Whole Foods has entered the chat, and it would like $14 for a jar of almond butter.
Here's the thing about "healthy food" in America: it's not a secret.
The information has been available since roughly the invention of the food pyramid, and yet the average American diet still runs on gas-station taquitos and whatever's on sale at the drive-thru.
Because the good stuff costs more, and we all quietly agreed to pretend that's normal.
A pound of wild-caught salmon: your firstborn and a co-signer.
When people say they "can't afford to eat healthy," they're not making excuses, they're reading a receipt.
Then there's the time tax nobody talks about.
Cool, hope you enjoy washing, chopping, portioning, and cooking for 45 minutes after a nine-hour workday, then doing dishes while your brain slowly buffers.
Meanwhile, a frozen pizza is a two-minute commitment with zero cleanup and a 100% approval rating from your taste buds.
The food industry knows exactly what it's doing here.
They've spent decades engineering products to hit the precise intersection of cheap, fast, and chemically irresistible. "Healthy" brands responded by charging a premium for the privilege of feeling morally superior at checkout.
It's a rigged game, and both sides are winning.
And can we talk about how "healthy" became a personality trait?
Somewhere along the way, eating a salad turned into a public statement.
People post their grain bowls like they're announcing a promotion.
If you genuinely enjoy quinoa, great, but let's not act like the rest of us are out here committing crimes against our own arteries on purpose.
Here's the plot twist nobody wants: some of the healthiest foods on the planet are also the cheapest.
Frozen vegetables, which are nutritionally identical to fresh and cost a third as much.
Cabbage, which is basically a vegetable that refuses to die in your fridge.
The problem isn't that healthy food doesn't exist at a low price.
It's that nobody's making a TikTok about lentils.
It's that we've been sold a version of "healthy" that looks like a $16 smoothie and a wellness influencer's grocery haul, when it actually looks like a pot of bean soup that feeds you for four days.
So no, you don't need to shop at Erewhon or hire a nutritionist or spend your Sunday meal-prepping seventeen identical chicken breasts.
You need to stop believing the lie that eating well is a luxury good.
It's just boring, unglamorous, and deeply unphotogenic, which is exactly why nobody's selling it to you.
Final Thoughts
Your body won't know the difference, but your bank account absolutely will.