguettes, not whole-grain. Fresh pasta gave way to dried and mass produced flour versions. Pork neckbones and stock gave way to ground-beef meatballs and mystery-meat sausage. Garnish that was more akin to salsa became heavily sugared sauce. Food snobs now sniff at the “red sauce” restaurants where Mediterranean immigrant families catered to American tastes, but there’s no defending the nutritional disparity between the Old World and New World approaches to “Mediterranean” foods.
The Mayo Clinic has found that the traditional Mediterranean diet reduces the risk of heart disease, lowers low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol — “bad” cholesterol — and reduces incidence of cancer, and Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases. While culture may have played a part in the slow deviation from the true Mediterranean diet, so did price and economics.
Before my wife and I take up the diet this year, I wanted to delve into the finances of it and see just how much it costs to change these eating habits. For the sake of this article, I’m sticking to prices at Safeway/Albertsons (the stores where we regularly shop) and excluding bulk items from warehouse stores.
Butter vs. Olive Oil
- Darigold Butter: $2.99 per pound
- Signature Select Extra Virgin Olive Oil: $6.99 for 16.9 ounces
A tablespoon of butter is equivalent to 3/4 of a tablespoon of olive oil. Thus, a 32-tablespoon pound of butter is equal to 24 tablespoons of olive oil. Those 24 tablespoons add up to 12 fluid ounces. That makes butter roughly 25 cents per fluid ounce, while the corresponding entry-level olive oil is 43 cents an ounce. That’s a nearly 42% premium just for swapping out some butter. Thus far, the budgetary fears are confirmed.
Salt vs. Spices
- Plain Table Salt / Morton’s Kosher Salt: 89 cents for 26 ounces / $2.89 for 16 ounces
- Basil, Oregano, Ginger, and Paprika: $3.29 (0.69 ounces), $2.79 (0.75 ounces), $4.99 (2 ounces), $4.49 (2.12 ounces)
There is no way that anything in the spice rack is going to match the cost of salt. The latter is plentiful, sold in tremendous bulk, and weasels its way into everything. Spices are rare enough that people accidentally discover new continents just to find a way to cut down the time and money it takes to procure them. A part of me wanted to throw minced onion or garlic into this mix, but seeing them at $1.10 and $1.70 per ounce, respectively (as opposed to 3 and 18 cents an ounce for granular and kosher salt) made me realize the futility of it.
Beef vs. Fish
- Ground beef, 93% lean: 1.5 pounds for $5.99
- Atlantic salmon: 1.5 pounds for $10.49
We live in the Pacific Northwest, which has its own salmon right in its backyard, but a similar cut of Alaskan sockeye would set us back more than $13. Yes, you can swap salmon for beef burgers fairly easily in the kitchen, but it isn’t so easy on the wallet. The comparison would be a bit more favorable if we were substituting for, say, a 1.5-pound chuck steak ($11.99) or flat-iron steak ($14.99), but I’ll admit that ground beef accounts for roughly 98% of our red-meat consumption.
Beef vs. Poultry
- Ground beef, 93% lean: 1.5 pounds for $5.99
- Jennie-O ground turkey, 93% lean: 1 pound for $3.99
Now this is our more likely substitution, and it’s a wash. We’ve used ground turkey before, and while it doesn’t excel in burgers or meat loaf, it doesn’t make a half-bad meatball. It’s a fine filling for tacos or burritos, but I’m fairly certain that those get the boot during the Mediterranean diet.
Beer vs. Wine
- Guinness Draught: Six-pack of 11.2-ounce bottles, $9.99
- Underwood Pinot Noir: 750 milliliter bottle, $10.99
I’ve been covering the beer industry since 2010 or so, and my basement beer fridge is being slowly emptied for this endeavor. Since a recent trip to Ireland, Guinness Draught has been a favorite and, at 125 calories per 11.2-ounce serving, it’s one of the least heavy beers you can drink. However, small servings of red wine are typically allowed in the Mediterranean diet, and five ounces of a typical Oregon pinot noir has roughly 120 calories. While losing all of that grain and adding some antioxidants may help, we’re going to stop short of calling a wine substitution “good for you.”
Whole Grain vs. Regular Pasta
- Barilla Angel Hair Pasta: $2.49 a pound
- Barilla Whole Grain Angel Hair Pasta: $2.49 a pound
That isn’t a mistake, but it also isn’t the rule. Pasta makers have gotten wise to the drift toward whole-grain pastas and offer a bunch of them. However, if you try this same experiment with a box of Safeway’s store-brand spaghetti ($1), the price difference is more pronounced.
And if you don’t trust the big pasta makers, it gets costly. Just eight ounces of Ancient Harvest Supergrain spaghetti will cost you $4.49, or 56 cents an ounce. That’s nearly $9 a pound and a significant increase over just about any other spaghetti on the market.
Fruits vs. Berries
- Jonagold apples: $1.10 each
- Strawberries: $4.49 a pound
The Mediterranean diet likes plant-based foods, true, but it also loves antioxidants and frowns on carbohydrates. Prices will fluctuate throughout the year, but strawberries and Jonagolds are some of the best bargains you’re going to get in either category. But each Jonagold apple is 130 calories with 34 grams of carbohydrates, including 25 grams of sugar. A cup of strawberries, meanwhile, contains just 48 calories, with 7 grams of sugar, and 12 grams of total carbohydrates. With roughly four cups in a pound of whole strawberries, the difference between servings of the two is roughly two cents more for strawberries.
The verdict: While some elements of the Mediterranean diet, like olive oil and spices, will certainly add some weight to our grocery bill, most of these switches will hopefully have a bigger impact on our waistlines than our bottom line.
Related Articles:
- The Power of the Spice Rack: How Simple Spices Can Transform Bland Staples Into Amazing Meals
- Three Healthy, Cheap, and Exotic Foods to Expand Your Culinary Horizons
- Homemade Bread: Cheap, Healthy, Delicious, and Easier Than You Think
The post How Much Will It Cost Us to Switch to a Mediterranean Diet? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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This Guy Had a Crippling $26K in Credit Card Debt. Here’s How He’s Paying It Down
Between the duo rested a stack of plastic cards and a bottle of Champagne leftover from New Year’s.
As Nick (who asked that we omit his last name) cut each card, his girlfriend offered words of encouragement — how one day he’d be able to buy a house, invest money, give back.
For Nick, 27, these financial goals have felt far out of reach.
At 18, he was roped into opening his first credit card. Over the years, he spiraled into about $26,500 worth of debt.
“I felt like I was drowning,” he says. “I was able to make monthly payments, but every time I did, the majority of the payments were going to interest charges.”
Hoping to fix the problem, he attempted to consolidate his debt. But each time, he was denied a loan. Until he read about Upstart, a lending platform founded by former Google employees that offers what it calls “smarter loans” through partnership with participating banks.
Rather than solely judging borrowers on their credit scores (though it does require a 620 credit score), Upstart’s underwriting model can incorporate factors such as education, area of study and work history to better understand a borrower and their propensity to repay a loan.
Nick took a shot and applied for an Upstart loan. Within 40 minutes, he was approved. Less than two hours later, Upstart initiated a transfer of funds. His loan funds would be available to him the next business day.
Cue the ceremonial credit-card cutting — because he vows to never let credit card debt take over his life again.
How This Guy Plans to Pay off $26K in Credit Card Debt
The more than $26,000 in debt Nick managed to collect was mostly from his younger, more financially reckless years, when he’d buy the latest and greatest electronics or take vacations and spend too much money.
“I completely misused [credit cards] and was not financially responsible at all,” he says.
Within 10 years of opening his first credit card, he owed six creditors a lot of money. His total monthly minimum payments hovered around $800. Much of that went toward interest and fees.
For example, one card called for a $160 minimum payment, but only $65 of that went toward the principal.
“How crazy is that?” he says. “I felt as if I was going nowhere, simply spinning my wheels in the mud, truly not able to make any momentum.”
He’d attempted to refinance with several lenders, hoping a loan with a lower interest rate would help him gain some traction. But each time he applied, he was denied.
Then he read about Upstart on The Penny Hoarder. It was the story we told about Kelsey Buxton, who found herself in a similar situation, with about $22,000 in credit card debt. Because Nick related all too well, he felt like he had a chance.
He applied for the loan, and the process moved forward quickly. He rattles off email timestamps:
- Upstart sends confirmation that it received his application at 11:53 a.m. Jan. 8.
- At 12:33 p.m. that same day, an email indicating his loan approval popped into his inbox.
- Then, at 2:10 p.m. — only a few hours later — Upstart let him know it had initiated the transfer of funds into his account.
- When he woke up Jan. 9, sure enough, the loan was in his account, and he immediately began making payments toward his credit cards.
“It was such a relief — like a giant weight had been lifted off my shoulders,” he says.
This new loan meant Nick could go from paying a minimum of $800 a month to a minimum of $667, thanks to the difference in interest. With his credit cards, he was paying up to 24% in interest. His new loan boasted a 19% interest rate.
Rather than blowing that extra $133 a month, though, he puts it toward his five-year loan, which means he’ll be able to pay the loan off in about three and a half years — at most. His job also allows for overtime, so he plans to put some extra time in and put any additional income toward the loan.
“Truly, my goal is to have this loan paid off at around two and a half years,” he says. “I think I am on my way!”
Additionally, he has vowed to never slip into credit card debt again. That’s helped by cutting up all his cards — except one he keeps locked in a safe, only for emergencies.
Upstart Loans Review: He Has Renewed Hope
Nick says he can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
He is able to more aggressively pay off his credit card debt through his Upstart loan, and his credit score through Experian has increased from 630 to 742. He suspects it’ll only continue to increase as he pays his debt down.
Nick feels thankful for Upstart — and that it took a chance on him.
His less than perfect credit score didn’t mean he wasn’t capable of taking strides to get his finances in order. Instead, Upstart’s technology analyzed other factors, like his job history in public service and his education, an associate degree.
“It has shown a light at the end of a dark, treacherous, financially disappointing [tunnel],” he says. “I finally feel like I’m moving forward.”
As soon as Nick pays off his credit cards, he wants to purchase a house.
“Upstart has provided me the opportunity to dream about my future without lingering credit card debt.”
How to Apply for an Upstart Loan
We send a genuine thank you to Nick, who emailed us about a week after his loan approval to share his story.
“I really want to be able to give others hope, like I was given,” he says. “I thought I was never going to be able to get out of debt.”
If you’re curious, you can get a free quote from Upstart within minutes. Checking your rate won’t affect your credit score.
Simply navigate to Upstart and select your goal. Do you want to pay off credit card debt like Nick did? Tackle student loans? Pay for personal expenses, like medical bills or rent?
You’ll enter some basic information on the rate check form: how much you wish to borrow ($1,000 to $50,000), your name, address, highest level of education and primary source of income.
There are no prepayment penalties, so you can take strides to pay your loan ahead of time, like Nick.
Learn more about Upstart and secure a free quote all online.
This story is a reflection of one individual’s experience and doesn’t necessarily reflect the experience of all applicants.
Carson Kohler (carson@thepennyhoarder.com) is a staff writer at The Penny Hoarder. If an Upstart loan has renewed your financial hope, she’d love to hear from you.
This was originally published on The Penny Hoarder, which helps millions of readers worldwide earn and save money by sharing unique job opportunities, personal stories, freebies and more. The Inc. 5000 ranked The Penny Hoarder as the fastest-growing private media company in the U.S. in 2017.
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