Can I Eat For a Dollar a Day?
72My Masterplan
After reading about a couple that made it through a month by eating for a dollar a day each, I started wondering how I would accomplish that challenge. I'm not surprised that they succeeded, but I was surprised at their food choices. For starters they ate nothing but oatmeal for breakfast for a month. I'm sure there are much tastier options, and I don't think I could gag down plain oatmeal once a day for a month. I'd at least have to add raisins or other dried fruit.
I was surprised that they opted to have no fresh fruit or vegetables either. For a vitamin C source they went with Tang. I haven't had Tang since the 1960's, but my guess it's that it's filled with a lot of artificial ingredients. I can't believe an apple a day or a celery stalk would make it impossible to complete the challenge.
Also, they didn't eat any meat. I'm not sure if they are vegetarian or just trying to fit in the budget, but I am definitely going to have meat, fish, chicken or something.
My biggest obstacle as I see it is that I don't live alone. Will I be able to stick to this if my boyfriend is sitting next to me eating steak and potatoes?
As far as drinks go, I'm going to go for iced tea made with tap water.
Luckily for me I live by several discount food stores. This would be a lot harder if I was snowed in in a cabin in Big Bear.
I don't expect my boyfriend to do this with me, but as long as he doesn't taunt me I should be OK.
I also don't drink alcohol. That might be a real deal breaker for people that can't live without a beer or a glass of wine a day.
I'm not sure when I'll start this. Logic would say to start it after Jan. 1. But if I wait that long I may forget all about it. I want to sleep on it and think about it for a day or two. I plan to shop once a week and spend $7 at a time. That way I can hit the farmer's market for fresh produce.
In days past we could live off the land
Mooching?
After some more thought, this challenge would be a lot more difficult if I had to do strictly a dollar a day. In other words, if my mom handed me a dollar at 8 AM each day and I had to survive just on that. For this to work, I'm going to spend $7 a week. Because in a market you can't just buy one egg, or one stalk of celery. I plan to buy a chicken for example, and it's not like you can buy a quarter of a chicken for .50. So if I want to make soup to last for 3 days, I'll probably spend $3.00 at once. The point is to spend no more than a dollar a day after it is averaged over a month.
I also have friends that are foragers and could probably survive in the wilderness for free. That's another challenge altogether.
In a chatroom one woman said she could eat for free. I said it's not a mooching challenge either. The point isn't to see how much food you can beg from others in a month, or to glean free groceries out of a dumpster. That's another challenge as well. A worthy challenge perhaps but not the focus of my informal experiment. This is getting complicated, isn't it.
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I'm torn between counting a daily vitamin or not.
I take vitimins so sporadically anyway I think I'll just leave that part out. But if you are going to do this for more than a month you should factor it in.
I don't think I'm going to survive through out this $1 per day eating.
I would like to share my tip of getting free food with you: I volunteer for my local food bank in exchange groceries, produces and can food. I've done this for more than two years, every month I got to save extra $200 - $300 of purchasing grocery food for a family of four. If you don't have time to volunteer you may still get help from them by becoming their client in the beginning. You get free groceries (depend upon the area you live. I heard some places provide low cost groceries. I am in San Francisco Bay Area and most of the local food banks are private non-profit organizations. They distribute free food for low-income people as well as anyone who needs food in any emergency bases.). Sign up is easy and they won't check your income as applying food stamps.
Perhaps you can try this, after one month of this $1 per day eating challenge. Good luck!
Great Hub !!!
people in third world countries make less than 1 $ a day and they still feed their families and survive. I think if you realy want to eat for a dollar a day you can eat for a dolar a day.
Heck yeah - buy expired Power Bars from the grocery store - cheap, fast, easy and yummy.
Well, this is certainly an unusual batch of comments.
While I think food banks are great and absolutely necessary in hard times, if I got food there I'd feel like I was robbing from the poor. It would be unethical.
As far as Third World countries, a dollar in S. California is a lot different than a dollar in Bangladesh. If you made a dollar a day in many third world countries you'd be rich by local standards.
And yes ecahoon, you could do that, but that would be an unhealthy way to live. Not to mention extremely boring.
Hi there,
You could definitely do it. I was inspired by the same couple and decided to give the dollar-a-day diet a try this month. Today is my 10th day. It is hard, but so far, so good! I accepted a free meal yesterday from a staff meeting at work - it was provided for all staff, so I decided to eat it. I thought that if I truly did not have more money for food than a dollar a day, I would accept a free meal if offered one. Otherwise, I have just been getting along on my dollar a day.
Oatmeal has been my breakfast of choice, but I have always eaten oatmeal anyway. I jazz it up with two teaspoons of brown sugar, and it's not so bad. You could get by with a tablespoon of raisins, I bet.
Lunch is usually a peanut butter sandwich and dinner is rice and beans, Ramen noodles, or spaghetti and sauce with some kind of frozen or canned veggie.
Good luck if you decide to do it! Oh, and I have been doing this alongside my husband who can put away a ton of food. It's hard to see him with all that food, but I make sure I eat at the same time as him so it's not so bad.
I see you are from Anaheim. I used to work there and went to CNA school there as well. I worked across the street from Disneyland. Also I grew up going to season ticket Angels games when he was still alive.
I actually participated in wrestling half of highschool and I know that, in terms of survival, you could live off of a dollar a day worth of food. It does become complicated when you factor in the choices of food opportunities and spending more at once. I would be tempted to try just having a dollar at 8 am (like you mentioned) and attempting to buy food with it. I may try this sometime soon but I think I like food to much to sacrifice it right now, lol. Thank you very much for this curious hub!
Ramen Noodles will do it! They're about 10-30cent a pack depending on where you live. This is one of the more interesting hubs I've come across LOL...
How did it turn out?
Did you know ramen noodles were invented so college students could eat for next to nothing? Sadly, they have about zero nutritional value.
I'd like to cut back, but so far have not been THAT inspired. LOL It's a worthy skill, and sacrifice to learn this!!
I would be hard but if you really triend i believe i could do it!!
On one hand, this sounds like a good thing to try, very informative. But on the other hand, the nutritional value of the foods you'd eat seem close to working toward malnutrition.
The key woul dbe to stick to the basic high calorie content low cost foods that are the core of meals for most people in the world: Those foods are corn, beans, grains(cheapest varieties), and rice, and to a lesser extent potatoes.
Storytellersrus Level 7 Commenter 3 years ago
do vitamins count? lol. i could eat oatmeal... actually do. but my requirements are more like $1 per meal. If you balance out the leftovers and divide by 3 to 5 depending on which kids are home. i might cheat at times and divide by the dogs and cats if i share... haha.