In The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten explored subsistence diets, from Gray’s Papaya to the USDA Thrifty Food Plan, finally settling on a meaty-grainy concoction from M.F.K. Fisher’s great tome on subsistence, How to Cook a Wolf. It set him back about $1.60 per day. The Hillbilly Housewife has invented a menu that she claims will feed a family of six for $45 per week.
These guys are eating like kings compared to Evan. A blogger who chooses a different project each month to write on, Evan decided to gain some insight into what it’s like to be poor by spending only $30 for food. For the entire month of November. That’s $1 per day, folks, not even enough to buy a seven-layer burrito at Taco Bell (which is sad, because Evan loves the Bell).
The results of that experiment, documented on Evan’s blog Hungry for a Month, are riveting. Not much of a cook, Evan ended up eating a lot of rice mixed with frozen veggies and mashed potato flakes, as well as that poverty staple, ramen. Like Morgan Spurlock, who was an inspiration, Evan saw his body go through some changes:
It hit me around 12:15pm today. I was on a conference call and my stomach started to hurt. It wasn’t too bad at first, but over the span of about 15 minutes, the pain turned from some dull rumblings to sharp pains. Sharp enough that it was hard to stand up. My arms started to feel heavy. For the first time, I wondered if my dollar-a-day-diet was simply going to give out on me.
In the comments section, people became alarmed at the sheer amount of carbs in Evan’s diet and began to offer plenty of unsolicited advice.
In the end, Evan lost 18 pounds, but gained insights on everything from the nature of comfort food to the hair-raising ease of slipping into anorexia. And what did he do with all the extra dollars he hadn’t spent at Taco Bell? At the end of the month he sent a check for more than $200 to the local food bank.
What’s your food budget? What would you cook if you had only $30 to spend for a month?
I would buy one roasting chicken approx $8
1 bag of black beans $2
1 bag of rice $2
3 onion $2
1 pkg corn tortilla $3
1 bag shredded cheese $3
1 jar of salsa $2
1lb pkg ground beef $5
2 zuccini $1.00
2-3 carrots $2.00
This gives you alot of different combonations of food, chicken & rice, chicken & cheese quesadillas, rice and breans, chicken soup w/ veggies and rice
How is 1 chicken and 1 pound of ground beef supposed to last an entire month?
I bet that amount of meat would stretch pretty far, if you used the whole chicken incl. the gizzards, feet, etc.; ground beef can go a long way, too, esp. in a sauce. I’m most interested in the fact that Evan’s commenters seem to think it would be so cheap and easy to add whole grains, herbs, etc. to his diet on just $1/day–I’m actually not sure how possible that would be. In terms of caloric bang for your buck, refined white carbs really are tops, at least according to a lot of stuff I’ve read–and supposedly that’s the whole reason the incidence of diabetes is so high among low-income people.
Being this broke has taught me the wonders and benefits to shopping in Asian Markets. A 25# bag of rice for $10 goes a long long way.
$8 for a roasting chicken? Pfft, you can get two for that price if you’re careful.
right on, hooliganyouth! if you shop at Asian/Indian/Malay markets then i guarantee you can go home with a whole box of fresh, beautiful produce for, max, $10 (cheaper for Americans, no doubt). not to mention bulk spices cost less than you can imagine. i’m talking cents here for enough for a month. and eggs! you’ll find eggs in bulk and very cheap and you’ll be grateful for those when making ramen.
if you aren’t a hermit you team up with friends and swap some of the frozen meals you’ve made…
better not to shop at peak times but wait for the end-of-night specials and pick up meat goods and bread on super, has to be sold special. also, deli meats go a long way to making life easier on that front.
it’s dairy that’s tricky on that kind of budget but one carton UHT long-life milk can last a month if used judiciously. but it has to be full fat or you lose out in terms of important dietary fats that help absorb the limited vitamins.
make real stock!! i can’t emphasise that enough. it was during the French revolution that a doctor found that gelatine, in its pure form, made from real animal carcasses, is what’s called a protein sparer… which means that your body can survive on an extremely limited amount of actual protein because what you do take in goes much, much farther. the chemical gelatine they use these days doesn’t have nearly the same benefits, unfortunately and many people lose out because of it. it means you can buy perhaps only one kind of meat each month and it will do just fine. no cravings.
tea is another great one. instead of coffee. keeps you going and vastly cheaper and it keeps.
a pressure cooker will save your bacon. you can make anything taste gorgeous with one. even plain old rice and beans.
tuna is a must, for your Omega 3… and visit a bulk depo once in a while. you’ll pick up great bargains in terms of canned goods.
if you go to the farmer’s market occassionally there will be honey available in bulk. use this for sugar. you need much less, spoon for spoon and it curbs cravings.
also, if you’re a woman, you’ll need to buy a bulk packet of cocoa from the spice market because without it added to in at a certain time of month your iron levels will drop and make your life hell.
i could go on but you get the idea. it’s creative solutions you need and unfortunately that goes against all the push for uber convenient foodstuffs.
it works better if you forget about ’square meals’ and feed yourself small portions consistently. you won’t get hungry. frustrated and bored, yes. but you won’t suffer quite as much as poor Evan…
i expect it also helps not to switch from one extreme to the other quite so rapidly. still, our bodies actually are designed to cope with periods of subsistence/starvation.
and if all else fails, ask your grandparents how they survived rationing.