Can I Eat On $1.50 A Day for Five Days??

Yes I Can!

Okay, it's Sunday evening, May 6, and I'm getting ready to  "Live Below the Line" for five days. As accurately as can be calculated, an American attempting to feed herself on what a "typical" person who lives in a developing country and is extremely poor would spend has about $1.50 per day to spend on food. Of course, we have a lot of advantages, not least access to information (and refrigerators), and the ability to purchase items in bulk because we actually have the cash on hand, and if necessary can drive to a store that has cheaper items.

In the photo are a tablespoon next to my big olive oil can (I'm allotting 2 T/oil/day), the rice, bean, and lentil bags from the market in Chicago, my 10 cloves of garlic, 2½ onions, the 6 kiwi, 5 eggs, 15 grinds of salt (one for each meal!) and the amount of broccoli I was able to buy for $1.00.

This takes some planning, not necessarily my strong suit. Last week I went to a neighborhood shop in Chicago with cheaper food than what is available in Evanston. I'm drawing on my work in rural Kenya, where I've both shopped and cooked, and I've decided that, as is common for poor people, I will eat a very limited menu, and the same thing all five days. Here are my self-imposed constraints:

•no gluten or dairy, as I am sensitive to both
•as nutritionally dense as possible, even though I only need to do it for 5 days
•I will buy non-organic produce
•I won't buy meat or eggs from animals treated badly. This means I can't afford meat, but have budgeted for free range eggs.
•I will cheat and call coffee "water", which is free. I freely confess to being addicted, and if I don't drink coffee I will have a headache (and be constipated!) by Tuesday evening. But - I'll drink it black rather than use my beloved rice milk.

I think this will work as a menu, but may alter quantities and ingredients as the week goes on. It will be the same every day:

breakfast                           
½ serving beans  .08    
1 serving rice       .08    
1 egg                   .25    
1 T olive oil         .10   
                             .46                                
                                                                                                     
lunch
l serving lentils   .12
½ serving rice     .04
1 kiwi                 .14
2 cloves garlic    .07
                           .37


dinner
½ serving beans    .08
1 serving rice        .08
broccoli                 .20
½ onion                .12
1 T olive oil         .10
                             .63


totals: .46 + .37 + .63 = $1.46 + .03/day salt = $1.49


I'm soaking the beans as I type, and will cook the entire 5 days worth tonight, with 2½ onions (½/day) for flavor. Tonight I'll also cook Monday's lentils (with 2 cloves of garlic) and rice, so that I can measure out the portions across the day and see what it looks like. I'm a bit worried about being full enough, but should have enough protein, since I both have one complete protein a day (the egg) and three servings of combined protein a day (the beans or lentils plus rice).

Yikes! I can't imagine doing this if I had to buy a little each day as I earned a little cash (and losing all advantages of economies of scale by buying in bulk), and expending lots of calories working, fetching water and firewood, etc.