Wow, an "honest start" indeed. This journey, though, admittedly lesser than a true "poor-man's crusade", seems like a metaphor for life, and consumerism. Though we persevere as human beings, humbly we reach back to primitive pleasures, and dare I say "deals". In essence, aren't we all looking for that little piece of heaven that makes life worth its torments(a $0.09 hot dog)?

Thing is, he could have done far better on the $30 if he had thought it out. It dosn't all HAVE to be ramen and mashed taters.

Interesting.

Hillbilly Housewife has a $45/week family-of-fourish plan here http://www.hillbillyhousewife.com/40dollarmenu.htm

But this is more extreme than that!

Great experiment. It appeared that he bought everything at the same store (Krogers). I believe he could have benefited from shopping certain ethic markets, particularly asian markets. Reading the labels can be a challenge but the markets I've found are often a great bargain.

http://www.aldifoods.com/

I shopped there in college for food. They sold boxes of pancake mix for $0.25. A bottle of generic syrup was $0.75. I ate nothing but pancakes. For protein, I'd sneak into the cafeterias and chug as much chocolate milk from the machine as I could without throwing up and before I got caught.

$30 a month would have been a luxury.

"Thing is, he could have done far better on the $30 if he had thought it out. "

I think part of the point of the experiment was that he didn't; I think people who fall into poverty in the U.S. and find themselves suddenly trying to eat on $1 a day don't have a lot of time to think about spices and nutrition, or the capital to buy the bulk packages (like 20# sacks of rice) that would make it cheaper in the long run. A lot of people didn't grow up with parents who cooked, or just never learned; they didn't learn home ec in school; how would they even know? I had to learn that beans took ages to cook from a book and even then it took me a couple tries, and beans are not that hard.

However. If it was me? I would have bought the BROWN rice if I was going to be eating it daily. White rice is icky and bland!

That's one thing I also find interesting about Hillbilly Housewife's $45 plan -- she assumes you have nothing, no spices, no cooking oil, nothing in the cabinets. Most "eat cheaply" menus assume you already have stuff in the kitchen -- and of course the pots and pans and stove and microwave to be able to cook! (which HH and the $1/day guy also assume)

Eyebrows McGee stole what I wanted to say, and then said it better. Except for the mean, dirty lie about white rice.

It's easy enough to natter on about diet and nutrition and obesity epidemics and whatever media-fueled crap happens to be in style when you're* sitting comfortably in a well-appointed home convenient to grocery stores with cheap, bountiful produce sections, but that's not the reality for many people living with real poverty.

They call it living hand to mouth for a reason, and we'd probably all be a little better off to remember what it's like.

* Not directed at anyone here. That's one of them there vague and unspecified second persons. And it's a little bit that Violent Acres harridan. I'm getting really tired of her.

While I don't have experience with being too poor to purchase food, I did research purchasing a six month supply of food on the cheap for disaster preperation / survivalism purposes just after the whole Katrina thing.

By purchasing large sacks of lentils, rice, kidney and pinto beans, and a lesser amount of salt and sugar, you should be able to survive for 6 months for less than $100, easy! You could probably supliment that with fresh vegetables if you have a garden or a nearby farmers market for next to nothing (if you don't have nuclear winter to worry about :) ). Add some curry, dried chilies, or other very cheap spices for flavoring maybe (the survivalist manuals actually recommend stocking up on food that doesn't taste good, as when you are sitting in your underground bunker for six months, you are likely to eat too much food out of bordom if it tastes good!)

I don't know how healthy that diet would be (I was thinking more about survivalism, not about poverty)... but realisticly it would be far healthier than the fast food and packaged processed meals that some people seem to live on.

"By purchasing large sacks of lentils, rice, kidney and pinto beans, and a lesser amount of salt and sugar, you should be able to survive for 6 months for less than $100, easy!"

(I know Rex specifically disclaims he's talking about survivalism, not healthy eating or poverty, so this isn't exactly a direct response to him.)

You've got to have that $100, the knowledge to cook from scratch, the facilities to cook (some of my clients on the lower end of the -- oh, screw it, they're poor. Flat poor. -- don't have kitchens in which a single thing works, and they can't afford to replace or repair anything), and the time to cook.

Also, the face of poverty in the US is now single mothers with children (statistically I think 2 children). An adult could probably live on nothing but carbs and a few veggies for quite a long time, but the health consequences in a child would be disastrous.

Not that they're not anyway for poor children in the US on their current diets.

I'm talking too much in this thread. Up with brown rice!

I'd just like to say that 18lbs lost over a, say, 4 week period (4.5lb/wk) isn't healthy. Throwing your body into a sudden deprivation of your normal eating habits can be disasterous as well.

Not to mention, cutting back a kid's intake like this would just lead to all sorts of problems.

(Of course, I wouldn't be able to live off of $30 for a month -- there are plenty of times you simply don't have enough time to cook or prepare a meal, and "buttered toast" will not cut it for a month)

So basically he shown us all that living on a cheap unhealthy diet is possible, however your body is going to be pushing a serious calorie deficit. Now if this was done with daily recommended food pyramid servings, then i would be really impressed.

I agree that if he was planing meals for the long term things would be way more plentiful, but buying week to week is how most people live.

The one thing that he didn't factor in that is available to many of those below the poverty line is the food pantry/soup kitchen option. There's usually plenty available as long as one isn't picky about what one eats and is willing to swallow a little pride and accept some help.

Another point to realize, which hadn't become apparent to me until living in Japan, is that those same people in poverty who need to survive on such little money, also usually don't have a car or transportation. This makes buying a 20lb bag of rice a real problem...

I took it for granted how easy it is to buy groceries when you only have to take your cart as far as your car and drive home. A trip to the grocers in the US takes me 30 min, in Japan, it took me an hour or more because I had to walk/bike both ways...and buying frozen foods in the summer became impossible.

This is not to say that people are poor in Japan, I just didn't have a car while living there.

There are a whole host of problems/challenges related to poverty and location and this experiment is certainly an interesting way to draw attention to that.

This conversation reminds me of two very interesting studies I heard about last year. One is that the George Foreman Grill is actually very popular with poor people because it's relatively inexpensive (compared to a stove), safter than a hot plate, and generally makes healthy fare.

The other related study is here (and though it's about Chicago specifically, I'd be surprised if it didn't tranlate to other major cities): http://www2.urban.org/nnip/whatsnew.html
It turns out (as most would suspect): "Income, race, and place are strongly correlated in Chicago. Access to quality food and other consumer goods is a major obstacle for Chicago residents that live 1) in a low-income community, 2) in a minority community, and 3) on Chicago's South side."

"Poverty and store access are inversely related; as poverty concentration goes up, store concentration goes down."

For anyone tempted to try this at home...make sure you work some Vitamin C in there somewhere. Scurvy can kill you if you're not careful. A glass of OJ or a tomato once a week should be all you need.

Eyebrows McGhee - the link to hillbilly housewife was fantastic. It reminded me greatly of how my mom managed to feed a family of six in a single-income household.

It takes time, practice, and training to plan a menu, budget for groceries, cook it all, and do it efficiently, but I think it's a truly worthwhile goal. I eat so much better than I did when I was living on take-out and fast food, and I spend a whole hell of a lot less too. Parents used to teach their kids these things, and it made it that much easier for them to set up their own households later. It seems to me that we could help a lot of people out just by re-introducing home-ec to schools.

I took it for granted how easy it is to buy groceries when you only have to take your cart as far as your car and drive home.

Word. I won't be doing that again.

Access to quality food and other consumer goods is a major obstacle for Chicago residents that live 1) in a low-income community, 2) in a minority community...

In some places you're paying more money for lower quality food. The first thing out of someone's mouth when I tell them I shop at Publix is, "Publix is expensive." Yet I was getting less food for the same amount of money at the grocery store nearby before it closed.

In her 1941 book "How To Cook a Wolf," M.F.K. Fisher provided a recipe intended to allow entire families struggling with wartime shortages and poverty to eat nutritiously for 12 cents a day. It involved cooking cheap ground beef, whole grain and vegetables into a paste she called "sludge," then storing it in your basement to keep it cool. Yum!

"sludge"? That sounds like it was pretty tasty.

And by tasty I mean radioactive.