41–50 of 136 posts
As a poor college student I'm currently on a food budget of < $40 per month. I rarely buy anything but bread, bacon, peanut butter, cheese, bananas, eggs, yogurt, and butter. It's a bit monotonous, but I was surprised how quickly I got used to it.
Try replacing some of that with seasoned brown rice and beans. It will be cheaper, healthier and (depending on what spices you use) tastier.
I a lot of people are suggesting that this diet is not healthy, but I'm not convinced. Eggs, salads, veggies, fruits, rice, beans, cheeses, beef...As long as things are taken in the correct quantities I see very little problem here, am I wrong?
To me, I'd just be suspicious of anything sold at those prices. You're a bottom feeder on the dregs of the food-industrial complex, and that can't be good.
It is important to think about eating in terms of return on investment. You can spend more money on better food (you can also spend more money on worse food) and get better overall fitness and alertness and performance in general from your body. The important thing to know is what is the cost and what is the benefit. Nutrition is a vast science. * All carbs are not equal. * All fat is not equal. * All protein is not…
It ought to be treated as a science but often it isn't. If you ask 100 nutrition experts how much protein a person should get in a day, you're not going to get a consensus based on empirical evidence, but drastically different answers and emotional passions bordering on the religious.
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Easy to fix: buy dried pinto beans and lard. Soak the pintos in water over night. The next day, pour off the water and simmer them in fresh water for about an hour. Strain your beans, put them in a pan (or cast-iron skillet), and pour liquid lard over top of them until the fat is about half-way up the beans. Cook over medium heat until the beans have exploded out of their skins. Now, take a potato masher to them. If…
You'll be eating 2 grams of carbohydrate for every gram of protein that you get that way. Sure, getting your carbs from beans is not nearly as bad for you as getting them from sugar, but there are much higher quality, and more expensive, protein sources that one should prefer. Then again, medical bills are expensive too.
That all having been said, tofu can be quite cost effective, low in carbs, and high in protein. Of course, you might tell me there's aggression issues associated with tofu ingestion, and that it contains chemicals that mimic estrogen. So, there's seitan, which is also high in protein, low in carbs, and can be made relatively cheaply from wheat gluten in bulk. Of course, there are lots of people who decry wheat gluten as well, not to mention people who're legitimately allergic to it.
So that brings us to meat and fish. Meat often comes along with saturated fats and often raises your blood's LDL cholesterol levels, not to mention all the health, environmental, and ethical concerns of factory farming. You could take part in a co-op for your meat, but that is not going to enable you to eat for especially cheap. Fish is generally better in the fat and cholesterol departments, but many carry with them mercury content that makes a lot of people nervous and the threat of overfishing. There are fish that avoid most of these concerns, such as tilapia, which fit most of the criteria, but is still not anywhere close to as price effective as dried beans.
If you don't want to get your protein from beans, that's fine. I personally advocate people pay a little more and eat a healthy, varied diet, including many (or all) of the above-mentioned dangerous foods. But this crap about "medical bills are expensive too" implying that somehow eating an incredibly traditional and largely vegetarian diet will send you to the hospital is just ridiculous.
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With the audience on here, I doubt that internet is considered "non-essential". It sounds to me that he ate a pretty balanced diet. Not gourmet by any stretch of the imagination, but plain, and for the most part, healthy food.
I agree that it sounds like he ate pretty healthy, but stuff like this really freaks me out: Lard is the highest calorie per cent food you can buy. That just seems to be the epitome of penny-wise and pound-foolish for 99.9% of people, who would be far better off trimming their budget in other categories so they could eat healthier instead of viewing food as just a source of calories.
The numbers you're using sound wrong now. In the last year or maybe 2 years food prices have skyrocketed. I'll go to store to pick up a few things and end up with a bag or two of groceries, and the bill is like $100 -- I know I could scrimp and figure out ways to spend less, but it wasn't always like that. The same stuff costs way more now. If you want to talk about really healthy food, especially if you have a stran…
The numbers are very regional (cheese in the northeast is 1/2 what it is in Colorado, for instance) and were lower a few years ago (you are right). If you shop the right stores at the right times, I am sure you could come pretty damn close, even today. Veganism can be spendy. I've only tried once (for a week). It didn't work out too well.
Rice, beans, pasta, and (frozen) veggies combined with different spices and sauces isn't a bad way to go when saving money and trying to stay healthy.
I'm much more skeptical of the health consequences from a diet including large quantities of eggs, cheap ground meat, and inexpensive cheese.
I also think the key to living this cheaply would be a multi-vitamin to help replace whatever you're invariably missing from your diet.
As a vegetarian who eats like a vegan 98% of the time (and for several years lived on no more than a $60.00/month food budget), you don't have to let budgetary constraints keep you from participating in a healthy and environmentally friendly way of eating.
As a poor college student I'm currently on a food budget of < $40 per month. I rarely buy anything but bread, bacon, peanut butter, cheese, bananas, eggs, yogurt, and butter. It's a bit monotonous, but I was surprised how quickly I got used to it.
Also, experiment with cheap veggies. I get sick of PB&J, so I stick things like cucumber slices or mushrooms in there, and it seems totally different to my taste buds. Cucumbers are dirt cheap, mushrooms less so, but either way, not breaking the budget. I also enjoy a zucchini sandwich (between buttered toast).
Another way most people could cut their budgets is to look seriously at their portion size. I realize this doesn't apply to you, but if one's definition of a 'meal' is what fills up a 15 inch dinner plate and involves at least four different colors, then yeah, it's hard to eat cheaply. Most restaurant 'meals' are really at least two.
It is important to think about eating in terms of return on investment. You can spend more money on better food (you can also spend more money on worse food) and get better overall fitness and alertness and performance in general from your body. The important thing to know is what is the cost and what is the benefit. Nutrition is a vast science. * All carbs are not equal. * All fat is not equal. * All protein is not…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'll be eating 2 grams of carbohydrate for every gram of protein that you get that way. Sure, getting your carbs from beans is not nearly as bad for you as getting them from sugar, but there are much higher quality, and more expensive, protein sources that one should prefer. Then again, medical bills are expensive too.
Honestly, I don't really buy into the idea that getting your protein from a mix of beans and grains will somehow cause you to end up making up the cost difference in medical bills due to the amount of carbohydrates you're ingesting, given the huge number of people on this earth who do so and who appear to have perfectly fine results from this sort of diet. Just make sure you're getting some exercise (which you should…
I stopped reading when he suggested dumpster diving.
I've gone dumpster diving on a couple of occasions with some friends of mine. I actually think most people should, at the very least, watch other people dumpster dive at least once. You will be absolutely amazed at the amount of perfectly good food that gets thrown out. Go to a bakery right after they close. There will be garbage bags full of bread (and nothing but bread so it's relatively sanitary) that was baked th…