The Great CFC Low Income Food Experiment Challenge!

[Gogf]

I've been thinking a lot about this and I really don't think living on a $20/week budget would be that different from how I normally eat. I think one of the major differences would be a serious restriction of my options at every meal because I can't let anything go to waste. Lack of planning and a wide variety of available meal options is an overlooked luxury.

Not eating breakfast helps me, but, as I noted, it's easy to buy giant containers of oatmeal, which is what I would want to eat most of the time anyway if I were eating breakfast. Fresh produce can actually be very inexpensive if you buy seasonally and especially if you pay attention to sales. I suspect that most of the reason people think this is a totally unreasonable budget is a lack of cooking knowledge and an over-reliance on processed foods. Processed food is both more expensive in general and also nutritionally poorer, which is a double-whammy of don't-buy-this-if-you're-poor.

This gets at the heart of the issue, which is that the real problem here isn't the cost of food (after all, the $20 from food stamps is supposed to be supplemented with other income, even if that's from other welfare; it's never supposed to be all of someone's food budget in the first place). The problem is all sorts of other expensive attributes to being poor. Not having been raised in a food culture is a serious problem, because it leads to a lack of knowledge about what to eat, how to cook, and what to do with leftover ingredients. Moreover, junk food (which includes soda and is completely worthless and a waste of money) is heavily marketed towards the poor. Poor people also tend to have trouble buying food because they live in "food deserts" where it is difficult to access supermarkets and don't own cars, which means resorting to more-expensive local convenience stores.

(Something else to consider: not every meal needs to contain meat, and nuts and vegetables contain protein as well. Yes, someone with $20/week to spend on food might not be able to afford three meals a day with meat. This really isn't the end of the world, either nutritionally or from a variety standpoint.)

 

[Mise]

If we're only doing this for a week then it's a lot easier than I thought, as I can stand prison diets for just one week. I'd obviously get sick of it after a month or so though.

 

[Zelig]

I'm pretty certain I'll be eating better than a prison diet.

Certainly better than a hospital diet, I assume prison diets are similar.

 

[luiz]

I also could not possibly meet those $20/week or anything close for the same reason. Except that I actually have to pay over 4€ for a full meal. Damn Germany, people make more and actually have to spend less on food there!

In Brasil we make less than in Portugal and it's completely and utterly impossible to have a decent meal at a restaurant in downtown Rio for 4€. I spend 3 times as much on lunch every day, though I reckon 8€ should be enough for someone who eats less or is less demanding.

 

[Mise]

Surely a McDonald's costs less than €8.

 

[Zelig]

I'd hardly call McDonald's a restaurant.

For $20 I've got standards still.

 

[Patroklos]

If we're only doing this for a week then it's a lot easier than I thought, as I can stand prison diets for just one week. I'd obviously get sick of it after a month or so though.

Yeah I mentioned that in the "Notes" section of the OP too. The simple fact is the knowledge that this is only for a week and that you can hit a steak house on day 8 does take make it easier to tolerate something you normally wouldn't.

Then again I am not poor so what I would normally tolerate should be less than someone who is poor. There are realities to being poor in regards your food choices and every other part of your budget. Not accepting these and spending more than you should is one of the primary reasons the poor remain so.

That might sound harsh, but part of this experiment is that just because you have to restrict your budget doesn't mean you have to live off or rice and beans. The purpose of describing how you cook and prepare your food is to ascertain if you can still eat enjoyably.

 

[luiz]

Surely a McDonald's costs less than €8.

A full McDonalds combo (with fries and a coke), for one of the bigger sandwiches, will cost you about R$20, which translates to €7.40 (remember Brazil is pretty much the most expensive country in the Big Mac index).

That's why I said it's possible to eat with €8, but I need about €12 per lunch.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

They're not "necessary" unless you actually had some sort of a mental health condition that they helped resolve.

Being the reason I didn't commit suicide should count... (I came to my senses and realized that without me, there would be NOBODY to care for the cats) I have been dealing with depression for many years, along with a thyroid condition and fibromyalgia. There are a lot of days when the cats are the ONLY reason I can find to get out of bed each day. Without them I just wouldn't care what happens to myself.

So telling me to discount their needs is something I simply cannot do, even for a week-long experiment. Because in RL, offline life, it's NOT POSSIBLE.


Now, on the subject of insanely expensive lunches... I make do with a bottle of drinkable yogurt (200 mL). The cost is $1 (if I buy 5 bottles at once), plus 10 cents deposit, plus 3 cents enviro fee. The deposit is refundable at the bottle depot; the enviro fee is not. Not sure if GST is charged on drinkable yogurt - will need to check my receipts since it never occurred to me to wonder about that before. But rounding it up to the nearest dollar, call it $8.00 CDN for a week's worth of lunches for me.

 

[dutchfire]

I've been thinking a lot about this and I really don't think living on a $20/week budget would be that different from how I normally eat. I think one of the major differences would be a serious restriction of my options at every meal because I can't let anything go to waste. Lack of planning and a wide variety of available meal options is an overlooked luxury.

Not eating breakfast helps me, but, as I noted, it's easy to buy giant containers of oatmeal, which is what I would want to eat most of the time anyway if I were eating breakfast. Fresh produce can actually be very inexpensive if you buy seasonally and especially if you pay attention to sales. I suspect that most of the reason people think this is a totally unreasonable budget is a lack of cooking knowledge and an over-reliance on processed foods. Processed food is both more expensive in general and also nutritionally poorer, which is a double-whammy of don't-buy-this-if-you're-poor.

This gets at the heart of the issue, which is that the real problem here isn't the cost of food (after all, the $20 from food stamps is supposed to be supplemented with other income, even if that's from other welfare; it's never supposed to be all of someone's food budget in the first place). The problem is all sorts of other expensive attributes to being poor. Not having been raised in a food culture is a serious problem, because it leads to a lack of knowledge about what to eat, how to cook, and what to do with leftover ingredients. Moreover, junk food (which includes soda and is completely worthless and a waste of money) is heavily marketed towards the poor. Poor people also tend to have trouble buying food because they live in "food deserts" where it is difficult to access supermarkets and don't own cars, which means resorting to more-expensive local convenience stores.

(Something else to consider: not every meal needs to contain meat, and nuts and vegetables contain protein as well. Yes, someone with $20/week to spend on food might not be able to afford three meals a day with meat. This really isn't the end of the world, either nutritionally or from a variety standpoint.)

I think it is indeed doable, if you you are careful and plan well. Especially cooking a large meal that you can reheat the next day (or buying ingredients that you can use two days in a row) helps a lot, I think. But the main problem is that there is very little room for mistakes. I might quite easily spend $10 per week on soda (yeah, I should drink less) and another $10 on candy and cookies. I ate a great lunch at a restaurant recently, cost me $9. If a go to a bar for a drink in the evening, I'll spend $10 easily. A single mistake like that means you would be hungry the rest of the week.

 

[Zelig]

Now, on the subject of insanely expensive lunches... I make do with a bottle of drinkable yogurt (200 mL). The cost is $1 (if I buy 5 bottles at once), plus 10 cents deposit, plus 3 cents enviro fee. The deposit is refundable at the bottle depot; the enviro fee is not. Not sure if GST is charged on drinkable yogurt - will need to check my receipts since it never occurred to me to wonder about that before. But rounding it up to the nearest dollar, call it $8.00 CDN for a week's worth of lunches for me.

That's an example of an expensive lunch?

Because those are expensive luxury items - as Gogf mentioned, most processed items are a terrible deal.

Yops are $1.33/200 Calories - averaged across an entire week, this equates to a grocery bill of over $90, which is nearly what I spend, and I eat like a king. Sure, fresh produce is going to be more expensive on a per Calorie basis than Calorie-dense foods, you need them for other nutrients. Yogurt is essentially replaceable by milk in terms of nutrients, and milk is roughly 1/3 the price of that yogurt on a per-Calorie basis.

 

[Gogf]

I think it is indeed doable, if you you are careful and plan well. Especially cooking a large meal that you can reheat the next day (or buying ingredients that you can use two days in a row) helps a lot, I think. But the main problem is that there is very little room for mistakes. I might quite easily spend $10 per week on soda (yeah, I should drink less) and another $10 on candy and cookies. I ate a great lunch at a restaurant recently, cost me $9. If a go to a bar for a drink in the evening, I'll spend $10 easily. A single mistake like that means you would be hungry the rest of the week.

Spending 50% of your weekly food budget on something totally unnecessary is a pretty gigantic mistake to make, though. I can't imagine anyone could do that without realizing.

 

[innonimatu]

For the people who mentioned that the trick would be to find food for free wherever possible: that just can't apply to most of the population, really. Extra cheap or free food just doesn't scale. In the countryside I could "easily" find food for free by taking remnants of harvested crops (there's always portions rejected left behind). But only a few people can realistically do it, and not all the time. And it's still the lower-quality items. And in cities there are promotions in shops, true... but those promotions are done with the purpose of selling other stuff! It's a calculated and limited subsidy, therefore it can't scale.

Thus chasing the cheapest possible food and then claiming "there, people ought to be able to eat with x$" will simply not be true. It doesn't scale from the few places and circumstances where it is possible fto find very cheap food.

In Brasil we make less than in Portugal and it's completely and utterly impossible to have a decent meal at a restaurant in downtown Rio for 4€. I spend 3 times as much on lunch every day, though I reckon 8€ should be enough for someone who eats less or is less demanding.

A downtown restaurant? Hah! 4€ is the cost in a (supposedly) not-for-profit work refectory. Though, to be fair, 6€ will be enough for an acceptable lunch in a cheap restaurant.

 

[Zelig]

I'm pretty sure those people weren't being serious.

My grocery budget has been $0 for the past week and a half because I've been visiting my family for Christmas. So in conclusion, if you visit my family for Christmas all the time, your grocery budget will be $0.

 

[Grisu]

I'm pretty certain I'll be eating better than a prison diet.

Certainly better than a hospital diet, I assume prison diets are similar.

your hospitals must be bad (at least on the culinary front)

as for a McD 'meals' the small ones cost 11.50 here (which is about the same in $ and roughly €9.50). If I go there it becomes a lot more expensive since I don't eat fries and thus have to order different things that don't come as a meal, which easily ends up costing around $20.-- But I go there rarely, anyway.

 

[Zelig]

Hospital meals are pathetic, if I'm ever stuck in a hospital I'm budgeting myself an extra $60/day to get real food catered if I'm not able able to persuade/bribe/blackmail/threaten my friends into cooking and bringing in food for me.

 

[dutchfire]

Okay, I've optimized my food buys today so that I can eat almost everything I still have in stock tomorrow, and can start fresh on monday.

 

[TomYo689]

Gonna be watching this. How many people are participating?

 

[Patroklos]

Okay, I've optimized my food buys today so that I can eat almost everything I still have in stock tomorrow, and can start fresh on monday.

Awesome! Is anyone else going to join us?

 

[Akka]

Surely a McDonald's costs less than €8.

A cheeseburger alone is about 6 €. A menu is about 9 or 10.

McDonald is "fast-food", but it's not really "cheap" in fact.