Charlatan

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Apparently, $3.50 a day is what food stamp recipients are expected to be able to feed themselves with. I am sure we could turn this thread into a political thread where we can spout off about "how the MAN keeps us down" or "how people shouldn't suck at the public teet"... I would be fully willing to have that discussion elsewhere.

For this thread, I just want to see if you think you could take this challenge and be successful. Many of you are going to say, "yes!" For those who do, I want to know if you could do it for a longer period of time. A month? A year?


Personally, I know could survive on $25 a week, or at least I could in Canada. Here it would be a little more difficult as food is a lot more expensive here (for example the staple Kraft Dinner is around $4/box here). That said, if you can go native, it's a lot cheaper.

I would stock up on peanut butter for my protein, cheap fruit and vegetables and maybe some ground beef to make some chili or stew.

I could survive but I don't think I would thrive.


What about you?

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kurty[B]

Depends on what condiments I have in the pantry and fridge already.

This also depends on the number of people in the household. For longterm, $50/week is what I know I can pull off for myself. For two, I can pull off $75/week ($37.50 per person). If I had a family of four I would be confident that with $100/week I could feed everyone ($25 per person).

Otherwise, assuming just myself. If I had a full stock of condiments to begin with I could go about a month before I used condiments up and was spending more than $25/week to restock those.

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Cynthetiq

Yes.

And I could be eating out every day and every meal.

$3.50 sliced roast pork/roast duck/roast pig/roast chicken over rice with sauteed cabbage total weight of the food is about 1.5lbs.

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inBOIL

I could do it, but I'd get sick of it very quickly. You can buy rice or beans in bulk, and that can make up the majority of your calories. Add cheap veggies and just enough protein to get by (ground beef might be too expensive for everyday eating) and you can survive for a while. If you can find out when the store usually recieves their food shipments, you might be able to go there the day before and negotiate the price of produce that's about to expire.

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skizziks

I probably could do it. Cabbage, rice, lentils, beans, food "on sale" and coupons would all be an integral part of it.

Jozrael

I couldn't do it . No way in heck. Perhaps it's the cost of living in New Jersey (which is rather high, though not the highest...try Hawaii :P). I guess I'm spoiled? I'd need like 100 a week just for myself . Maybe not quite that much but...25/week? Bajeez...

telekinetic

Beans and rice make a complete protein, eliminating the need for meat. Giant bags of each + crockpot, with miscellaneous veggies and potatoes on the side.

Add cheese and salt for flavor, eat this for dinners with a side of a fruit.

Ramen boiled with Vienna sausages is a 30 or 40 cent lunch, depending on the sale prices.

Oatmeal bought in bulk with a boiled or fried egg for breakfast is under a dollar also.

Should be able to do this for $2-$3 a day.

Jozrael

That alone sounds like $10/day

Willravel

Skizziks has the right idea. These foods are incredibly cheap and redily available anywhere, but most importantly they're filling and get most of their weight from water (which I'm assuming isn't included in the $25). Lentils are extremely high in fiber and have plenty of protein. When combined with other cheap foods that can have other basic vitimans and minerals, you could survive without becoming sick.

If I were to do this, I'd also try and save seeds and try to grow food. Fruits like tomatoes are very easy to grow and grow relatively quickly. They're also very rich in nutrients. Rice, lentils, beans, and tomato along with maybe some pepper from a McDonalds could be dinner for a week.

The biggest problem would be meat. B12 is hard to find outside of meat products, even with the popularity of vegan diets. Milk may seem cheap, but on a budget of $25 it's actually quite expensive. The cheaper meats are probably going to be canned, but they're going to have more preservatives and less nutritional value. The best thing to do might be to get 1 turkey breast on sale and stretch it out over the month by only cooking a quarter of it a week and freezing the rest.

It would be very, very difficult. Even drinking a lot of water, I can imagine being quite hungry often over the month. What scares me, though, is that people forced economically to be on this diet are competing for food deals with other people on this diet. That means that all of the things we're thinking of in here are probably hard to find.

ColonelSpecial

I am one to answer yes to this. I feed my husband and myself on $40-50 per week. Within this is one bulk run a month to Sam's for meat, cheese, etc. Weekly budget spent on vegetables, condiments, etc. We both take simple lunches to our jobs and eat out occasionally. I think I could get it down to $100/month for both of us but it would mean more frozen veggies and less fresh stuff.

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telekinetic

I just got back from Walmart, and there are microwave dinners for $1, and pot pies and burritos for even less than that. I took pictures, uploads pending.

Makedde

I could do it, quite easily, in fact. Just buy in bulk, freeze what you don't need, prepare big meals and freeze what you don't eat. Soups, pastas, bread, etc. It all goes a long way if you buy the right foods.

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Lucifer

Absolutely, in fact the first time I sailed across the Atlantic, it took 34 days, and we fed a crew of 15 on red beans and rice and assorted pasta dishes. It's not enjoyable, but it can be done!

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Martian

I could feed myself on $25 per week. Pasta, beans and rice would be the order of the day.

I'd really prefer not to, though.

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anti fishstick

I suppose I could do it, but I wouldn't want to. And I would probably eat less healthy (not that I eat all that healthy to begin with).

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Stare At The Sun

You could, but it would be the same crap over and over, it wouldn't be healthy, and you wouldn't drink anything other than water or maybe milk.

snowy

I could do it, but I couldn't do it and eat a balanced, healthy diet. And it wouldn't be interesting eating. I require my food to be interesting and tasty. I also prefer variety, which is hard to achieve on a budget.

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little_tippler

My monthly shopping costs about $120. That's eating well and healthy. I think I could do it for $20 less a month anyway. Just cut out the extra junk. But that's Portugal, not the US. Then again, I get less food for my euros than you guys get for your dollars, I think.

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Lucifer

Portugal has gotten really expensive since it joined the EU. I remember when I first went there, a litre of beer was cheaper than a litre of coke. We used to feed a crew of about 12 on 500 Escudo a day (about $3 US then), and pick up a couple of 5 litre jugs of rotgut wine for about $2 each.

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Willravel

Lucifer could live on 25 SOULS A WEEK! MUHAHAHAHA!!!

PonyPotato

You can eat a balanced diet for VERY little money. Something like cabbage, collard greens, lard, beans, lentils, and rice. Balanced diet when it comes to carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Add in a multivitamin and you essentially get everything you need.

(and Crompsin and I spend about $200-$300 a month to feed the two of us, so some months we are right around $25 a week. And we eat quite well.)

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snowy

The point is that I--or anyone else for that matter--shouldn't have to take a multivitamin to reach balance. Additionally, multivitamins can get pricey. Eating cheap lard is disgusting. I suppose I could render my own, but that would take time and is kind of a pain in the ass, plus I'm betting my vegetarian boyfriend wouldn't care much for the inclusion of lard.

Balance is variety. You need to eat a variety of foods to get all the vitamins and minerals you need, and colorful foods besides, not just rice and beans. That is not going to happen on $25/week. I spend upwards of $20 alone on the produce my boyfriend and I use every week at the farmer's market, and it's cheaper to get it there than elsewhere. I wonder what people do when they don't have access to that resource. Yes, you can avoid getting the diseases associated with nutritional deficiency if you supplement, but again, why should we have to? What's wrong with our food supply system and the economics of food in the United States that people have to take vitamins to reach balance on a budget?

And what's wrong with our food that they have to supplement it with vitamins in processing it?

By the way, both Jeffrey Steingarten (The Man Who Ate Everything) and Michael Pollan have very interesting things to say about the state of food in the United States. In the 1990s, Steingarten actually attempted to cook meals according to the food stamp cookbook the USDA had out at the time. Oddly, the USDA put a lot of emphasis on cooking meat in said cookbook, which is expensive, versus embracing a more vegetarian diet, which is cheaper. Pollan makes the point I made above--if you eat a variety of whole foods, mostly plants, you can achieve a healthy, balanced diet. But trying to do so in the modern grocery store is not always feasible or cost-effective, given the prevalence of subsidized corn and soy in processed food products.

Yes, you could survive on rice and beans every day. But I seriously doubt anyone here could actually do it. I freely admit that I couldn't, nor would I want to. Admittedly, my biggest personal expense is food. I love food, and I want to enjoy what I eat. Eating the same thing over and over is not enjoyment of food, and I can't do it--I won't do it.

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Plan9

How bowls of Raisin Bran do I have to eat to get the same nutrition in just one bowl of Total, Yowl? HOW MANY!?

See, I like multivitamins. They keep me from eating 20 lbs of various vegetables / nuts / small children every day. Living in a fast-paced college-commuter balls-to-the-wall culture prevents basic things like eating "balanced" meals. I don't have time to shop for and cook meals that would give me the same nutrition as a couple of peanut butter 'n jelly sand[m]iches, a glass of milk, an apple and a Centrum.

...

If I was doing the hardcore cheap thing... I'd just eat Top Ramen and drink powdered milk and take a multi-vitamin.

My body would totally hate me, but it would survive.

...

This message brought to you by the United States Army: Keeping troops alive for $24 a week.

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PonyPotato

I said nothing about not being able to enjoy your food. I pointed out that you CAN have a balanced diet ("balanced" does not mean variable, perhaps to you, but not nutritionally) for very little money. I pointed out the simplest way of achieving such balanced diet. The point of the thread is to ask if you could feed yourself for $25 a week.

The poor people of this country are often the most overweight. Why? Because they can get "complete" meals via fast food restaurants for a lot less money than they would spend on fruits and veggies at the market. A cheap diet is generally not very enjoyable, but it CAN be complete in reference to your body's absolute needs.

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ASU2003

Yes I have. And a few things have changed, but not too much. It was high in sodium, and the quality of meat wasn't the best (and I lost some weight that I shouldn't have).

Let's see if I can remember what I ate:

$3.00 - 1 bag of Apples (an apple a day for an afternoon snack)
$3.00 - 1 box of crackers
$3.00 - 6 cans of tuna fish
$3.00 - oatmeal or cereal

$2.00 - hot dogs and buns (ketchup and mustard borrowed from fast food places)
$1.00 – chips

$1.00 - can of baked beans
$1.00 - bag of carrots
$2.00 – 1lb of hamburger

$1.50 - bag of potatoes
$1.50 - 12 eggs

$1.00 - 2 yogurts
$2.00 - Gatorade
$0.58 – 2 gallons of water (the water was too bad to drink out of the tap)
-----------
$25.58/week (I sometimes had leftovers and would buy other stuff to mix it up a little, or would spend a little more $5 or so)

$Free - any free food I could get. I would take home whatever extra food I could get.

Grasshopper Green

I've done it before. I could do it again. Granted, now I know what I'd be missing so it would be a lot harder...but I could do it.

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Tully Mars

Sure very easily. But I live in Mexico.

Back in the state I could also, though I might have to drop an elk out of season.

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Jozrael

As a note, most of the things mentioned in that $25 list cost double that here

dlish

if you went local or indian food here, you would get away with it.

it'd be tough living on rice, potatoes and bare necesaties but not impossible.

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Makedde

I know! 12 eggs here would cost around $3, a bag of carrots would cost about the same, hamburger meat would cost about $6 for a pound (half a kilo) - if I bought all of that, it'd cost me almost $100.

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Shagg

If you have the time to actually cook, it isn't too difficult. Also easier to plan for a month than just a week at a time. Watching sales is a big help.

Just an example here, I got 2 tri-tip roasts with a total weight of five and a half pounds for 17 bucks on Friday (sale price). If I was just cooking for myself, I could probably get 6 (or more) very tasty sandwiches out of a single roast. I love this cut of meat and I eat it all the time, many people don't like it because they don't know how to cook it.

Whole chicken is something else that's cheap. Roast a chicken, save the carcass for making chicken stock. Make a big batch of chicken stock and freeze it, use as needed.

Basic spices are cheap, garlic at 40 cents a bulb, onion is usually inexpensive. If you have space for a couple of plants, rosemary and basil are simple to grow. A bulk size container of coarse ground pepper set me back all of 6 bucks last week and is easily enough to last me a year or more.

Most of the staples are pretty reasonable. Rice, beans, flour, corn meal, potatos. Butter and margarine can be reasonably expensive, but you don't necessarily need to buy it every week.

Living on an average of $25 a week isn't difficult, but it does take time and planning. If you work 40 hours a week and are willing to give up a decent chunk of a day to cooking, you should have no problem. If you have say... a family of 4, one provider, stay at home parent and 2 kids; having 400 bucks for the monthly food expenses can allow the family to eat reasonably well. Problem is, you have to work at it, most people are not willing to invest the time to learn how to cook. They would rather watch tv or hang with friends. You will need to spend a significant amount of time in the kitchen to make it work.

I will say that it is damn near impossible to conveniently eat for 25 bucks a week. My food bill is probably my single highest expense, but it's from choice not necessity. I frequently plan meals a couple hours before I am about to cook and end up spending more than if I would have planned in advance, fortunately I am well enough off that I am able to do this. In years past when I wasn't so fortunate, I put a lot more care into my shopping and was still able to really enjoy food.

Having a couple of really good cookbooks also helps big time. How to Cook Everything and the New Homes Cookbook are 2 of the best cookbooks ever written. They have tons of simple recipes with clear, easy to follow instructions.