"I'd like to be at a healthier weight," a friend told me. "But we just don't have the money to buy expensive diet foods and there isn't enough money to join a gym." Many people feel that way -- that a healthy diet and exercise plan is out of reach because of their high cost. Don't lose hope! We'll be looking at ways to make healthy choices without spending too much money.  First you don't need to buy the expensive pre-prepared "diet foods." Back in the early 1970s when I started housekeeping, 90% of the food I bought was ingredients. Very few things were preprocessed  . Now 90% of the food you find in the store is quick food. That's a bad thing.  Quick foods like boxed "just add hamburger" meals have had the fiber   removed to make them faster to prepare. Take a look at the label   on that box. It often has low numbers listed under "fiber" because fiber takes longer to digest. If the low fiber meal is digested, the result is that your body begins to store fat. Besides, your body is short of nutrients  . You will be driven to eat more to try to make up for the low quality of the food you are eating. And then there are the chemicals the producers add to the quick meals to make them palatable. If not, the stuff would taste like cardboard and you wouldn't enjoy it. However, these chemicals certainly aren't good for your health.  What's the answer? Buy whole ingredients and give up the expensive, low nutrition, processed foods. Do the cooking yourself and you will have control over what is in your food -- and it will cost less, too. The author suggests in the text that people should   _  .
control the amount of food eat more processed foods cook food for themselves choose cheap ingredients