6 ms·

How to Eat on a Dollar a Day

29 points by matthewking 17y ago

planckscnst 17y ago
This is just an advertisement. If you want the real content, click on "Home" then the last link in the top post.
- matthewking 17y ago
  An advertisement? I thought the about page was a good introduction to the site, from there you can find the rest of the content without being thrown in randomly. But for those who want to go straight to the diary, here's the link: http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/it-starts-today/ http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/it-star...
  - planckscnst 17y ago
    Thanks! Didn't realize we could post links here (relative newcomer).
    - hughprime 17y ago
      I'm still having difficulty finding many posts of the form "here's what I ate today and here's how much it cost". There seem to be only a few posts per month, which is a pretty poor showing.
PStamatiou 17y ago
Yikes, would love to see how this goes! I read about all these live on $X for a month and shy away, mainly for nutritional value every very cheap diet I've seen has a fairly bad mix of calorie distribution. Is this always the case? That being said, food is the one place I'm not stingy. Apartment? Sure. I downsized from a highrise condo to a small loft apartment. Got rid of satellite/cable TV, and did small things like removing unlimited texting from my phone, etc, I just can't find/get myself to eat cheaply. I try to get groceries on the cheap... then I just end up going out to eat 3x a week with my friends that have regular jobs and have lots of disposable income.
tjic 17y ago
Idiotic. People spend most of their money on things other than food, so to save money by cutting your food budget is silly. It's far more efficient to cut your housing budget by the same number of dollars. Also, this reeks of muddy-headed thinking - they're "Social Justice" teachers? That's basically an extreme left wing ideology. Wikipedia says "Social justice, sometimes called civil justice, refers to the concept of a society in which "justice" is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It is generally thought of as a world which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and an impartial share of the benefits of society. Under this LITERALLY beyond-communist ideology, if some people generate a ton of value by hard work and risk taking, their resources should be redistributed to everyone, including the lazy and indolent. The reason that $1-per-day eating is tied up with this is that social justice folks want to redistribute ALL resources, across the entire planet. So, rather than generate utility themselves, these folks are making plans on how we can all live on drastically (and artificially) diminished resources. Bah.
- PStamatiou 17y ago
  Yeah I had the same thinking with my comment below (above?, wherever it is now). I don't cut corners with food, that's the one place (and maybe my tech gadgets..). I saved a few hundred moving to another place, and then another hundred getting rid of cable I rarely watched.
  - potatolicious 17y ago
    I fully agree. Food is such a fundamental (and enjoyable!) aspect of your life, why would you cheap out on it? I realize that wasn't the intent of this exercise, but given the recent number of "how I don't waste money on food" articles, I think it needs to be said. The benefit you get from good food (which doesn't even have to be all that expensive) far outweighs whatever money I spend on it. Food is the only thing in my life that I do not set a firm budget for. I eat what I want, when I want, because food lends a richness to my life that no amount of cable TV or internet news trolling can equal. To extend beyond this point a bit: of all the things that people really need to get rid of, it's cars. I recently moved to a new city and wondered if it was really time I got a car - nothing fancy, just your average middle-class sedan. Turns out between ownership cost, insurance, and gas, the car would be chewing up $15-20K per year (more likely $20K than $15). And for what? So I can sit on a clogged freeway, gas-brake-honk my way to work every day, and repeat in the evening? No thanks. Instead I paid a bit extra (couple hundred bucks a month) to live in a denser area with great transit coverage. Imagine what that money can do for your average individual/family. $20K of extra discretionary spending a year? Holy batman!
noodle 17y ago
reminds me a lot of this submission a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=732770 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=732770 these guys have more of a purpose behind what they're doing, so its harder to say that its a bad idea due to sacrificing personal health.
- jcw 17y ago
  I was about to post the same link. I would rather read that guy's excellent and concise article than buy this couple's book or sift through their entire blog for details.
pchristensen 17y ago
This has got to piss off the people that eat on a dollar a day because that's all they have
- onreact-com 17y ago
  Well, not really. Those people are rather pissed because we in the West waste resources eating for 10 or 100$ a day while they have to starve or survive on one dollar. When we curb our consumption there is actually more left for the rest of the world. It's that simple.
dschobel 17y ago
On a slightly offtopic note, what the heck is a "Social Justice teacher" ?
- sunburnt 17y ago
  Apparently this is a frequently asked question. See #9 here: http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/food-log/ http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/food-log/
scorxn 17y ago
http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/ http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/
- hughprime 17y ago
  Wow, that's a much better version of the same basic concept -- more details, less preachiness.
  - hughprime 17y ago
    Though now I've actually read it, it turns out that the real answer to the question of how to survive on $1 a day is "slowly starve". The guy ate a diet consisting almost entirely of rice and noodles, and wound up losing 18 lb (!) over the course of the month.
msluyter 17y ago
Whatever the motivation, these sorts of living experiments always intrigue me. The book "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping" (Judith Levine) is another example. I informally decided to go a year without buying any clothes back in January, and while I haven't totally kept to it (have bought a few t-shirts from Threadless), I've managed to spend much less than usual and not look like a hobo. The point of most of these seems to be that we can manage, quite well in fact, on a much lower level of consumption than we might be used to. Worth remembering, imho.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  "we can manage, quite well in fact, on a much lower level of consumption than we might be used to" True, but this is attitude is a double-edged sword, it can just as well be applied to money-hypermiling (i.e. gross over-optimization of spending, in older terms, being a cheap bastard).
sharjeel 17y ago
In my country, considerable population makes a dollar a day and fulfills all its needs with it
ggchappell 17y ago
An unexpectedly good site. These sites about eating very cheaply show up now & then. But in my experience, most of them end up pushing very unhealthy diets. This one at least makes an attempt at variety and health. Still, if you look at the menus, their meals are starch, starch, starch. Not ideal, but at least they tried. What I'd really like to see is someone who is trying to eat as cheaply as possible, with a diet that is lower in grains.

29 points by matthewking 17y ago

planckscnst 17y ago

This is just an advertisement. If you want the real content, click on "Home" then the last link in the top post.

matthewking 17y ago
An advertisement? I thought the about page was a good introduction to the site, from there you can find the rest of the content without being thrown in randomly. But for those who want to go straight to the diary, here's the link: http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/it-starts-today/ http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/it-star...
- planckscnst 17y ago
  Thanks! Didn't realize we could post links here (relative newcomer).
  - hughprime 17y ago
    I'm still having difficulty finding many posts of the form "here's what I ate today and here's how much it cost". There seem to be only a few posts per month, which is a pretty poor showing.

PStamatiou 17y ago

Yikes, would love to see how this goes! I read about all these live on $X for a month and shy away, mainly for nutritional value every very cheap diet I've seen has a fairly bad mix of calorie distribution. Is this always the case? That being said, food is the one place I'm not stingy. Apartment? Sure. I downsized from a highrise condo to a small loft apartment. Got rid of satellite/cable TV, and did small things like removing unlimited texting from my phone, etc, I just can't find/get myself to eat cheaply. I try to get groceries on the cheap... then I just end up going out to eat 3x a week with my friends that have regular jobs and have lots of disposable income.

tjic 17y ago

Idiotic. People spend most of their money on things other than food, so to save money by cutting your food budget is silly. It's far more efficient to cut your housing budget by the same number of dollars. Also, this reeks of muddy-headed thinking - they're "Social Justice" teachers? That's basically an extreme left wing ideology. Wikipedia says "Social justice, sometimes called civil justice, refers to the concept of a society in which "justice" is achieved in every aspect of society, rather than merely the administration of law. It is generally thought of as a world which affords individuals and groups fair treatment and an impartial share of the benefits of society. Under this LITERALLY beyond-communist ideology, if some people generate a ton of value by hard work and risk taking, their resources should be redistributed to everyone, including the lazy and indolent. The reason that $1-per-day eating is tied up with this is that social justice folks want to redistribute ALL resources, across the entire planet. So, rather than generate utility themselves, these folks are making plans on how we can all live on drastically (and artificially) diminished resources. Bah.

PStamatiou 17y ago
Yeah I had the same thinking with my comment below (above?, wherever it is now). I don't cut corners with food, that's the one place (and maybe my tech gadgets..). I saved a few hundred moving to another place, and then another hundred getting rid of cable I rarely watched.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I fully agree. Food is such a fundamental (and enjoyable!) aspect of your life, why would you cheap out on it? I realize that wasn't the intent of this exercise, but given the recent number of "how I don't waste money on food" articles, I think it needs to be said. The benefit you get from good food (which doesn't even have to be all that expensive) far outweighs whatever money I spend on it. Food is the only thing in my life that I do not set a firm budget for. I eat what I want, when I want, because food lends a richness to my life that no amount of cable TV or internet news trolling can equal. To extend beyond this point a bit: of all the things that people really need to get rid of, it's cars. I recently moved to a new city and wondered if it was really time I got a car - nothing fancy, just your average middle-class sedan. Turns out between ownership cost, insurance, and gas, the car would be chewing up $15-20K per year (more likely $20K than $15). And for what? So I can sit on a clogged freeway, gas-brake-honk my way to work every day, and repeat in the evening? No thanks. Instead I paid a bit extra (couple hundred bucks a month) to live in a denser area with great transit coverage. Imagine what that money can do for your average individual/family. $20K of extra discretionary spending a year? Holy batman!

noodle 17y ago

reminds me a lot of this submission a few weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=732770 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=732770 these guys have more of a purpose behind what they're doing, so its harder to say that its a bad idea due to sacrificing personal health.

jcw 17y ago
I was about to post the same link. I would rather read that guy's excellent and concise article than buy this couple's book or sift through their entire blog for details.

pchristensen 17y ago

This has got to piss off the people that eat on a dollar a day because that's all they have

onreact-com 17y ago
Well, not really. Those people are rather pissed because we in the West waste resources eating for 10 or 100$ a day while they have to starve or survive on one dollar. When we curb our consumption there is actually more left for the rest of the world. It's that simple.

dschobel 17y ago

On a slightly offtopic note, what the heck is a "Social Justice teacher" ?

sunburnt 17y ago
Apparently this is a frequently asked question. See #9 here: http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/food-log/ http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/food-log/

scorxn 17y ago

http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/ http://hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/

hughprime 17y ago
Wow, that's a much better version of the same basic concept -- more details, less preachiness.
- hughprime 17y ago
  Though now I've actually read it, it turns out that the real answer to the question of how to survive on $1 a day is "slowly starve". The guy ate a diet consisting almost entirely of rice and noodles, and wound up losing 18 lb (!) over the course of the month.

msluyter 17y ago

Whatever the motivation, these sorts of living experiments always intrigue me. The book "Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping" (Judith Levine) is another example. I informally decided to go a year without buying any clothes back in January, and while I haven't totally kept to it (have bought a few t-shirts from Threadless), I've managed to spend much less than usual and not look like a hobo. The point of most of these seems to be that we can manage, quite well in fact, on a much lower level of consumption than we might be used to. Worth remembering, imho.

potatolicious 17y ago
"we can manage, quite well in fact, on a much lower level of consumption than we might be used to" True, but this is attitude is a double-edged sword, it can just as well be applied to money-hypermiling (i.e. gross over-optimization of spending, in older terms, being a cheap bastard).

sharjeel 17y ago

In my country, considerable population makes a dollar a day and fulfills all its needs with it

ggchappell 17y ago

An unexpectedly good site. These sites about eating very cheaply show up now & then. But in my experience, most of them end up pushing very unhealthy diets. This one at least makes an attempt at variety and health. Still, if you look at the menus, their meals are starch, starch, starch. Not ideal, but at least they tried. What I'd really like to see is someone who is trying to eat as cheaply as possible, with a diet that is lower in grains.