The Growing Price Tag on Your Waistline

And while food prices have generally declined, a few categories have become pricier recently. Compared with a year ago, the prices of fruits and vegetables have gone up 2.4 percent and alcoholic beverages 3.6 percent, according to the consumer price index.

The organic food industry is also booming—and sucking more money from consumer wallets in the process. The Organic Trade Association says that sales of organic food and drinks grew from $1 billion in 1990 to more than $20 billion today, and it's one of the fastest-growing food sectors. With more mainstream stores, from Safeway to Food Lion to Wal-Mart, carrying organic products, consumers don't have to travel to specialty outlets such as Whole Foods to find organic apples or pasta.

Sticking with nonspecialty stores is also easier on the wallet; a survey from Washington Consumers' Checkbook shows that families that spend an average of $150 a week on groceries at a mainstream store such as Safeway would spend $3,510 more by shopping at Whole Foods. (They could also save $1,326 by shopping at a discount store such as Bottom Dollar Food, but they might not find any organic arugula there.)

Meanwhile, Americans are also willing to shell out cash for convenience. Processed foods, which include everything from cereal to baked goods, have expanded to make up about three quarters of global food sales and now exceed $3.2 trillion a year, according to the Agriculture Department. Almost half of all money going to food in the United States is spent at restaurants, the National Restaurant Association reports. (In 1955, only $1 went to restaurants for every $4 spent on food.) The consumer price index shows that the prices of food eaten away from home have been climbing, and the National Restaurant Association reports that sales will reach $565.9 billion this year, up from $379 billion a decade ago. Despite the recession, the restaurant industry is expected to grow 2.5 percent in 2009.

Your company wants you healthy and might pay you to get there. Some employers wager that the better you feel, the more—and more productively—you'll work. Combine that with most health policy experts' belief that healthful living, with a focus on prevention, takes less of a financial toll on individuals, their employers (which typically pay a portion of healthcare costs), and the overall medical system than the current alternative. So in an effort to discourage those medically costly behaviors—smoking cigarettes, being overweight, having high blood pressure, for example—many employers are offering incentive programs to get healthier. From giving cash to shaving a few hundred dollars off your health insurance premium, some employers are really putting their money where their mouth is.

The big picture. Put it all together—the growing costs of our exercise routines, medical care, and health food—and you can see why our bodies have become more expensive to maintain. The exercise industry, which was practically nonexistent 50 years ago, now rakes in billions of dollars a year. According to the National Sporting Goods Association, sales of sports-related footwear, clothing, and equipment exceed $53 billion a year. Americans buy $3 billion worth of treadmills alone annually.

Americans are also spending record amounts on their healthcare. According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, total annual spending is now $2.2 trillion, or around $7,421 per person. Ten years ago, it was half that, and 20 years ago, total spending was a quarter of what it is today.