It wasn't too long ago that I prided myself on how I was able to feed a family of four on just over three hundred dollars a month. I'd create a menu that covered two weeks, make a grocery list on my word processor, and with a firm dedication to buying only what was on the sacred list, I'd go shopping at my local grocery store.

I did this for quite a while, and with as much self-satisfaction as I got from my ability to keep that grocery bill low, it was actually a necessity to keep the wolf from the door.

I discovered the cost effective "benefits" of adding steamed rice to many meals, buying twenty pound bags of potatoes, and shopping bakery outlet stores for day old bread and rolls. I fed my family "well rounded meals" and no one went hungry. When I looked at the checkbook and figured the bills, all seemed right with the world. I was able to stay on budget and feed my family.

Well, life changed, as it tends to do, and our family life took an upward turn as my husband changed jobs and quickly began the climb up the ladder of financial success. The wolves had ceased their insistent knocking at the door to our lives.

But life never remains static and in no time it was throwing us another curve when we took my father in

I found myself spending substantially more on food. Why?

One we were no longer dirt poor and could afford the "extras" on occasion, so I simply relaxed the purse strings a bit.

Two my father didn't like leftovers. I found myself making a new dinner each night. It would have been better to make double recipes, freezing the leftovers to serve my family at a later time.

Soon my dedication to grocery-thriftiness was left in the dust in order to keep everything else from reeling out of control. But our grocery bill remained doable and if it ever did get "out of control" it was those times I simply wasn't paying attention and found myself running to the store every five minutes for another box of this and another bag of that.

But then, things really changed. We began doing Atkins

Our grocery bill began to climb really climb and rather quickly at that.

I thought at first and rightly so that it was all the low-carb specialty products I was purchasing. So after the first month, I backed off and began shopping for only "real food." I thought surely this would fix the costly dilemma. And now, it was indeed a dilemma You see, my husband was no longer climbing that corporate ladder. In fact, he'd been laid off for a year and now was starting his own business.

This was no time to relax my resolve to keep our costs down.

So our second month of low-carbing, I bought only what most of us know are the low-carb essentials meat, cream, butter, veggies, eggs, and some fruit. I felt confident our food bill would plummet and my financial chart would show that bar graph as a stubby little pillar next to the previous month's skyscraper.

It didn't. To my shock, the costs were still rising. Month after month, no matter how carefully I planned, the final bill was staggering. Why? How was it possible?

We weren't eating out at restaurants at all. We no longer bought junk food. I'd begun to diligently shop for sales on meat, and had even created a price book so I'd know a good sale when I saw one.

After brooding over this as we control freaks do I came to realize something that maybe everyone knew but me.

It's actually cheaper to eat a diet that will kill you than to eat one that will keep you out of the doctor's office.

I sat in disbelief as I pondered this realization. I could go to Costco and buy a case of boxed macaroni and cheese for nearly nothing and feed my family for a month. But if I wanted to feed them something that wouldn't send them careening toward diabetes, I'd have to spend quadruple that. It was going to cost a lot more to give them a breakfast of eggs and sausage.

So, why is that? Why is it so incredibly cheap to purchase twenty-five pound bags of bulk white rice? Yet, if you want brown or wild rice, you're left with fashionably tiny bags at immense prices?

Why is it that when I buy a "snack" for my son's (15-player) soccer team, I can walk down the aisle and spend next to nothing for high fructose corn syrup that masquerades as "healthy juice drinks"? But if I wish to avoid assaulting those kids' bodies with instant insulin spikes, I must pay dearly for something truly good for them?

I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but I find myself tempted to join their club!

It makes me wonder about those much less fortunate than myself. How do the working poor do it?

Answer: They buy the cheap stuff in order to feed their children. I know I probably would. And then the destructive circle begins. Obesity. Diabetes. Low test scores. High doctor bills. High prescription bills. More poverty. More cheap, mass-produced "food."

I wonder how many of society's ills would be cured or at least curtailed if we weren't polluting our bodies with this stuff.

There may be some of you, who even though you are low-carbing, will see me as nave. Yet I assure you, I'm well aware of the world's problems.

I've been fortunate to live in many places while growing up the child of a military father. I've lived from Alaska to Florida and ended up living in Turkey for a year in a village eighteen kilometers from the base. I've seen how many people live.

Indeed, living in Turkey was an eye-opener in many ways. There were no pre-packaged foods. I watched eighty-year-old men, muscles taut and toned, heaving bags of flour onto trucks. I watched little old ladies in their headscarves, walking a mile or more to buy their groceries from outdoor markets that circled the village square and, heavy laden, trudging back home. Automobiles were rare and food was whole, not broken down and reconstituted so it could last for decades on a warehouse shelf.

So where am I now? I continue to be on a mission to keep our grocery bill down. But I'll never be able to match the savings of a few years ago when I was able to stretch my meals with cheap, starchy foods.

That doesn't mean there aren't great cost-saving measures we can all take. In fact, I've picked up several valuable tips I'll share with you. Perhaps you've heard them before, but if we all share ideas freely, more will come, and we can all stay within our budgets without paying the truly higher price surrendering our health.