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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

#91

Post by claudius »

Someone wrote: post #85
claudius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to live on 700 €/month for three years, where I spent 310 €/month on rent (including warm water and heating for a 1-room + kitchen + bathroom flat of 40m²) and saved a further 100 €/month, plus ~50 €/month for university fees (~250 €/6 months). So I lived off (700 - 310 - 100 - 50 = 240 €)/month, which I found to be no particular problem – ~150 €/month on food, toothbrushes etc. (general groceries), 30 €/month…

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 €/month. The oven came with the flat and worked fine, I got an old fridge from my grandparents which was still functional when I moved out, but likely sucked up far more energy than necessary.

Tech was relatively decent (used X300, used X41, a weird desktopy-mediacentery thing) when I moved in, I got a T410s after two years from the money I had saved when the battery in the X300 failed and sold the latter for 500€ (350 after replacement of said battery). Trips to my parents were usually paid directly by them, but they obviously weren’t strictly necessary either.

You can get a döner and a drink or two for ~8 € – surely not eating out, but not eating in either.

[0] I spent about 25 € there per week, which would give 120 €/month for strictly groceries and a further 30€ for extras (cheap pans, clothes, paper etc.).

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#92

Post by mtct »

Thrall wrote: post #64
mtct wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, why you don't move to another (better) area? It's not like you have an house or anything else that bind you there. To be clear, I'm not saying that is an easy life, I'm only saying that is difficult die of starving in a modern first world nation

The better areas are taken by those with money. You can move to a better area, but the police will turn up before long to move you on.

Obviously is not a simple life. Dangers are everywhere from drug dealers to policeman. But to keep this short the fact is the same: For a mentally sane man (or woman) in USA is very difficult die of starvation.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#93

Post by Samuel_Michon »

claudius wrote: post #83
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is simply not true. I live in the third most densely populated country in Europe (after Monaco and Vatican City), the Netherlands. It has 1287 people per sq mile. Yet, the country has plenty of rural areas from where it takes hours to walk to the nearest town or even the nearest shop. Belgium, the UK, Germany, and Italy are ranked 4, 5, 7 and 9 respectively. They too have large rural areas. In the less densely p…

On one hand, I cannot recall a single village of more than, say, 1000 inhabitants (in Germany) which did not have a decent supermarket (Aldi, Lidl etc.) – at most, it might be at the other end of the village a few kilometers away, but, well. On the other hand, you ignore that bicycles are perfectly fit for use as transportation, especially in rural areas with little traffic, reducing the need for a car even further.…

You’re moving the goalposts. I indicated I moved to a small city specifically not to have to own a car to shop for groceries. You seem to think that one can live anywhere in Europe and be within 2 miles (a 30 minute walk) of whatever amenities you need. That is simply not true.

My sister’s husband owns a home on an island in Norway which has been in his family for several generations. They spend several months a year there. There are no shops on the island at all, it takes more than an hour by boat to get to a supermarket. I’ve never visited Norway, but I’ve been told this is quite common.

“if the vast majority of the population live in villages and cities, it doesn’t matter whatsoever whether there are fifty trillion square miles of forest around them or not.”

It does matter to you, if you happen to live in or near a forest. In Iceland, two-thirds of the population lives in the Reykjavik area. If you live outside of that area, you absolutely need a car.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#94

Post by saraid216 »

hkmurakami wrote: post #62
jiggy2011 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely agree, when you are poor your biggest problem is not actually quantity of money. It's the flow of money. So the problem is often not "I have £50 to plan food for the rest of the month" but "I have an unexpected expense and now I have £2 I found behind the sofa and a bare cupboard/fridge to feed myself until I get some more money". I also found that when I am poor I am much more reluctant to go out and buy in…

>but "I have an unexpected expense and now I have £2 I found behind the sofa and a bare cupboard/fridge to feed myself until I get some more money". It seems that the most common of these unexpected expenses include automobile related repair expenses (which come once every few years that even the best of us tend to forget to budget) and health expenses. Are there any others that come to mind? Of course, automobile an…

And the poor are typically the people who need a car the most, because they don't live in neighborhoods well-served by public transit.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#95

Post by drakaal »

The way to eat cheap is to have 49 friends. Costs are much lower if you buy a lot of something. Soup kitchens as they are called in the US (and elsewhere?) do this. There are self sustaing ones in the US that charge $1 for a meal which is prepared by those who eat there. As a community center $1 for a meal is doable. And with the pound being worth more than the dollar, one should be able to do that on a 1GBP as well.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#96

Post by keithpeter »

fpp wrote: post #44
shubb wrote: post #3

The problem with this article is that a lot of things that are cheap for one serving go stale before you eat the second. For instance, on day one, he adds some mint which cost ~50p to buy, but he calls 1p because he only eats a little. He does not eat the rest of the mint that week, so it cost him ~50p, i.e. half the days budget. I am poor and eat very cheap. I do that using dry bulk foods and frozen veg. This is imp…

Fully agreed - IMHO this article again shows how removed from reality some people are and seemingly nothing is left out to polarise society further (a/k/a the poor are only to stupid - look here they can live a healthy diet on even less). a few thoughts on this article: (1) compare the energy / fat / etc in this article with the rations given to the British people during WWII and shortly afterwards - I estimate the a…

"a/k/a the poor are only to stupid - look here they can live a healthy diet on even less)."

Agreed. George Orwell explored this one in his Road to Wigan Pier, ch 6.

I would encourage people to shop at their local food market. I can get all the fruit and veg we need for a week for £5 to £6 relatively easily at Birmingham's Fruit and Veg market.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#97

Post by yummyfajitas »

takluyver wrote: post #82
yummyfajitas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claims are a little surprising, at least from an American perspective. Our various welfare programs are so generous that our poor can (and often do) eat like gluttons. I was under the impression that UK welfare benefits are far more generous than those in the US - is that incorrect? (Full disclosure - I've spent a grand total of 5 days of my life in the UK, most of it in zones 1-2 of London. I know virtually not…

This is rather political. I think you can probably find something similar in both the UK and the US: some 'poor' people are getting enough money that they can afford to eat a lot of cheap, unhealthy food, while others genuinely struggle to get enough to eat. The difference in money isn't all that much when compared to factors like whether you have children, which area you live in, and which benefits you're getting. T…

At least among children (the only group for which I could find this data, see the citations I added to the post you responded to), this is not correct. The number of poor children who don't get enough to eat is virtually the same as the number of rich children who don't - about 5%.

In the last few years, the number of people using foodbanks in the UK has increased dramatically, for instance.

This does not mean people aren't getting enough to eat. The human body responds in very predictable ways to food consumption - do waistline measurements suggest anyone is lacking food?

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#98

Post by yummyfajitas »

thenomad wrote: post #90
yummyfajitas wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claims are a little surprising, at least from an American perspective. Our various welfare programs are so generous that our poor can (and often do) eat like gluttons. I was under the impression that UK welfare benefits are far more generous than those in the US - is that incorrect? (Full disclosure - I've spent a grand total of 5 days of my life in the UK, most of it in zones 1-2 of London. I know virtually not…

"Our various welfare programs are so generous that our poor can (and often do) eat like gluttons." This statement surprises me, as it contradicts a lot of what I've heard of poverty in the US. Do you have a citation or several I could look at?

I added a couple to the post above. The link with "women" in the title also includes data on men under the data tab. The gist - poor women are more likely to be gluttons than non-poor women, no big difference among men.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#99

Post by ceejayoz »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #71
fpp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agreed - IMHO this article again shows how removed from reality some people are and seemingly nothing is left out to polarise society further (a/k/a the poor are only to stupid - look here they can live a healthy diet on even less). a few thoughts on this article: (1) compare the energy / fat / etc in this article with the rations given to the British people during WWII and shortly afterwards - I estimate the a…

Your claims are a little surprising, at least from an American perspective. Our various welfare programs are so generous that our poor can (and often do) eat like gluttons. I was under the impression that UK welfare benefits are far more generous than those in the US - is that incorrect? (Full disclosure - I've spent a grand total of 5 days of my life in the UK, most of it in zones 1-2 of London. I know virtually not…

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.

Re: How to eat healthily on £1 a day

#100

Post by batemanesque »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #97
takluyver wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is rather political. I think you can probably find something similar in both the UK and the US: some 'poor' people are getting enough money that they can afford to eat a lot of cheap, unhealthy food, while others genuinely struggle to get enough to eat. The difference in money isn't all that much when compared to factors like whether you have children, which area you live in, and which benefits you're getting. T…

At least among children (the only group for which I could find this data, see the citations I added to the post you responded to), this is not correct. The number of poor children who don't get enough to eat is virtually the same as the number of rich children who don't - about 5%. In the last few years, the number of people using foodbanks in the UK has increased dramatically, for instance. This does not mean people…

very much doubt that only 5% of poor children don't get enough to eat. citation?
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