6 ms·

A loaf of bread where I live is $4. Blew his daily budget with one purchase. Cant buy single eggs even from a local farmers market here so thats another $4-6. C

A loaf of bread where I live is $4. Blew his daily budget with one purchase. Cant buy single eggs even from a local farmers market here so thats another $4-6. Cheese is probably the most expensive item at $10. If you bought everything this guy ate youre looking at $60 or so and it will last about 5 days, which is 7gbp per day. Must be cheap food in the UK

Samuel_Michon 14y ago
Well, the author bought everything in larger quantities while conveniently not taking into account limited shelf life. He also makes trips to 5 different supermarkets to get the cheapest prices, which takes a lot of time (research & shopping) and gas. One of the best ways to cut costs is to not cook for one, but to cook together with others. Then you can buy in bulk like the author suggested. I live alone and I do cook for one. I probably spend more on food than most. However, I chose to live in a compact city with relatively low rents. This way I don’t need a car. I live in walking distance of supermarkets, health food stores, farmers markets and bakeries. I live 1 minute from a bus stop, 5 minutes from the main train station. What I spend more on groceries, I make up for in low rent and using public transport instead of owning a car.
- claudius 14y ago
  You can get by basically anywhere in Europe without a car. Sure, you might have to walk 20 or 30 minutes or so (one-way), but the wear on your shoes from that is absolutely negligible.
  - Thrall 14y ago
    You'd have to walk for hours to check all the prices and work out the cheapest from various supermarkets though. Also, the more calories you burn walking across town to find, purchase, and carry home the very cheapest food, the more you need to eat...
    - claudius 14y ago
      Five kilometers sounds like a very sane maximum distance for shopping, which is manageable in one hour (two hours round trip). You don’t have to visit every shop each day, as the prices will be roughly the same and you can note new ones as you get to the shop the next time. Walking requires nearly no energy, compared to the standard energy requirements of the human body. Also note that a bicycle for as little as £20 can speed up transportation immensely at nearly no cost (of course, you might want to invest a further £3 in chain lube, but, well).
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    That is simply not true. I live in the third most densely populated country in Europe (after Monaco and Vatican City), the Netherlands. It has 1287 people per sq mile. Yet, the country has plenty of rural areas from where it takes hours to walk to the nearest town or even the nearest shop. Belgium, the UK, Germany, and Italy are ranked 4, 5, 7 and 9 respectively. They too have large rural areas. In the less densely populated European countries, it’s even more problematic to live outside of a city without a car: Iceland (8 people per sq mile), Russia (21 people per sq mile), Norway (41 people per sq mile), Finland (48 people per sq mile), and Sweden (60 people per sq mile). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...
    - RBerenguel 14y ago
      Clearly the commenter means in cities or towns, or generally inside the public transportation system. I'm from Spain (and I have been to several other countries in Europe from the list you give.) I live in a small town (22000 inhabitants) and I don't have a car. Anything I need for day-to-day life I can find in town, for anything else I use public transport to get to Barcelona, which is just 30 minutes by train. In most of Spain, except for the most rural places there are public buses that can get you from unheard-of-on-sea to closest-big-town without many problems, and my experience in Germany and UK is the same. Of course Iceland and Norway are completely different, specially Iceland (I was there for 18 days) where from "big" city to the next you can count on seeing just a few farms, at best.
      - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
        “Clearly the commenter means in cities or towns, or generally inside the public transportation system.” I doubt that’s what he meant, because that wouldn’t be much of a statement to make. When you live in a town or city, of course you can walk to a grocery store – that’s not unique to Europe. I lived in rural northern New Mexico, the 6th least densely populated state of the 50 United States. Even there, I could walk from my home to Wal*Mart, a nearby gas station/taquería or farmers market. Walking on the side of a state highway just isn’t much fun, especially at night.
cbhl 14y ago
The trick to the author's math is this: A loaf of bread has, say, 24 slices in it. If you ate two of them, then the cost of bread was that day $0.34, when you amortize the loaf of bread over twelve days. If you can find a $2 loaf of bread with 24 slices, it's only about $0.08 for a slice of bread. But yes, I agree -- if you actually had to maintain this budget, you'd probably buy one kind of breakfast, lunch, and dinner and eat it every day for a week.
- EliRivers 14y ago
  Here's a loaf from Tesco for fifty pence (seventy-seven US cents). Looks like twenty or so slices, so call it 2.5 pence per slice; about four cents a slice. http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=262358089 http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=262358089 As I recall, however, you have to be quick. The cheapest bread tends to vanish from the shelves within minutes of being put out.
  - xyzzy123 14y ago
    Also, you have to pretty much vacuum seal them yourself to stop them going off in 3 days.
- Thrall 14y ago
  > The trick to the author's math That's the trouble with this article; With the dependence on buying everything in bulk (and somehow using it all up before it goes off), it appears to be more of a fun theoretical calculation than a practical weekly diet.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

Well, the author bought everything in larger quantities while conveniently not taking into account limited shelf life. He also makes trips to 5 different supermarkets to get the cheapest prices, which takes a lot of time (research & shopping) and gas. One of the best ways to cut costs is to not cook for one, but to cook together with others. Then you can buy in bulk like the author suggested. I live alone and I do cook for one. I probably spend more on food than most. However, I chose to live in a compact city with relatively low rents. This way I don’t need a car. I live in walking distance of supermarkets, health food stores, farmers markets and bakeries. I live 1 minute from a bus stop, 5 minutes from the main train station. What I spend more on groceries, I make up for in low rent and using public transport instead of owning a car.

claudius 14y ago
You can get by basically anywhere in Europe without a car. Sure, you might have to walk 20 or 30 minutes or so (one-way), but the wear on your shoes from that is absolutely negligible.
- Thrall 14y ago
  You'd have to walk for hours to check all the prices and work out the cheapest from various supermarkets though. Also, the more calories you burn walking across town to find, purchase, and carry home the very cheapest food, the more you need to eat...
  - claudius 14y ago
    Five kilometers sounds like a very sane maximum distance for shopping, which is manageable in one hour (two hours round trip). You don’t have to visit every shop each day, as the prices will be roughly the same and you can note new ones as you get to the shop the next time. Walking requires nearly no energy, compared to the standard energy requirements of the human body. Also note that a bicycle for as little as £20 can speed up transportation immensely at nearly no cost (of course, you might want to invest a further £3 in chain lube, but, well).
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  That is simply not true. I live in the third most densely populated country in Europe (after Monaco and Vatican City), the Netherlands. It has 1287 people per sq mile. Yet, the country has plenty of rural areas from where it takes hours to walk to the nearest town or even the nearest shop. Belgium, the UK, Germany, and Italy are ranked 4, 5, 7 and 9 respectively. They too have large rural areas. In the less densely populated European countries, it’s even more problematic to live outside of a city without a car: Iceland (8 people per sq mile), Russia (21 people per sq mile), Norway (41 people per sq mile), Finland (48 people per sq mile), and Sweden (60 people per sq mile). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de...
  - RBerenguel 14y ago
    Clearly the commenter means in cities or towns, or generally inside the public transportation system. I'm from Spain (and I have been to several other countries in Europe from the list you give.) I live in a small town (22000 inhabitants) and I don't have a car. Anything I need for day-to-day life I can find in town, for anything else I use public transport to get to Barcelona, which is just 30 minutes by train. In most of Spain, except for the most rural places there are public buses that can get you from unheard-of-on-sea to closest-big-town without many problems, and my experience in Germany and UK is the same. Of course Iceland and Norway are completely different, specially Iceland (I was there for 18 days) where from "big" city to the next you can count on seeing just a few farms, at best.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      “Clearly the commenter means in cities or towns, or generally inside the public transportation system.” I doubt that’s what he meant, because that wouldn’t be much of a statement to make. When you live in a town or city, of course you can walk to a grocery store – that’s not unique to Europe. I lived in rural northern New Mexico, the 6th least densely populated state of the 50 United States. Even there, I could walk from my home to Wal*Mart, a nearby gas station/taquería or farmers market. Walking on the side of a state highway just isn’t much fun, especially at night.

cbhl 14y ago

The trick to the author's math is this: A loaf of bread has, say, 24 slices in it. If you ate two of them, then the cost of bread was that day $0.34, when you amortize the loaf of bread over twelve days. If you can find a $2 loaf of bread with 24 slices, it's only about $0.08 for a slice of bread. But yes, I agree -- if you actually had to maintain this budget, you'd probably buy one kind of breakfast, lunch, and dinner and eat it every day for a week.

EliRivers 14y ago
Here's a loaf from Tesco for fifty pence (seventy-seven US cents). Looks like twenty or so slices, so call it 2.5 pence per slice; about four cents a slice. http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=262358089 http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=262358089 As I recall, however, you have to be quick. The cheapest bread tends to vanish from the shelves within minutes of being put out.
- xyzzy123 14y ago
  Also, you have to pretty much vacuum seal them yourself to stop them going off in 3 days.
Thrall 14y ago
> The trick to the author's math That's the trouble with this article; With the dependence on buying everything in bulk (and somehow using it all up before it goes off), it appears to be more of a fun theoretical calculation than a practical weekly diet.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]