The Great CFC Low Income Food Experiment Challenge!

[dutchfire]

For what it is worth: I just walked to the shop down the road and bought things that looked good and cheap. I didn't buy in bulk. I think I did quite okay.

 

[Patroklos]

Although I guess that this challenge is pretty commendable, it won't do much in the way of debunking the notion that poor people can live healthier on their meager budget. Why? Because poor people don't have access to the same information that you, a CFC poster, do.

The only reason I pointed to the online Harris Teeter site was so you can verify my prices should you be suspicious. It was about transparency.

Here's what I mean: We have access to more-or-less reliable, high speed internet. We can look up deals and do all the research to figure out the most cost-effective way of buying things. Poor people don't unilaterally have internet access. The poorest are limited to the 30 minutes time they get at the closest public library, if there are even any public libraries around them any more.

The only research online that was done was finding the sites to set the criteria for success. It took me maybe 10 minutes.

There was no online shopping or price research done.

Poor people also don't have the connections from which to hear about ways to make their spending more cost-effective. Even if you consider yourself a pretty frugal person, you probably got help from other people who "figured it out" before you. Poor people don't have any such network to draw on.

I think you have this backwards. Poor people have experience at being poor. That's exactly why low end markets sell things like pigs feet, chicken gizzards, collard greens and chicken livers while up scale ones generally don't. The problem is they choose to pad that with junk food or cook it in ways to make it unhealthy.

The reason for my errors in day one and were because I had the assumptions of a middle class dude on what would be cheap. I wales into the grocery blind and found what I could in 30 odd minutes informed by my previous grocery experiance.

I was talking to a sailor about my experiment today who comes from dirt poor Georgia and she asked why I hadn't used dried beans. This was a staple of her youth and she didn't eat them anymore because she could afdor better. BRILLIANT! I of course had o experience with this so I never would have stumbled on it.

Lastly, poor people don't always have the means to get around to X grocery store 15 miles away to buy Y healthy ingredients in bulk. In fact, the earlier point made about buying things in bulk is a very good one; when you literally don't have the comfort of knowing that you can fall back on enough money, you won't go for the rationally safer decision. Combined with the aforementioned point about information asymmetry when it comes to finding out where to get healthy groceries, poor people will opt for the "safe," guaranteed enough-calorie fast food places all the time.

The experiment specifically stipulated not to use multiple grocery stores and I in fact only used one 1.5 miles away accessible by both bus and light rail.

So in sum, while I back any campaign to make healthy eating a viable option for poor people, I think this thread needs some insight into why it's currently not.

I think you need to read the OP because in there things that can't be factored in are listed, all of yours however were addressed. I appreciate the comments and interest but I provided the OP for a reason.

 

[Japanrocks12]

I wasn't necessarily replying to the terms of the OP, I was responding to what I think are some unstated assumptions behind the experiment itself.

 

[Silurian]

Well it seems that Pat has demonstrated that you cannot live on (for food) $20 dollars a week in Norfolk VA at 1600 calories.

He made $46.22 of purchases from an allowance of $20.
An overspend of $26.22 or 131% over.

As well as eating his purchases he used products such as cheese that he does not have so we can assume that he already had them. He does not state what the cost of the products that he already had for making the cheese spread and blue berry muffins so lets assume all the PIMIENTOS were used and half the blueberries and the rest of the cost came from items in stock.
So $5.31 for the declared items plus $2.43 (cheese) plus $1.73 (muffin) plus $1 for uncosted items such as oil, soy sauce etc. This comes to $10.47.

So as well as purchases of $46.22 there is expenditure from stocks of $10.47 giving a total of $56.69.

Not so good; an over spend of $36.69.

But he did have some food left over at the end of the week to the value of $27.34 plus $2.16 for half the cheese spread giving $29.50 increase in stock. I assume that the uneaten bananas, muffins and milk are no good on the 14th so have no value - you do not save money by not eating food you have purchased. It should be noted that if he continued to eat the apples at the rate he was doing he would end up wasting some of the as well.

So he increased the value of his food stocks by $19.03.

Losses of $7.19 on the over spend above $20 a week.

Pat would have to spend no more than $10 per week plus eat $6 of stock piled food for the next three weeks with no waste to get back to the position where he started (assume $100 cash plus $20 of food stored)

 

[Silurian]

So know one has found any mistakes in my maths etc.

 

[dutchfire]

Well, I'm not going through all these pages to add all of Patroklos' numbers (and I'm still waiting for his write-up/analysis!).

Some nitpicking:

$1 for uncosted items such as oil, soy sauce etc.

That's a lot, I think. I used sunflower oil which is €0.70 a bottle, and I think I used like less than 1/10th of it. (But then I cooked little.)

 

[Camikaze]

To add to what Japanrocks said, knowing what is cost effective involves not only knowing what's cheap, but also what's healthy. It takes an investment of sorts to know how many calories, for instance, you get from a meal, and then another investment to know how many calories you actually need. And once you do figure out what the most cost effective option is, there's an added investment in becoming aware of the best way to cook it. It's probably easy to underestimate the difficulty this may pose for some people; it might take a well-off and well-educated individual 10 minutes to look things up, but that doesn't mean it'll take someone who hasn't had similar research experience the same time.

 

[Quackers]

To add to what Japanrocks said, knowing what is cost effective involves not only knowing what's cheap, but also what's healthy. It takes an investment of sorts to know how many calories, for instance, you get from a meal, and then another investment to know how many calories you actually need. And once you do figure out what the most cost effective option is, there's an added investment in becoming aware of the best way to cook it. It's probably easy to underestimate the difficulty this may pose for some people; it might take a well-off and well-educated individual 10 minutes to look things up, but that doesn't mean it'll take someone who hasn't had similar research experience the same time.

Well doesn't food packaging have calories on the product per serving / 100g? Most of the food in the UK does and i imagine a similiar situation exists in the rest of the devoloped world. In fact, I imagine most young adults in the UK, Australia and the USA will know whats nutritious and healthy food is and knows what is bad for you.


It's barely an investment, some people shouldn't be so lazy and put a little effort into knowing what they are eating if they are serious about dieting or eating healthily. You don't need to be a well-off and well-educated individual to look up calories for food, just a bit of common sense. I don't think people are as dumb as you think they are.

 

[Silurian]

Well, I'm not going through all these pages to add all of Patroklos' numbers (and I'm still waiting for his write-up/analysis!).

Some nitpicking:

That's a lot, I think. I used sunflower oil which is €0.70 a bottle, and I think I used like less than 1/10th of it. (But then I cooked little.)

Well

Originally Posted by Patroklos
I did fried chicken tonight. Not too healthy but it was only one leg so I don't feel too bad. Healthy doesn't mean you can't stick in a comfort food in there every once and awhile after all. I actually have a fry daddy at home so the oil was already there but I did add a serving of fat (no cost) and I googled the calories in a fried chicken leg to get those calorie values to make sure I captured how much more unhealth it is compared to other preparations. It did help with calories though. The flour was negligable.

Well the Fry Daddy uses upto 4 cups of oil or fat, so say 3 cups of oil.
The oil needs changing after a number of uses.
People seem to quote 3 or 4 uses but lets say 8 uses because Pat is poor.
So 3 cups equals 24 oz of oil.
Harold Teeter sell a 32 oz bottle of oil for $2.99.
So the cost of the oil per use would be $0.28

Lets say 1 oz of flour was used to coat the chicken.
Harold Teeter sell a 32 oz bag of flour for $1.89.
So the cost of the flour would be $0.06.

So thats $0.32 that was not recorded in one meal.

There are 20 other meals to spread $0.68 around in to get too $1.
3.4C per meal for those 20 meals.

Harold Teeter sell a 10 oz bottle of soy sauce for $2.35. How much went in the stir fry. etc

 

[Patroklos]

Well it seems that Pat has demonstrated that you cannot live on (for food) $20 dollars a week in Norfolk VA at 1600 calories.

Quite the opposite, I ended up at right around $20.40 consumed and was well over 1700 calories per meal averaged.

He made $46.22 of purchases from an allowance of $20.
An overspend of $26.22 or 131% over.

Total purchases are not relevant to the success criteria. A stated side benefit of the experiment was to identify affordable ways to shop. Only an idiot buys enough flour for an ingredient in one meal. Poor people can't afford to do that.

As well as eating his purchases he used products such as cheese that he does not have so we can assume that he already had them. He does not state what the cost of the products that he already had for making the cheese spread and blue berry muffins so lets assume all the PIMIENTOS were used and half the blueberries and the rest of the cost came from items in stock.

1.) Cheese is listed on my purchase list. Two blocks of sharp cheddar.

2.) I did state the cost of products I had in my possession, for instance butter.

3.) I did provide a per serving cost for meals that involved multiple ingredients. That involved me pricing out each included ingredient both purchased and already stocked added together and then divided by servings produced. If you had asked me at the time for a line item breakdown I could have done so and probably still could. What reasons do you have to doubt the price I have given?

So $5.31 for the declared items plus $2.43 (cheese) plus $1.73 (muffin) plus $1 for uncosted items such as oil, soy sauce etc. This comes to $10.47.

So as well as purchases of $46.22 there is expenditure from stocks of $10.47 giving a total of $56.69.

Not so good; an over spend of $36.69.

Everything you mentioned was already accounted for, be more careful in your reading.

But he did have some food left over at the end of the week to the value of $27.34 plus $2.16 for half the cheese spread giving $29.50 increase in stock. I assume that the uneaten bananas, muffins and milk are no good on the 14th so have no value - you do not save money by not eating food you have purchased. It should be noted that if he continued to eat the apples at the rate he was doing he would end up wasting some of the as well.

Why are you assuming bananas/muffins/milk have an expiration of a week or less? None of those were expired before consumed last week. I freeze left over bananas for banana bread at later dates BTW. I do the same thing with apples that get soft.

So he increased the value of his food stocks by $19.03.

Losses of $7.19 on the over spend above $20 a week.

Pat would have to spend no more than $10 per week plus eat $6 of stock piled food for the next three weeks with no waste to get back to the position where he started (assume $100 cash plus $20 of food stored)

Increasing your food stocks by bulk purchasing on a long range plan is beneficial, cheaper, and a part of the experiment. Nothing about that indicates failure of the experiment.

For instance I won't have to buy rice again for probably a year. I have certainly been using the same bag of flour for the past six months at least.

Most people, including the poor, have a wide range of stable ingredients and condiments in their homes. What would be the point of doing an experiment to see what a random person dropped into an empty kitchen could accomplish? Most people including the poor are not in that situation.

So if you want to challenge the affordability of bulk purchases go right ahead, but they do not indicate any sort of failure as far as this experiment goes.

This of course was all outlined in the OP.

Well the Fry Daddy uses upto 4 cups of oil or fat, so say 3 cups of oil.
The oil needs changing after a number of uses.
People seem to quote 3 or 4 uses but lets say 8 uses because Pat is poor.
So 3 cups equals 24 oz of oil.
Harold Teeter sell a 32 oz bottle of oil for $2.99.
So the cost of the oil per use would be $0.28

The number of uses before changing oil depends on a lot of things from what you are cooking (fish for instance leaves flavor behind so you can rarely reuse oil after that), the temperature you cook at, the length of time you cook things, whether you strain debris out of the oil and etc. etc.

As I was only cooking a single chicken leg my oil was just fine. Im have been using the same oil in that thing for months ( sealed with plastic wrap and the lid). The point being trying to divvy up that oil to any one meal or one week of use is a futile endeavor. If I had been frying up a whole chicken you might have a point, as it was it was simple a negligible cost.

Lets say 1 oz of flour was used to coat the chicken.
Harold Teeter sell a 32 oz bag of flour for $1.89.
So the cost of the flour would be $0.06.

It was literally a table spoon of flower put in a left over grocery bag a shaken up. Again, it was a single chicken leg. Again, negligible.

So thats $0.32 that was not recorded in one meal.

Again, this is disputed by me.

There are 20 other meals to spread $0.68 around in to get too $1.
3.4C per meal for those 20 meals.

That is a ridiculous extrapolation of your already debunked math.

Harold Teeter sell a 10 oz bottle of soy sauce for $2.35. How much went in the stir fry. etc

See the OP regarding condiments and their use and accounting.

Again, the OP addresses most of this .

 

[Borachio]

number of uses before changing oil depends on a lot of things from what yiuare cooking (fish for instance leaves flavor behind so you can rarely reuse oil after that, the temperature you cook at, the length of time you cook things, whether you strain debris out of the oil and etc. etc.

As I was only cooking a single chicken leg my oil was just fine. Im have been using the sameoil in that thing for months ( sealed with plastic wrap and the lid). The point being trying to divvy up that oil to any one meal or one week of use is a futile endeavor. If I had been frying up a quote chicken you might have a point, as it was it was simple a negligible cost.

Ach! Danger! Will Robinson!

Changing your deep frying oil should be done much more frequently than you think. It degrades very quickly indeed. And can degrade if you just leave it exposed to the air without using it to cook with at all.

Not that I want to worry you. But there have been some poisoning cases in France, where people consumed toxic deep fried food.

Of course in such cases they were frying > 100 pieces of food in the same oil. So it's not likely you're in any danger.

But still. Months!

If I fry anything, it tends to be shallow fry. So I use new oil every time. And it saves all that faffing around with pouring oil in and out of containers all the while.

Anyway, ignore all this. I daresay you know what you're doing.

 

[Silurian]

Quite the opposite, I ended up at right around $20.40 consumed and was well over 1700 calories per meal averaged.

Total purchases are not relevant to the success criteria. A stated side benefit of the experiment was to identify affordable ways to shop. Only an idiot buys enough flour for an ingredient in one meal. Poor people can't afford to do that.

The amount of purchases that a poor person can make is limited because, well they are "poor". As a number of people pointed out in reply to the OP it is very unrealistic to make large amounts of bulk buys. Purchasing $46.22 of purchases from an allowance of $20 is very unrealistic.

Who suggested buying flour for one meal

1.) Cheese is listed on my purchase list. Two blocks of sharp cheddar.

Sharp cheddar is not included in your list of purchases on day 1 and 2.
I can see no other purchase lists.
You use some on day 1.

2.) I did state the cost of products I had in my procession, for instance butter.

You did not do that in all cases such as the cheddar you used on day 1 demonstrates.

3.) I did provide a per serving cost for meals that involved multiple ingredients. That involved me pricing out each included ingredient both purchased and already stocked added together and then divided by servings produced. If you had asked me at the time for a line item breakdown I could have done so and probably still could. What reasons do you have to doubt the price I have given?

I have no reason to doubt the cost per serving and i have not stated that I disput the cost per serving. I have assumed the amount of product used which you have not disputed, (so good assumption on my part.)

Originally Posted by Silurian
assume all the PIMIENTOS were used and half the blueberries and the rest of the cost came from items in stock

Everything you mentioned was already accounted for, be more careful in your reading.

Do you dispute that you have declared $5.31 form stock. If not please give the correct figure.

Are these figure of $2.43 (cheese) plus $1.73 (muffin) wrong, If they are please give the correct figures and working.

You have admitted to some uncosted items. Please give the correct figure if $1 is not correct for all the uncosted items.

Do you dispute that you made purchases of $46.22. If not please give the correct figure.

Originally Posted by PatroklosIt was literally a table spoon of flower put in a left over grocer bag a shaken up. Again, it was a single chicken leg. Again, negligible.

So it was one table spoon of flour not the two that I assumed. So $0.03 not $0.06 that you admit you failed to record the cost because you wrongly believed it was negligible.

1.) why are you assuming bananas/muffins/milk have an expiration of a week or less. None of those were expired before consumed last week. I freeze left over bananas for banana bread at later dates BTW. I do the same thing with apples that get soft.

Bananas lose some minerals and vitamins when frozen. This would result in a loss in value. Obviously it is better to freeze a banana, reducing its value than bin it. But in real life a poor person would eat the seven bananas over the week (or less). Freezing bananas reduces there potassium by 10%, if you take this as the reduction in value by freezing then that cause a loss in the value of the 5 uneaten bananas of $0.12 or a loss of 0.6% of your weekly budget.

This website gives 5 days as the shelf life of bananas unfrozen.

http://shelflifeadvice.com/fruit/fresh-fruit/bananas

This website gives 7 days as the shelf life of muffins in the refrigerator. It gives much longer if you freeze them but you have not stated that you froze them. I assume you binned them because they were as you noted "a bit dry". In real life a poor person would not use an oven to cook just twelve muffins and then only eat two.

http://www.stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/17741

This website gives 7 days as the shelf life of skimmed milk.

http://shelflifeadvice.com/dairy/milk/fat-free-whole-reduced-fat

Increasing your food stocks by bulk purchasing on a long range plan is beneficial, cheaper, and a part of the experiment. Nothing about that indicates failure of the experiment.

Fir instance I won't have to buy rice again for probably a year. I have certainly been using the same bag of flour for the past six months at least.

Bulk buying is good as I have previously noted. Large scale Bulk buying of more than two weeks food allowance is not a realistic representation of the position a large number of poor people are in. If you wished to carry out a realistic experiment you should have restricted your bulk buying. You have demonstrated the cost of a number of cheap meals but have not represented living for a week on a restricted budget. Unrealistic tricks such as freezing expensive bananas just demonstrates this.

Most people, including the poor, have a wide range of stable ingredients and condiments in their homes. What would be the point of doing an experiment to see what a random person dropped I to an empty kitchen could accomplish? Most people including the poor are not in that situation.

I am well aware of this and as I have stated before it does actual cost money to buy.
If you do not show the cost of it you are under recording your total food cost.

So if you want to challenge the affordability of bulk purchases go right ahead, but they do not indicate any sort of failure as far as this experiment goes.

A large number of poor people do not have the spare cash to make more than two weeks worth of purchases with one weeks allowance. You have demonstrated that a poor person with no money problems can make lots of purchases. This is not realistic and so is of limited value as an experiment.

This of course was all outlined in the OP.

And was challenged before you started.

number of uses before changing oil depends on a lot of things from what yiuare cooking (fish for instance leaves flavor behind so you can rarely reuse oil after that, the temperature you cook at, the length of time you cook things, whether you strain debris out of the oil and etc. etc.

As I was only cooking a single chicken leg my oil was just fine. Im have been using the sameoil in that thing for months ( sealed with plastic wrap and the lid). The point being trying to divvy up that oil to any one meal or one week of use is a futile endeavor. If I had been frying up a quote chicken you might have a point, as it was it was simple a negligible cost.

I note that you have not disputed my assumption that you change the oil after eight uses on average.

If you rarely use the fryer it does not reduce the cost per use.
As I have stated most poor people have limited financial resources. Buying oil and not using would not be sensible for poor people.

You are trying to live on only $20 of food a week. Not accounting for $0.28 of oil (1.4% of your weekly budget) is not a negligible cost.

It was literally a table spoon of flower put in a left over grocer bag a shaken up. Again, it was a single chicken leg. Again, negligible.

So I was wrong in assuming you used 2 table spoons. So the cost would be $0.03 not $0.06. You did state that you would be recording flour and such things.

Originally Posted by Patroklos
3.) A condiment is a description of a use. A cup of sugar or flour for a cake is an ingredient, not a condiment, so it should be counted in money calculations.

I wonder what other things you did not list because you wrongly thought they are negligible. It would not be unreasonable to allow $1 for your oversight.

Again, this is disputed by me.

You have admitted to using $0.03 of unrecorded flour and have not disputed the amount of times on average you change your oil.

That is a ridiculous extrapolation of your already debunked math.

So you do not agree that 68/20 is 3.4.

See the OP regarding condiments and their use and accounting.

One table spoon of soy sauce in your stir fry would cost $0.12.
Not insignificant when your food budget is only $20.00 per week.

Again, the OP addresses most of this .

And was challenged before you started.

 

[Patroklos]

I appreciate the warning and you are absolutely right concerning large scale operations. I ran the galley on my last ship and we had three large commercial fryers used nearly every day and for every meal for something. We generally changed oil every three days, but if we were cooking fish we might do it after one meal due to the flavor staying in the oil. If you burn something it also has to go, it will affect the flavor of everything else cooked in the oil.

The thing to remember about commercial sanitation is that the conditions generally have half a dozen or more people with all their germs and sanitation failings working around one food prep area, not to mention whatever managers and wait staff are in and out of the kitchen. For this reason commercial leftover and cleaning rules are far more strict than your household.

 

[Patroklos]

The amount of purchases that a poor person can make is limited because, well they are "poor". As a number of people pointed out in reply to the OP it is very unrealistic to make large amounts of bulk buys. Purchasing $46.22 of purchases from an allowance of $20 is very unrealistic.

Your objections to the purchase amounts are noted and discsrded. Nothing about the amounts I purchased are outside the realm of what anyone would expect a normal poor person to afford as your 40 odd dollar total shows.

It has been stated several times now that bulk buying will be an upfront cost for anyone participating while it would be an ongoing cost for an actual poor person. I am not poor, thus the stock in my pantry reflects me not being poor. Thus when I start eating as if I were poor I would have to restock.

My purchasing is completely in line with that and shows extreme cost savings for food bought even factoring the difficulties of starting with a suboptimal starting pantry for my purposes.

Who suggested buying flour for one meal

You. If you have a problem with the quantities I purchased then yiu have a problem with me having a bag of flour at my house.

Sharp cheddar is not included in your list of purchases on day 1 and 2.
I can see no other purchase lists.
You use some on day 1.

That was my fault then, it was bought on special, two eight ounce bricks for $5.00.

You did not do that in all cases such as the cheddar you used on day 1 demonstrates.

I have no reason to doubt the cost per serving and i have not stated that I disput the cost per serving. I have assumed the amount of product used which you have not disputed, (so good assumption on my part.)

Then your criticisms of their cost are disregarded.

Do you dispute that you have declared $5.31 form stock. If not please give the correct figure.

Are these figure of $2.43 (cheese) plus $1.73 (muffin) wrong, If they are please give the correct figures and working.

The costs were included in the per serving provided in the meals the finished products were included in, and thus accounted for in the daily money value consumed.

The values you are looking for are only relevant to your defeated point concerning stocking, so irrelevant.

You have admitted to some uncosted items. Please give the correct figure if $1 is not correct for all the uncosted items.

The rules were provided, some items are considered a wash as per the unedited OP post.

Do you dispute that you made purchases of $46.22. If not please give the correct figure.

The purchase values are irrelevant in so far as you can not demonstrate an unrealistic cost for stocking food for immediate and long term use.

Bananas lose some minerals and vitamins when frozen. This would result in a loss in value. Obviously it is better to freeze a banana, reducing its value than bin it. But in real life a poor person would eat the seven bananas over the week (or less). Freezing bananas reduces there potassium by 10%, if you take this as the reduction in value by freezing then that cause a loss in the value of the 5 uneaten bananas of $0.12 or a loss of 0.6% of your weekly budget.

Using your imagined in house assumptions. Potassium loss is irrelevant tot he criticism you made. The simple fact is they don't go bad as fast as you imagine. I know this because I ate them and froze them .

This website gives 5 days as the shelf life of bananas unfrozen.

http://shelflifeadvice.com/fruit/fresh-fruit/bananas

http://www.eatbydate.com/fruits/fresh/bananas-shelf-life-expiration-date/

And this one says seven at room temperature while noting it is Difficult to determine due to not knowing what state you bought them in or what state you like to eat them in. If you buy green bananas and like to eat them soft add a few more days. If you refrigerate them (like me) add a more time (I didn't know this, I just don't like keeping things on my counter).

This website gives 7 days as the shelf life of muffins in the refrigerator. It gives much longer if you freeze them but you have not stated that you froze them. I assume you binned them because they were as you noted "a bit dry". In real life a poor person would not use an oven to cook just twelve muffins and then only eat two.

http://www.stilltasty.com/fooditems/index/17741

They had fresh fruit in them, thus they were refrigerated. Next! I still have two, and I would still eat them happily.

This website gives 7 days as the shelf life of skimmed milk.

http://shelflifeadvice.com/dairy/milk/fat-free-whole-reduced-fat

I went off the date on the container which was well into the next week (and I used it then). Again with you having no way of knowing whether it had been sitting on the shelf for a week before I bought it you have no grounds to speculate on it's expiration just like the bananas.

Bulk buying is good as I have previously noted. Large scale Bulk buying of more than two weeks food allowance is not a realistic representation of the position a large number of poor people are in. If you wished to carry out a realistic experiment you should have restricted your bulk buying. You have demonstrated the cost of a number of cheap meals but have not represented living for a week on a restricted budget. Unrealistic tricks such as freezing expensive bananas just demonstrates this.

How the hell is freezing bananas unrealistic? Can poor people not bake? Surface to say you are just being combative now. Rich people would have thrown the bananas out, freezing them for later use is exactly what a poor person should/would do.

Your concept of what qualifies as bulk at all, let alone excessive bulk, is so out there that it can be disregarded outright. You have not provided single example of an unrealistic bulk purchase.

And since you are all about bringing up things outside the scope of the experiment, poor people generally don't live by themselves. Me doing this by myself is a reality of not having two fake children and a fiancé who didn't want to participate. If I had four poor people and their combined 80 dollars my "bulk" buying and cooking 12 muffins at once doesn't seem so bad now does it? Despite not being able to capitalize on that economy of scale I still achieved satisfactory results.

Even if all your criticisms were valid (and they are not) the above would outweigh them all anyway.

I am well aware of this and as I have stated before it does actual cost money to buy.
If you do not show the cost of it you are under recording your total food cost.

It's a negligible cost and given the spirit and level of seriousness of this experiment your objection is just sour grapes that it was accomplished satisfactorily.

A large number of poor people do not have the spare cash to make more than two weeks worth of purchases with one weeks allowance. You have demonstrated that a poor person with no money problems can make lots of purchases. This is not realistic and so is of limited value as an experiment.

The average low wage worker in the US makes $6.50 an hour. 47% of low wage earners work full time.

http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/09/lowwageworkers/rb.shtml

So in other words for a full-time worker using my purchases they would have only spent less than a single work day out of their week paying not only for their food consumed that week, but significant portions of the next week and beyond as well. And that using my purchasing needs with my pantry's structural flaws to boot.

The simple fact is they can afford to buy the amounts I did and more if need be, but probably wouldn't have to either. Your objection is has been refuted.

And was challenged before you started.

And was satisfactory refuted then, just as now.

I note that you have not disputed my assumption that you change the oil after eight uses on average.

If you rarely use the fryer it does not reduce the cost per use.
As I have stated most poor people have limited financial resources. Buying oil and not using would not be sensible for poor people.

More unfounded assumptions on your part. I stated how long it's been there, I did not say how often I use it. I use it pretty often, at least once a week, and do to what I fry/how long I fry/how I maintain the oil/the quantity I fry when I use it he oil has probably been used dozens of times and is still clear and good.

For instance one of my favorite snacks outside the experiment is left over mashed potatoes or Mack in cheese balled and fryer (the next experiment I will try this with rice balls!). This has no effect on the oil at all.

So again, you are just making things up that you can't possibly know.

You are trying to live on only $20 of food a week. Not accounting for $0.28 of oil (1.4% of your weekly budget) is not a negligible cost.

It was neglidgale, you will simply have to accept this.

So I was wrong in assuming you used 2 table spoons. So the cost would be $0.03 not $0.06. You did state that you would be recording flour and such things.

You assume that all the flour made it to the chicken. .03 is negligible, a fraction of that is more negligible. Cups of flour in baked goods were not negligible and accounted for.

You are literally now argueing over one cent (.05% of a daily meal value or there abouts), the very definition of negligible and exactly why the OP had the rules it did. It was for the sake of simplicity and keeping things fun, both things you have now circumvented with your quibbling.

I wonder what other things you did not list because you wrongly thought they are negligible. It would not be unreasonable to allow $1 for your oversight.

You are the arbiter of nothing, did not participate, have been proven factually wrong and shown to have no desire to adhere to the rules or spirit of this experiment. Your judgement of "wrongly" has no bearing on anything.

You have admitted to using $0.03 of unrecorded flour and have not disputed the amount of times on average you change your oil.

I have shown you to be a quibbling obstructionist.

So you do not agree that 68/20 is 3.4.

The problem is the values you come up with are based on unfounded assumptions, and the extrapolations based on nothing that you come up with are based on this math.

Your "what the poor can afford" line, now completely debunked, being a perfect example.

One table spoon of soy sauce in your stir fry would cost $0.12.
Not insignificant when your food budget is only $20.00 per week.

what sized bottle was used? What brand? Was it diesel or low sodium? Was it a free packet left over from chinese take out or store bought?

Don't know? Well imagine that...

And was challenged before you started.

And as previously noted, your challenge didn't survive scrutiny then.

There are legitimate problems with my experiment, calories per day being the most glaring. You, however, have not brought forward a single one.

 

[Zelig]

Freezing bananas reduces there potassium by 10%, if you take this as the reduction in value by freezing then that cause a loss in the value of the 5 uneaten bananas of $0.12 or a loss of 0.6% of your weekly budget.

I'm almost certain this isn't the case - where would the potassium go?

 

[Patroklos]

Freezing does nothing to potassium in bananas.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/534722-frozen-bananas-and-potassium/

 

[Silurian]

I hope to have my results tabulated today but I am finishing my honey due list right now.

Thanks for pinging out that error. That sucks because that puts me over the 20.00 by .27 cents. I would have compensated during dinner if I had realized this. Don't judge me to harshly!

When will you be posting your own analysis.

Will you be checking your unit costs as the maths for some seem to be off.

For example the cost of the chicken in the purchase table is different to the eaten section.

 

[Patroklos]

My desktop crashed right after the end of the experiment and it's a PITA making long complicated posts with graphs on the iPad. I have my new desktop components on order, should have everything built in not to long.

 

[Oerdin]

If you have a car and don't mind eating the same things over and over than, yes, it is possible. The big problem is really poor people don't have cars and so are stuck either buying from corner stores in the ghetto who typically have poor selection and high prices or to confine themselves to what they can carry on a bus trip which, once again, limits the ability to shop around for the lowest price and takes a heavy toll on the amount of time which must be spent traveling. The other problem is to get the lowest prices you often have to buy in bulk but to keep to the $20 limit you can't do that so you're stuck buying smaller packages at higher per unit prices.

Can it be done? Sure, but it will be tight, you'll end up eating a lot of the same stuff over and over, and without that variety no it won't be nutritious over the long term.

 

[Patroklos]

Did you read the thread? I disproved all of what you just said.

So the desktop is up and running, I am lazy though so I'll get to it this weekend.

I am looking for dates to run the experiment a second time using what was learned from the first go around and to address the valid criticisms levied (primarily calories, the goal will be a straight 2000 this time).

I was thinking I will wait until after Valentine's day?