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$1 a day for food for 30 days. Can you do it?

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There are plenty of ways to do this. In fact I plan on doing something similar in some upcoming month.
Things like rice, pasta, beans, flour, oil have calories/dollar of greater than 2000/$1. If you buy in bulk you could easily get more than 30 days of calories for $30, with the left over money, buy some "premium" foods like fruits to balance your diet a bit. You can eat pretty well for that amount if you are willing to work.

I did a bicycling trip across the county and I basically ate 1lb of pasta +sauce, half a loaf of bread and peanut butter/jelly each day. Spent more than $30 for the 24 days, but it wasn't too terribly much more than that
 
Depends...how much planning do I get? I could load up on vegetable seeds and get a nice garden growing for $10-$15. Supplement that with some bulk rice and a lot of fish caught from a $15 fishing license and it's doable.

If I had to start doing it tomorrow it wouldn't be fun, easy, or even remotely healthy.
 
Do you get to spend the full $30 upfront? Or is it you only get $1 each day.

B/c the former would be possible, while the latter would be very very near impossible to do.
 
can you prorate seasonings? they'd easily blow your budget if you have to keep them in the one month, but usually a bottle or jar will last several months.
 
I once ate Ramen straight for a month (with a few eggs dropped in every now and again). I was very low on money. So yes, I could. Would I again (by choice)? No.
 
ElFenix said:
can you prorate seasonings? they'd easily blow your budget if you have to keep them in the one month, but usually a bottle or jar will last several months.
Click to expand...

It's other required ingredients too.

Bread is cheap to make...by volume. But expensive if you want to make one loaf. You need baking soda and baking powder but those can run $3-$4 if you had to buy them new...but they can last you months worth of cooking. Same with stuff like vanilla and honey.

If you also knew where to score good deals (bakery outlets and quickly expiring milk for cheap) you could expand your options more.
 
I'd be self sufficient and pull it off easily. Nobody here grows plants or keeps animals? Shit, I'd grab 3 rounds of 12ga that I load up for about $0.30 and take a deer. That's food for a month.
 
It wouldn't be healthy and would get boring fast. But yeah I think I could survive. Lots and lots of Mac and Cheese and instant Ramen bowls!
 
Here? No problem. The homeless guys panhandle outside the Starbucks. You buy them a coffee on a cold day and they say they only drink lattes.

I think you could do this. It'd be rough in the early going, but by the end it wouldn't be so bad.

I think the trick is to go with seeds. Pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds (shelled) are so intensely packed with calories it isn't even funny. I just bought a bag of sunflower seeds and a cup of the things have about 900 calories. It cost less than a dollar, and that was at the fancy organic store.

I'd probably save the $2 on the first 2 days and go with just water. Survivorman tells me this is doable. After this, I'd spend $3 on the biggest bag of sunflower seeds (shelled) that I could. That would probably last me about a week. I'd spend the accruing money on a piece of fruit a day, and add in a vegetable here and there, making sure that I was able to buy another big bag of seeds/nuts when the sunflowers ran out.
 
If you exclude the cost of water and multivitamins yes, anyone could do it.

Oatmeal, beans, and pasta are all cheap and will keep you alive and relatively full.. However they offer almost no vitamins.
 
It's doable in China and other parts of asia for sure. Ever heard of people going there testifying "I feel like I'm living as a king."

Not in the US or modernized Europe I would imagine.
 
TwinsenTacquito said:
I'd be self sufficient and pull it off easily. Nobody here grows plants or keeps animals? Shit, I'd grab 3 rounds of 12ga that I load up for about $0.30 and take a deer. That's food for a month.
Click to expand...
If a deer only lasts you a month, you either eat a lot of meat or you are shooting babies.

Any decent sized deer should provide 70+ lbs of meat.. that would last you at least a couple months.
 
I'd have a hard time lasting a single day spending just $1 on food. 30 days of that would be out of the question.
 
I've been dirt poor before. I think we came pretty close to that. $40 a week for 3 people is $1.33 a person a day.
 
gaidensensei said:
It's doable in China and other parts of asia for sure. Ever heard of people going there testifying "I feel like I'm living as a king."
Click to expand...

It's really about sustainable living too. If you had the land to support it, you could easily grow enough fruit and vegetables and have enough livestock on hand to keep you fed for next to nothing. Many of us don't have room for a henhouse, pasture or a large garden so we pay a convenience fee for somebody else to do it for us.
 
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