Follow the One Dollar Diet Project

Sounds like a tough challenge! I've always wondered if I could do such a thing on bulk beans, rice, home grown fruits and veggies.

posted by katiek on 9/ 3/2008 5:41 pm

I often hear people complain that to eat inexpensively they must eat unhealthily -- packaged food, HFCS, etc. But, in reality, the closer you eat to the farm (meaning the less processed the food is), the less the food costs, and the healthier the food is. $1 a day is a very worthy goal.

posted by madkat on 9/ 5/2008 11:45 am

I've been eating on $10/week for quite a while just to save money and for the discipline. I get free produce sometimes from neighbors and the Friends Meeting, I buy a lot of rice that helps to "fill out" meals, and when I want an indulgence, I distract myself with other thoughts and actions. I'm lucky that I've always eaten so little anyway. Of course, this $1.42/day has included indulgences like organic milk (not powdered) and half and half. It includes organic produce and some canned foods (I love lentil soup!) and the occasional batch of cookies (homemade, still), so I know I could spend less and still be happy. I still have my black and green tea,too! I feel like a spendthrift when I think of cutting my budget by another $3.00/week. I think I'll try it, though. Thanks for the inspiration!

posted by katiegrace on 9/ 9/2008 7:32 pm

That seems like a wonderful idea. We can all eat cheaply. I see so many people in my poorer suburb loading their trolleys with junk food. My naturopath is working on a community garden, and I happened to be in a new age shop yesterday where they were selling Biodynamic Rudolf Steiner planting calendars. You can grow your own vegetables and save quite a lot. I used to shop at an end of line and damaged goods supermarket where they used to throw out stuff that was near their useby date and get the rest from Aldi which I could not get there. I found out about coupons too in the USA, you can buy them for a minimal bidding price off ebay. People in small cottage industries spend a long time cutting these from newspapers and you can get your groceries for nothing. I found out about this through a marketing guru who shared this information. If you go to ebay and type "coupons" you will find 1000's of them. Nobody knows about it but you can get them for next to nothing. Good luck with your endevours, many people in modern societies don't know about hardship. They say they are poor and squander their money on all sorts of things like entertainment, clothes and cars. You don't need it. We need to be educated in other ways and derive our happiness from other things. There are so many people who need more but our society is becomming so decadent and the waste is so unnecessary. You can also go to www.lovefoodhatewaste.com (I think) and find ways of using left over vegetables. According to this website in Britain they throw out double decker buses worth of apples each week and all this gets converted to greenhouse gas emissions, rotting food. I don't know whether i could live on $1 a day I live on lentils and vegetables, but it is worthy to consider others less fortunate than us an stop being so self centered and thinking you are more deserving.

posted by Teilah on 9/ 9/2008 8:13 pm

You must be a registered user to comment. If you are already registered Click here to login or Click here for our fast, free registration.