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How to eat healthily on £1 a day

bbc.co.uk

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Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#111

Post by Dove »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #35

The amount of highly processed carbohydrates is frightening and far from "healthy"[1]. It's unfortunate, but to eat healthy costs more, because healthy food spoils. I look at it like this: if a food doesn't spoil[2], it is most likely because bacteria and fungus can get no nutritional value from it. Do I want to eat that? 1. http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Scienc... 2. There are some exceptions,…

it is most likely because bacteria and fungus can get no nutritional value from it.

Here are two other reasons bacteria might not be able to eat something you can eat:

1. They can't stand the chemical environment -- pH, poisons, salinity. You're just eating it, and can compensate for a lot; they have to live in it! Examples: Honey, garlic, onions, hard liquor, vinegar, salted butter.

2. It's too dry; you can drink extra water, but they need it to come from the environment they live in. Examples: Any dry food, really, but stale bread and dried meat are good examples.

. . . and cheating a bit, here's one more:

3. The food could spoil, but is in an otherwise inhospitable environment -- too cold, too hot, no oxygen, already sterile/sealed. Examples: Frozen food, food in the slow cooker, canned food.

None of those have much to do with nutrition! You're just a more robust organism than bacteria, is all.

Even "poisons" in the first one is misleading -- a lot of what the microbial world sees as poison, you and I see as tasty. :)

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#112

Post by yoster »

kragen wrote: post #77
gnosis wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's if you're lucky enough to be in a hotel, and not out on the street, where you'd be lucky to have access to even a hot plate.

The guys who sell flatbread on the street here cook it on reused refrigerator condensers on top of a bed of charcoal, which can be on the ground between rocks, or more commonly, in a metal pan atop a (presumably stolen) shopping cart. This is better than a hot plate if you can reliably find nontoxic wood.

I use a Lodge double dutch oven that is cast iron. It is a combination where the lid is a skillet and the bottom is a 5-quart pot. You can cook everything imaginable in this combination. It is far superior than the nonstick pans that are toxic at high temperature.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#113

Post by yoster »

In the state I live in, there are a plethora of $1 stores that sell all types of fruits, vegetables, cheap meats, and pre-packaged food for $1. They even sell Breyers half gallon vanilla icecream for $1. The local big grocery store sells mass quantities of bananas(20) for 99cents. I have seen 3lb potatoes going for $1 as well. You could easily live off a dollar a day. It might not be the healthiest thing to do, but it's completely doable.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#115

Post by thenomad »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #101
ceejayoz wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your citations show a link between poverty and obesity, not gluttony. If welfare programs were generous poor people might be able to afford fresh vegetables and other nutritious foods less linked with health issues, rather than the cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrition foods.

Obesity is a direct product of gluttony (i.e. eating more than you need). If the poor were really financially constrained, they would eat a smaller quantity of high caloric density foods. (There is one exception to this - tall muscular people. This is a known problem with BMI.)

Sorry, can I just get a clarification here?

Are you saying that it's impossible to be malnourished and obese?

If so, that's provably untrue.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#116

Post by moneyrich »

I did this for a while, surviving on about $4 a day. I was living in mexico, I am a web developer from the states, and there is no jobs down there. What I did for 6 months as a 175lb fit man (used to fight mma and when I was exercising was eating probably 3-5k calories a day):

breakfast choices:

mangos - free and abundant about half the year

tortillas 11 pesos (99 cents) + apple slices 5 pesos (45 cents)

fish tacos - 11 pesos (99 cents)

lunch and dinner:

fishing supplies: 4 hooks and 4 sinkers 24 pesos ($2) go catch 3-4 fish and hopefully not lose all my equipment. come home and buy 8 tortillas for 11 pesos ($1), season them (45 cents every 2-3 weeks), and put some fresh mango (free) or occosional tomate and onion salsa ($1)

sometimes just eating mangos when I had no money.

sometimes dinner at a restaurant where locals eat: 8 pesos a taco (72 cents)

14 cigarettes: 20 pesos ($1.8)

beer for dinner: 10 pesos (90 cents)

i probably got almost 2000 calories a day, but lots of good fat and protein for me and my dog from eating fish 3x a day.

another cool fact: i bought my dog for 50 pesos, a rott/pitbull mix from a guy in the street.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#119

Post by driverdan »

claudius wrote: post #91
Someone wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you have a similar mix and quality of clothes at the end of tht period as at the start? Similarly, was you washing machine (if you had one) of similar quality? T.v, computer? It is relatively easy to live on a budget starting from a position where you have all relatively new stuff, and where you have a full closet of relatively new clothes. Also: €25 for eating out once or twice plus clothes?

You can get jeans for 10 €, lasting about four months (so a year if you have three), shoes are roughly twice the price, three t-shirts usually come in at 5€ (Aldi is wonderful at that – thinking of which, I mostly bought my clothes there, including them in the general groceries category[0]). I bought a used washing machine when I moved in for 90 €, which had to be replaced after two years, so this would be 3.75 €/mon…

You could do much better on clothing. A single pair of Gap jeans on sale for $40-50 will last me over a year wearing them almost daily. Or go to a thrift store and pick up a pair for $5. You can get free swag shirts at any tech event.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#120

Post by driverdan »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #35

The amount of highly processed carbohydrates is frightening and far from "healthy"[1]. It's unfortunate, but to eat healthy costs more, because healthy food spoils. I look at it like this: if a food doesn't spoil[2], it is most likely because bacteria and fungus can get no nutritional value from it. Do I want to eat that? 1. http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-Scienc... 2. There are some exceptions,…

> but to eat healthy costs more, because healthy food spoils

Brown rice and dried beans don't spoil and are extremely cheap. Most other foods can be frozen to prevent spoilage.

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