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My wife and I tried to do this recently on $1.70 per person per day. We didn't last our intended 28 days. A few observations we found: Meat and organic food wa
by mmaunder 16y ago
My wife and I tried to do this recently on $1.70 per person per day. We didn't last our intended 28 days. A few observations we found:
Meat and organic food was too expensive.
Fruit is crazy expensive so we bought OJ from concentrate with no additives as a cheap source of Vitamin C.
Eggs were are very expensive, but we needed the protein and nutrients, so rationed ourselves to 3 each per week.
We had to remove all sugar to save on cost and sugar crashed badly.
We decided that Costco was cheating due to the $70 membership fee and so we alternated between Safeway and Walmart.
You quickly learn the difference between broccoli florets and stems. [Stems are cheaper]
Baking your own bread is incredibly cheap and if you're using a sourdough starter you just need flour, salt and water. It's a great staple and adds taste to the meal. I scraped the unused flour off the work bench and dumped it back in the sourdough starter to save on cost.
Lentils are the most complete non-meat protein source.
Combining beans and rice give you a complete protein.
Cheese is too expensive and you can't make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk. It just doesn't set when you add the rennet.
You can buy coffee for $1 for a months worth of ground coffee at walmart. It's called Master Chef and it tastes like a used catbox.
Before we did our experiment we found a few "living on a dollar a day" blogs, but every single one bought in bulk and then calculated the cost of each scoop they took out of the bin. They also didn't care about nutritional completeness and basically starved themselves for the period.
After trying to do this on $1.70 and failing, I think Mike's budget of $3 is probably a realistic per person budget if you're going to stay healthy.
- jacobolus 16y ago> we alternated between Safeway and Walmart Well there’s one problem. Safeway is crazy expensive compared to many supermarkets, like 30–50% more.
- ImprovedSilence 16y agoThat depends on where you live. In some more urban areas, huge Walmarts and Wegmans are nowhere to be found. I find Safeway and Giant to be the bargin places when comparing to Harris Teeter or Whole Foods in my area. (Arlington, VA)
- orenmazor 16y agoif you want to save on coffee, buy green beans and roast. I pay around $30 for 5lbs of green beans that are extremely high quality. you can do far cheaper than that though.
- mmaunder 16y agoGreat idea! Thanks!!
- orenmazor 16y agono problem. the cheapest (and still good quality) can be found in many middle eastern shops. they wont sell them by the canvas sack, but you can usually get a pound or two for a couple of bucks and its going to be better than walmart brand.
- catch23 16y agoThe taste of coffee is directly proportional to the length of time sitting on the shelf after roasting. Even the worst-grade green beans taste great after a fresh roast. I roast my beans in a $9 popcorn machine I bought at Walgreens.
- bradgessler 16y agoWhere do you buy those beans at? Online or a local coffee joint?
- lsc 16y agoI get mine at http://www.sweetmarias.com http://www.sweetmarias.com - they have info on roasting using a popcorn popper and other cool things.
- mgarfias 16y ago+1 for sweetmarias. Those guys rock.
- bradgessler 16y ago
- r0s 16y ago> we found a few "living on a dollar a day" blogs, but every single one bought in bulk and then calculated the cost of each scoop they took out of the bin. What's wrong with that? It's by far the cheapest way to cook. Bulk makes buying organic cheap too, as long as you don't shop at supermarkets. They have a habit of avoiding organic brands that are price-competitive with existing products.
- mmaunder 16y agoI guess it's not a train smash, but most people don't buy flour by the bin. The main problem I had with their approach was not eating a balanced diet and it being unsustainable.
- ramchip 16y agotrain smash n South African informal a disaster or serious setback (esp in the phrase it's not a train smash) That's an interesting phrase.
- Klinky 16y agoYou have to store those products somewhere. 25lb - 50lb bags or buckets of flour, rice, beans and/or other dry goods are not small. Buying produce in bulk may save you money, but you must use the produce before it goes bad which can start to happen within a few days or a week.
- prawn 16y agoMy biggest issue is with wastage. My budget is certainly not a few dollars/day - we eat out a lot and our schedule changes (last minute invites, etc) so it's hard to buy fresh things in advance without losing a fair bit along the way. My idea is for a guide and cookbook that focuses on: - ingredients that can be stored for a long time (tins of coconut milk, rice, etc) - things that can be cooked and then frozen/saved for long periods - shortcuts that aren't awful (frozen vegetables aren't always the devil) - things you can make with fading vegetables (soups, stock, etc) Have always wondered if it would be worth doing. Not a glamorous cookbook concept (like most that sell here as gifts), but might appeal to some?
- callmeed 16y ago>> "and you can't make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk" I love making homemade ricotta cheese (http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/homemade_ricotta_cheese http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/homemade_ricotta_cheese) It's very easy and great for making a couple lasagnas which can last a long time. Not sure how it comes out price-wise though.
- michaelhalligan 16y agoLentils are the most complete non-meat protein source. I believe that Quinoa actually takes this honor. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentils http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lentils
- phlux 16y agoI would love to find a community of like minded individuals in the bay area that meetup regularly to shop in bulk and divide. We did this on reddit recently with herbs/spices sold in bulk where people basically committed 20 bux and got a healthy personal portion of the loot. It would be great to do the same with a costco bill....
- gcb 16y agoNow that's something I could buy into
- kleiba 16y agoTry Berkeley.
- skrebbel 16y agoWon't you spend as much on gas driving to wherever you decide to bulk shop (Bay area isn't tiny) compared to your neighbourhood supermarket, as you'd save by bulk shopping?
- dangravell 16y agoIt really depends on what you are buying and the nature of the 'market'. It's not only bulk buying either; if you buy in a different way, you can save money depending on the market. An example I am involved in is with wine. It is cheapest to buy wine by the case, en primeur (basically buying in advance). Yet many wine lovers don't want a whole case. So consortia are set up on wine forums to buy several cases and split them across tens of people. They are often setup when one member of the forum spies a 'parcel' of wine going for a good price at a reputable retailer. This can typically save around 40-50% and given these wines are generally £15/bottle, and in some cases a LOT more, the savings are pretty good. Normally delivery is arranged to go to one person in a given area, who then distributes to others or waits for the others to pick-up.
- zecho 16y agoBuying clubs are surprisingly effective depending on what you're buying. I have friends in clubs that cut their non-perishable food costs in half.
- dilap 16y agoI'm surprised you found eggs to be expensive. Where I'm at (Eugene, OR), you can find eggs for $7 for 5 dozen -- an incredible deal per nutrient dollar, even on your extreme budget. (This is at the Red Apple, if any Eugene locals are curious.)
- eru 16y agoOr get yourself some chickens, if you have a lawn.
- pyre 16y agoUnfortunately this doesn't scale well because in most places where you can keep chickens within city limits, roosters are forbidden. If you're only buying female chicks, then you're supporting the practice of just dumping all of the male chicks into wood chippers or just suffocating them by dumping hundreds of them into tied-up trash bags. (Note: Those are both 'industry-standard' practices. Some animal activist group tried to sue a farmer over those practices a while back and the judge ruled that he did nothing wrong because he was following the industry standards.)
- bodski 16y agoAre cheap those eggs laid by anaemic, malnourished battery hens who are given growth steroids/antibiotics though? I realise that it is possible to find good deals direct from farmers but those prices sound insane! Personally eggs and meat are things I will pay the extra for the animals to be free range and fed a natural diet, and I eat a lot less of them. With a diet such as the one in the post such things can become an occasional treat and their true value is appreciated. A non-trivial part of the problems facing the human race is related to the growing expectation of a never ending, abundance of cheap meat.
- gnosis 16y agoWhen I was in the UK recently, I saw some exposes on supposedly "free-range" farms. The reporters used hidden cameras to record the atrocious conditions showing many sick and dead birds on excrement-covered floors that had obviously never been cleaned. Dead birds are supposed to be picked up every few hours, but it was clear some of the dead birds had been lying there for days. Of course, the eggs laid by these sick, overcrowded birds were still sold at a premium, as was their meat. After the expose, the farms were closed down due to health violations, but it makes you wonder how many more such supposedly "free-range" farms are getting away with this sort of thing just because they haven't been unlucky enough to have been the targets of an undercover news story. Here's an article critiquing "free-range" farms: http://www.upc-online.org/freerange.html http://www.upc-online.org/freerange.html
- Goladus 16y agoOn a budget, and for people trying to limit their saturated fat, cheese works best as a flavor-enhancer rather than a major source of nutrients. IE don't bother with pizza or macaroni & cheese dinners, but sprinkling some parmesan on your meal can make it taste a lot better without really adding a calories or costing that much. (If your goal is ridiculously low, like $1.70/day, it's probably still too expensive, but since the upper average is probably closer to $15-30/day there's plenty of wiggle room)
- riffraff 16y agowhy do you need additional vitamin C from orange juice? IIRC the RDA for vitamin C is easily achieved by eating plenty of vegetables, which you must have been doing since you shod meat.
- GFischer 16y agoWhy did you set your target that low? (50 dollars / month) The expected standard here in Uruguay is 100 dollars / month in food (and that with a 150 dollar minimum monthly wage) I probably spend about 300 dollars per month in food (I do buy and/or eat out half the time), with a salary of 1200 dollars / month after tax. I'm pretty sure you make at least twice that. (see also an Australian commenting the same thing: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492511 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492511 ) To add to the conversation, some prices here: Eggs - 2 dollars for 15 eggs Apples - 2 dollars per kg (about 6 apples) Rice - 1.5 dollar per kg
- danssig 16y agoGood lord, is the point of this kind of thing to see how much money you can move from your food budget into your health care budget? Of all the places to save money, food is the absolute last on my list.
- PagingCraig 16y agoYes someone gets it. You shouldn't be skimping on quality food, it's your body! Also 10% protein is kinda low :(
- hammock 16y agoThis diet is pretty much the standard in many poor parts of the world - rice, beans, and fresh vegetables (in season). Billions of people across the planet have figured out that it's cheap and nutritious. Glad he could figure it out on his own too.
- pyre 16y agoMany people in poor parts of the world get their daily B12 from fecal contamination in the water supply. It's actually an issue because cleaning up the water supply makes them deficient.
- jessedhillon 16y agoCan you provide sources for this claim?
- pyre 16y agoI can't find the original article unfortunately, but I can provide a bunch of information that supports that claim: * Well, meat is no a large (or any) part of the diet of people in many of the poorer parts of the world. * Animal sources, are the only real sources of vitamin B12 (though yeast is an animal source, so this doesn't necessarily mean 'mammals' or 'fish'). * Feces contains B12[1][2] * B12 is water soluble. * In parts of the world where the water is 'untreated,' it is contaminated with feces to some amount. Obviously, the more people and animals that use the water source, the more this is true. [1] http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-7c.shtml http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t/comp-anat/comp-anat-7c.s... [2] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?entry_id=23280 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/parenting/detail?entry_i... There was a single article that made that claim, but I can't find it right now. All I can provide... -- later -- I found this: http://books.google.com/books?id=CF2INI0O6l0C&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=B12+%22contaminated+water%22&source=bl&ots=N-17UCgREA&sig=wGMR8XIgErabWtUOJXHFomIAMeg&hl=en&ei=hvO5Ta_lDpHXiALKtYQm&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=B12%20%22contaminated%20water%22&f=false http://books.google.com/books?id=CF2INI0O6l0C&pg=PA209&#... Not the original source that I read, but states: Vitamin B12 is not found in vegetables: it is available, however, from faecally contaminated water, and this source is important in the poorest vegetarian societies. So if you went to such a society and decontaminated their water supply, you would end up with a population suffering from B12 deficiency.
- wtn 16y agoIf you remove all sugar from your diet you should not be sugar crashing.
- ugh 16y agoWhy would you do that if you don't have to?
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoCheese is too expensive and you can't make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk. It just doesn't set when you add the rennet Use a mixture of skim milk and cream. Or take a trip into the country and buy 5 gallons from a dairy farmer before it's homogenized.
- mikey_p 16y agoIn many areas this is illegal, and the courts have held up the law saying that there is no such thing as a consumer right to buy raw milk.
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoThat's why I said before it's homogenized not before it's pasteurized. It's no longer raw after it's been pasteurized and not yet homogenized. The problem with cheesemaking with store bought milk is the homogenization process, not pasteurization.
- dkarl 16y agoSugar crash is a good sign. If you stop constantly pumping sugar into your body, your body will eventually starting maintaining your blood sugar on its own -- which is how it's supposed to work. Starving writers have been known to buy horse meat at pet stores. I wonder if that's still legal? Also, I wonder if organ meats are cheap, since they're so unpopular in the U.S.? They can be very nutrient-rich. Lentils and rice are incredibly cheap when bought in quantity. Asian grocery stores have great deals, though you might have to look a little harder there to find brown rice. I've heard textured vegetable protein can be a cheap protein source if you can overlook its aesthetic shortcomings (honestly, vegetarianism or extreme frugality are the only reasons to eat it) but the only way I've seen it sold is in a little bag at Whole Foods, which probably isn't that cheap.
- aberkowitz 16y ago> your body will eventually starting maintaining your blood sugar on its own I was under the impression that a sugar crash is the result of your body maintaining your blood sugar on it's own[0]. [0] On it's own, meaning secreting insulin from the pancreas to maintain homeostasis.
- dkarl 16y agoSecreting insulin is the mechanism that keeps blood sugar down, which is only half the job of homeostasis. The other half is keeping blood sugar up when you haven't eaten a bunch of carbs recently, and it seems (anecdotally) that if people don't exercise that second half -- i.e., if they keep their blood sugar up by eating constantly -- that their body's ability to keep blood sugar up on its own atrophies. When your body's blood sugar regulation is working properly, you can skip one or two meals without any dire consequences(+). You have a bunch of glycogen in your muscles and liver, for one thing, and your body just has to release that energy into your bloodstream as glucose. It's really that simple, but the impression I get from a lot of people is that their blood sugar regulation is only half-working. They take it for granted that if they miss lunch, they're going to be a wreck in the afternoon. They become tired and irritable, and they may even have headaches. That shouldn't be considered normal. A sugar crash isn't a normal reaction to a brief interruption of a healthy diet; it's a warning sign that your diet before the crash was not healthy. (+) I won't swear this holds true if you exercise intensely, since I haven't tried it, but the paleo lifestyle guys say they have no problem exercising on their "lean" days.
- gatlin 16y agoQuinoa is also a complete non-meat protein source.