I have always been a “value guy” when it comes to purchasing anything. What does that mean? To me, it means that the object that I’m considering purchasing offers more benefit to me than the effort I have to put out in order to be able to afford to purchase it.

Junk Food: Does a piece of chocolate provide enough pleasure to merit the ten or twenty cents that it costs. Unfortunately for me and to many others, the answer to that one is yes despite the fact that we know that it is bad for us. Our society is filled with overweight people because junk food is a low cost way of providing temporary satisfaction. Unfortunately, in the long run, the cumulative effects to our health of over consumption of junk food exceeds the financial cost. The real cost the health risk.

GMO Food: This is a tougher decision. Monsanto/the Devil is feeding the world. Productivity is up which keeps prices down. However, what is the real cost?

Entertainment: This is a far reaching category…from music to sports to theater to movies to television to the internet and so on. Other than professional sports and some theatrical productions, entertainment is typically very inexpensive from a financial perspective. To me, the real cost is the “brain dead” time that so many of us waste in front of the television, or the loss of “family time” as we all scurry off to our offices or bedrooms to play on the “net” instead of sharing with each other.

Water: You didn’t think I would let this one sneak by did you? Most of us think water is free because it doesn’t cost anything to get a drink of water out of our taps. Once again, the cost shouldn’t be measured in terms of money. While tap water is “free”, it is often filled with poisons that cause long term health problems.

The Reverse Osmosis people (a good one can be purchased for $400 to $600) have had it right all along in that they have focused on eliminating harmful contaminants from water. Adding a Calcium/Magnesium type supplement to replace lost minerals and eating an alkaline diet to offset the acidic properties of RO water is a good solution, or, you can add an antioxidant filter ($300).

I can’t leave this topic without talking about electric water ionizers. They work…plain and simple. But, how much should you pay for it? I guess that depends upon what value you attach to your health. The Kangen guys are the only “real” electric water ionizer company as they sell 5,000 machines per month in the USA. It boggles the mind to see people paying $4,000 per machine when competitive brands that work just as well or better sell for half the money….but that’s marketing baby! The market share for the alternative brands is shrinking while the Kangen brand is growing. It looks like the only real alternatives for consumers are the antioxidant filters which sell in the $300 to $400 range. I understand that sales for the antioxidant filters are taking off, but I thought their impact would have been greater by this time. Apparently the low price of the units is holding back sales as people wonder if the product actually works. Go figure.

On a percentage basis, virtually nobody owns a water ionizer. Would you use one if it was free? Would you pay $100? $200? $500? $1,000? Does the brand make a difference to you? I would really like to know so please comment below.

I don’t know any other way to describe the success of bottled water other than to recognise that the bottles are for lazy people. There is simply no reasonable explanation for people to be wasting ridiculous amounts of money and knowingly destroying our planet with bottled water other than they are too lazy to do something about it. This may sound crazy, but I think the real problem with bottled water is recycling. People think that bottled water is ok because the bottles get recycled. Wrong….less than half of the bottles get recycled.

Electro Magnetic Fields/Radiation: My new passion. Most of us know that we should avoid living near overhead telephone wires if we can avoid it. We have been hearing from out parents since we were children to not sit too close to the tv or the computer (but for the wrong reasons). We know that using micro wave ovens kills off the useful nutrients in the foods we “nuke”. Yet so many of us ignore the evidence.

We like our cell phones, our portable phones, our computers, and our televisions. Many of us broadcast WiFi through our homes and offices. The convenience offered represents great value when it comes to dollars spent versus the pleasures or efficiency derived from them. Virtually none of us has ever considered the cost of what the radiation from these appliances does to our health until the WHO announced in March 2011 that it ranks cell phone use as a Type 2B carcinogen. What does that mean? It means that using an unprotected cell phone may cause cancer. What does it cost to protect yourself or your children from this? Twenty bucks for lab tested shields that offer a 97% a reduction of the EMR’s entering your ear canal. Seems like a no-brainer to me. I have also learned that shields can also reduce the EMR from your computer screen by 89%, but you need four of them. My solution to reducing EMR’s from computer screens is to keep the screens a full arm’s length away (about 3 feet from my face as my hands rest on the keypad). I find that resting my arms on the desk also reduces the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

I could go on and on about the value of things because the selection of items to choose from is endless. The old adage that the best things in life are free still holds true. For everything else, there is…..do your homework and please consider all the costs, not just the price tag.