Picture this, if you had the chance to purchase a lean hamburger, a bag of potato chips, or a candy bar, which would you buy? And how would you base your choice: cost, taste preference, convenience, nutritional content, emotional mood?

The battle between our taste buds and our knowledge of nutrition is never ending. What may taste sublimely delicious to us is most often not good for us short-term, and in the long-term detrimental to our health. If you take the time to calculate the benefit of good nutrition in dollars and cents, the real cost of bad food is shocking.

My first exposure to all things syrupy sweet (and in a four-year old mind, wonderful) is sitting under the Poinciana tree next to Soares Store in Spanish Point, eating candy purchased from them with money stolen from my mother?s pocketbook. The feeling of having my very own bag of candy to quaff down was soon interrupted by my mother who had discovered the theft and would render punishment. And there you have it, the beginning of eating pleasure tinged with complete guilt.

My second most vivid food memory is moving a few years later ? very close, too close, to Freeza Fresh in Paget. Thus began easy access to ice cream and full sugar soda (we called it mineral then) along with a lifelong family addiction to junk food and a constant struggle to avoid excess sugar intake.

Casting a real wet picnic blanket on Cup Match festivities, let?s just suppose that even over this holiday you?d like to eat healthier. It?s not so easy to figure out the content of all your purchases, some in grams, ounces, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and other Asian languages. After a long day spent bringing home the bacon, grocery shopping can feel worse than detention in school.

Does a brand name mean it?s good for you? The global food industry spends billions on media who are masters at brand identification. Brand does not mean better. Brand does not mean adequate nutritional components, including protein, one of the building blocks of life. Branding may cost more for less. To really understand what you are buying, go to any number of websites by typing in ?wholesome low cost nutritional food?. And yes, it won?t always be what you just love.

In the movie, ?SuperSize Me? which won an award at the last Sundance Film Festival and should be required viewing for every single family, not just the junk food junkies, we see a brand recognition test done with children around six years of age. Showing them a few pictures, i.e. Jesus, Ronald MacDonald, Wendys, George Washington, President Bush, they are asked if they know who they are. Guess which pictures they knew immediately, Ronald and Wendy?s; the Lord Jesus and George Washington were completely unknown.

These advertising blitzes are particularly harmful to children, who lack the intellectual capacity to make sound food judgments. Young children, particularly, will emulate the eating habits of their parents and siblings. In empirical study after study it has been shown that children who do not receive adequate nutrition, including sufficient protein (and fat in correct proportions) during their formative years ( birth to to age five) are terribly disadvantaged. In many cases, they will have diminished resistance to disease, are smaller in stature, and most appalling of all, may have more limited intellectual functions because a child?s brain is not fully grown until their fifth year. The message, once those formative years have passed, is it may be too late to reverse the damage.

The movie ?Supersize Me?, which was shown at the Bermuda International Film Festival a couple of years ago, follows a 30-something fellow and his unexpected consequences of eating a McDonalds diet, three meals a day for 30 days. Yes, McDonalds sell protein in their burgers, but that is only one component of fat, sugar and calorie laden meals. In one month, he had:

A weight gain of 25 pounds, almost a pound a day

A significant elevation in blood pressure

A significant increase in cholesterol levels, and bad triglycerides

A significant increase in sugar (glucose blood levels)

Depression and insomnia

Listlessness, less energy and observed stress on lung functions

Constant cravings for more food

Fatty liver and some liver deterioration

At the end of the film, it takes him nine months to lose those same 25 pounds.

How do you know what is good for you? Rather than trying to describe a total daily diet plan, this after all, is not a nutritional column, let?s take one food component. Everyone needs some protein, every day. If you can?t bear to give up all the ?goodie? foods and think they are not so bad to eat, let?s use a simple cost comparison for protein, one of the building blocks of life. Exactly how much are you getting and what does it cost?

Here is our simple spreadsheet, which you can copy if you feel so inclined. You can also do this the old fashioned way, by hand. Caution: these are estimates based only on one shopper?s food cupboard, but you get the picture. And the answer as you probably suspected, is pretty predictable. Junk food, as a nutrition is very poor, not really food at all ? with the cost of pure protein in most cases priced in excess of twenty times higher than the rest of the sampling. Think about how often you treat yourself (and your children) to what is really an incredibly expensive, poor excuse for a food group. Cutting out a just a few of these types of snacks will help with healthy living, not to mention saving more than a few dollars. Knowing all this, guess who loves junk food?

There now, I?ve made both me and you feel enormously guilty. Now go out and enjoy the holiday!