I'm not a spring chicken anymore, so I've been trying to get my diet under control, exercise more, etc. One thing I've noticed is that eating healthy can really be costly. This may not be a revelation to most people, but I've never been one to pay a whole lot of attention to prices.

But I've been subscribing to Men's Health and reading the health section of my local newspaper, and I've been trying to follow some of the advice found in these places. But it's not so cheap to do so.

Two examples:

Pom Pomegranate Juice is supposed to fight atherosclerosis (heart disease) and contain antioxidants and do all sorts of wonderful things. At this store you can get a 16-ounce bottle for $4.99. (I think it is actually a little cheaper than that at my grocery.) That's a lot of money for 16 ounces of liquid. If it was the guaranteed fountain of youth, no problem. But it's just pomegranate juice. I'm still going to die someday, and so I have to question how much of the money I have while alive should go toward pomegranate juice.

Planter's now offers this NUT-rition Heart Healthy Mix, which is full of peanuts, almonds, pistachios, pecans, hazelnuts and the especially heart-healthy walnut. Over at Amazon I can buy three 9.75-ounce cans for $15, or $5 per. That's actually not bad in comparison to my local store, where I believe a single can was over $6. Nuts are never cheap, but add the heart-healthy tag (and the walnuts), and now you're getting into some serious cash.

Don't even get me started on the cost of multivitamins.

They might make me live a long time, but these superfoods are also going to make me go broke.

Running late for a wedding? Worse yet, you didn't have time for a gift? If your wedding just happens to be at this wedding hall in Israel, then no problem:

Guests at an Israeli wedding hall can now insert a credit card into a machine at its entrance, tap in a sum and leave a gift for the bride and groom.

"It's new in Israel and the world," Aya Alon Kaufman of the Gan Oranim hall in Tel Aviv said on Israel's Channel 10 television.

Well, it may be new, but I don't think it's going to sweeping the world. Although maybe the country, if your country is Israel, at least according to this paragraph which taught me something I didn't know:

Rather than bring boxed gifts, guests at Israeli weddings usually leave cash or cheques in envelopes they slip into a safe placed at the reception hall's door.

If I ever get married again, I'm just going to use PayPal.

Dayana Yochim has a fun article this week at Motley Fool about teaching a friend's 6-year-old daughter about credit after the girl received a credit card solicitation in the mail. My favorite parts:

"When you go to the store to buy Barbie a friend, if you pay for her with your new Visa, her friend will cost $1,087 and won't be paid for in full until you're 43."

And a little existential angst that every child is sure to understand:

"So now you have this huge Visa bill and an empty piggy bank and all of your friends are going to upstate New York in 10 days for a relaxing weekend. Only now you can't go because gas prices are insane and you decided not to go into PR after college where you could have earned money hand over fist, but, in retrospect, you wouldn't have felt like you sold your soul and ..."

Heh, heh. I especially enjoyed that last one. Funny stuff.

Tough economic times often bring out the greatest creativity in marketers.

Case in point: Brothel offers customers gas rebate:

A Nevada brothel is trying to stimulate business by offering free gasoline.

Clients of the Shady Lady Ranch will get a $50 gas voucher if they fork out $300 - worth about one hour's worth of services - at the brothel in Beatty, Nevada, 130 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Owner James Davis said he already has had to order another $1,000 set of gas vouchers because the first $1,000 were spent in one week.

Better than a free Slurpee.

(Hat tip to Five Cent Nickel)

Around the PF blog world:

Stop Buying Crap: Five Thing I'll Never Buy My Future Kids:

From my experiences, the quickest way to raise a bratty child is to buy them lots of crap to appease them, and what better way than a gigantic TV in the car, with a full collection of Sponge Bob DVD?

The Wastrel Show: The Art of Doing Nothing:

Doing nothing is an art. It's a treasure. Once you master this craft there is no turning back. For the less you do, the less you want to do. I've spent the past few years streamlining my environment, so much so, that each anniversary brings me less to do. I can now sit perfectly still anywhere I choose and neither read a book, listen to music nor engage my mind in anything other than the stillness of the moment. I can just sit back and observe the world as it unfolds itself to me. A world that I was once too busy to notice.

Brip Blap: Learn to Think Bigger:

Many investors will establish a pattern of investing that suits them, and then defend that pattern to others (and to themselves) even if it doesn't work. A good example is index fund investing. The conventional wisdom is that it cannot fail. The truth is that it's the investing pattern with the best possible return for a non-knowledgeable investor, but even then it's subject to a number of caveats. If you happened to be withdrawing your money now, the last eight years would have been essentially 0% returns on those funds.

Single Ma: Spending Challenge:

Nordstrom - how can I resist a shoe sale when the friggin store is less than 5 minutes from my house? It's a set up!

My post last week bashing supermarket loyalty cards brought this response from Craig, whose Flickr photo I used as part of that post:

The photo above shows a loyalty benefit to using the cards at Krogers and my local Krogers brand, King Soopers. For every $100 you spend at the store each month you get 10 cents of a tankful of gas at their gas stations. It's not huge, but considering the store and the gas station are just up the road, it keeps me going there.

I agree with Craig.

I had forgotten about this new twist that many supermarkets are adding. This is what a loyalty card should be - you spend a certain amount at that store and you get something in return. In other words, you are rewarded for your loyalty. I will admit that one benefit to my own local grocery store is that your purchases lead to gas discounts at their store-owned stations - the more you spend in the store, the greater your gas rebates. It's a good thing.

However, I stand by my position on grocery store cards as a way to get "sale prices" on certain items. Since everyone is eligible to get the sale price if they have the card, it's not anything special; it's merely a way for the store to track your purchases.

Nevertheless, Craig makes a good point that I had missed.