Hi! My name is Mina, and I am so excited to connect with you in this way. I am the passion behind @IamMinaAdams over on IG. I recently had a young mom message me to ask if I had any practical advice on how she could afford things like pure maple syrup with rising food costs. She told me that she felt guilty because she wanted to feed her family healthy options, but she wasn't sure if she could afford it. Her story and her concerns resonated with me.
Most people don't know that I gave birth to my first child the day before my nineteenth birthday. I was married by 24, and by the time I turned 30, I was a mother of five. Clean eating wasn’t on my radar, and it definitely wasn’t in my budget. I was in survival mode, always. We ate fast food, we drank loads of juice, and our fruit of choice was fruit snacks. When our zip code changed, so did my awareness of the importance of healthier choices. We began to slowly swap out one unhealthy choice for one that was a little better.
Shortly after beginning this new journey I began to realize that our zip code may have changed, but our grocery budget was quite the same. Pure maple syrup is expensive! Organic fruits and vegetables are often beyond our budget. The reality of it is, we all want our children to be healthier, happier people, but what do you do when your current resources don’t allow it? I can tell you what I did. I bought the Maple Syrup! I spent $12.98 for a 32oz bottle. That’s 3 times the price of our normal bottle! But guess what? I also decided to buy and prepare less meals that required syrup, so that one bottle lasted three times as long. This process became my secret to cleaning up my pantry.
Asking myself if there were any foods that we could limit or eliminate in order to afford another, I began to make safer swaps. I can now buy Organic Milk because I’m no longer buying juice and we eat way less sugary cereals. I can buy more fresh fruit because I put back the fruit snacks and Pop-Tarts. I now opt for better protein sources because we’ve practically eliminated our trips to the drive-thru.
Not everyone can afford to throw everything in their pantries away and start over. Some of us have to monkey bar this journey. We have to hold on to our current choice until we figure out how to make to the next. If you ever find yourself desiring to be in a position that your current resources can't take you, just hold on. I believe that as long as you know that it's possible, you will find a way. It is truly a journey, one that is a lot more enjoyable when you don’t burden yourself with guilt. We are all doing the best that we can with the resources that we have. Trust me, you’re not on this journey alone. Take care, I’m rooting for you.
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