[MrOwen]

It's unfortunate so many people "fight" or argue the importance of this. Anyone, and I mean anyone, who's taken a week to eat clean, locally sourced, minimally processed food will notice a marked difference in behavior, energy level, and whole host of other benefits. It's unfortunate that access to this type of food is often limited, however, and cost or time prevents many from taking advantage of this kind of diet.

Food is such an amazing aspect to human life and I thoroughly enjoy taking full advantage of what good food can provide for my body.

[pragma_x]

Exactly.

What really gets me down is that our shopping options are often steered towards processed foods.

Take a basic cost-benefit analysis of processed foods, for example. These are an obscenely good value in terms of calories per dollar. The alternative, raw foods, take time and energy (heat/fuel) to cook before you can eat them. This puts highly processed and nutritionally poor food on the table a lot of the time if you're lacking in time, money, or both; it's the only option that makes sense in that situation. Granted, we're discounting future costs of health from a diet like this, but that's not an immediate concern when you're hungry.