
How to eat healthily on £1 a day - xSwag
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22263706
======
shubb
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 important because there are opportunities for free meals (e.g. if
customers at work do not eat all the sand witches and biscuits, that can be
lunch for 2 days). Friends invite you for dinner too. If you buy food that
spoils, opportunities like this come at a price.

How about this for a suggestion - mix lentils, buck wheat, brown rice, dried
beans, quinoa. These come in 500g bags for about a pound. You need 6 spoons of
this mix per meal, so 10 pounds of mix will last you several months. Put in a
rice cooker for 40 min (some beans need soaking first), with a chicken stock
cube. Cook for 20 mins then add mixed frozen veg. This will cost you about 30p
per meal, and is pretty much complete [1].

I eat the above most of the time, and take free food whenever possible. At the
end of the week, I treat myself to a ready meal. You can add curry spice or
other herbs for variety. After a year of this I feel pretty healthy.

As an aside, supermarkets are machines for making you overbuy. Between BOGOF
offers and big packs of meat (or small ones at a huge premium), it's very hard
to shop there on a budget because they are designed to trick you into making
'bad' choices. Avoiding them by living on a non-spoiling diet saves tons.

[1] I think. The key to a healthy diet is variety, but if your basic meal is
healthy and cheap, you can make sure to be eating other things from time to
time.

~~~
fpp
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
article's diet is even below those and nobody would ever dare to deny those
enduring that time lived in abundance or a healthy diet.

(2) one more _"... live on xxx £ for a few days"_ \- Hypocrites, a few days
does not make a difference. You can easily live on a few sugar cubes & apples
(plus water) for 10 or more days. Most people would not feel different after
that, and in our obese societies some even pay thousands of £s for such a
minimal diet to loose some weight. The difference comes from 2-3 months or a
year. When you're actually poor like many in the UK - being in such a
situation (for indefinitely or until you win the lottery - about the same)
adds a massive psychological toll on top that should not be underestimated.
Hint to understand: If I tell you at the beginning of a 2 months software
development task that all code you're going to write during these 2 months
will be dumped unseen, ask yourself how much of a great coder you will be - so
much about motivation and psychological toll.

(3) it is generally no fun to be poor even if some tell you otherwise - you're
excluded from society, constantly humiliated and shown that you're worth
nothing. This is even worse if you have children.

(4) With the changes in the social systems during the last decade(s) in Europe
there is almost no chance to get out of this situation by yourself
particularly if you're over 50 or have been unemployed longer than 2 years.
And you get there much quicker than any politician would publicly admit. If
you're self-employed, a few people not paying their bills, a few new contracts
not signed - bang you're there.

There is a petition running at change.org that already more than 475'000 Brits
have signed to asked bigmouth IDS (work & pensions secretary) who claimed he
could easily live on £7 a day to actually do it and do it for longer than a
few days - sign it to at least show you disregards with these politics (
[http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-
iain...](http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/iain-duncan-smith-iain-duncan-
smith-to-live-on-53-a-week) ).

~~~
yummyfajitas
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 nothing about your
situation, which is why I'm asking.)

[edit: citation on poverty and gluttony. I'm surprised that this is still a
controversial fact.

<http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/whusa11/hstat/hshi/pages/210oo.html>
<http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa11/hstat/hsa/pages/221oo.html> ]

~~~
takluyver
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.

The right uses the former group to claim that welfare programs are overly
generous, and can be scaled back. The left uses the latter group to claim that
the safety net is barely adequate, and should be strengthened. I'm more
inclined to agree with the left; I'd rather the safety net was a bit too cushy
for some than that people went hungry. In the last few years, the number of
people using foodbanks in the UK has increased dramatically, for instance.

Of course, politicians regularly try to tweak welfare to reduce both extremes.
But reality is too complex, and you always end up with some people not getting
enough while others get more than they need.

~~~
yummyfajitas
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?

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

~~~
csense
Government definitions of "poor" don't necessarily equate to what you and I
would call "poor," due to politics (basically, getting more people identified
"poor" helps you get votes if you're the party perceived as better able to
help the poor, and in the US one party has dominated the poverty issue and
used this strategy for a number of decades).

For example, someone I knew in high school (a number of years ago now)
qualified for the school lunch program, so nominally his family was poor. But
they lived in a house, with a yard; had cable TV, computers, and Internet. I
would say they're working-class, or maybe even lower middle-class.

If the lowest-income 20% of the population is labeled as poor for the purposes
of this statistic ("nominal poor"), but the number of people who are so poor
their children are starving in the streets ("desperately poor") is 0.20% of
the population, then it's not so surprising that statistics over the nominal
poor much more closely resemble the general population than the picture of the
desperately poor.

~~~
lotharbot
During my teen years, my dad made a pretty good software engineer salary, and
we lived in a paid off house with a big yard and lots of computers. But with 8
children (and the associated tax exemptions) and substantial charitable
donations, we often had net taxable income that was well below various
"poverty" thresholds.

~~~
Evbn
Income is a poor approximation of wealth, indeed.

------
shanev
This article should be renamed "How to sustain yourself on £1 a day". It's
amazing how the word "healthy" can mean different things based on your
knowledge of nutrition. This article is a perfect example of someone whose
nutritional knowledge involves skimming some articles in popular media that
are laden with grain and sugar industry advertisements. It's more a recipe for
getting diabetes, not being healthy.

Biscuits and margarine are certainly not healthy. On one hand you have a high
glycemic, gluten-laden processed food that turns into sugar as soon as you eat
it. Then you have a highly inflammatory industrial vegetable/seed oil with a
very poor fat profile.

Better options are to shop at farmers markets, grow your own garden, get bulk
stuff from Costco, buy cheaper cuts of meat and braise them, ferment your own
veges, and make bone broth.

Good health rarely comes from a package in a supermarket. The only packaged
items I buy are ghee, coconut oil, butter, and canned wild sardines.

------
jkat
As a bad but persistent cook, I'm convinced eating healthy is generally
cheaper. A lot of the healthier food I eat is cheap: legumes, [sweet] potatoes
and other root vegetables, broccoli, bananas, oranges, water, eggs, oats,
frozen vegetables (spinach!), brown rice, tomatoes (canned if not locally
cheap). I think people intentionally mix up expensive with more work...

~~~
Thrall
I agree. Local seasonal veg from a good greengrocer or market is cheap and
healthy.

~~~
solnyshok
depends on the part of the world where you live in. In Latvia where I live,
tomatoes grow in July/August. The rest of the year we can have Spanish
tomatoes at 3-5$/kg or locally grown in a heated greenhouse, at $10/kg

------
SoftwareMaven
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...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial-
Science/dp/1400033462/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367083033&sr=8-1&keywords=good+calories+bad+calories)

2\. There are some exceptions, of course, but surprisingly few.

~~~
Dove
_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. :)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
It all sounds great until you think about how much they actually spent. It's
more like "How to eat healthily on £1 worth of food per day, but spending a
lot more because you aren't eating the majority of the food you have bought,
which cost a lot more than just £7".

------
elmuchoprez
This reminds me of a project I did in November of 2006 when I decided to eat
for $1/day for the month. The whole thing is chronicled here:
<http://www.hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/>

I wouldn't say what I did was exactly healthy though.

~~~
GigabyteCoin
In the bbc article the woman's diet for day one consisted of:

Breakfast:

\- one piece of toast and margarine (6p - cost of tea)

\- one cup of tea (6p - cost of toast - cost of margarine)

\- one "unethical" egg (8.7p)

Lunch:

\- one ham sandwhich, presumably just bread and ham (29p)

Snack:

\- one "value" scone with jam (6p)

\- one apple (free?)

Dinner: (37p combined, I imagine there are some more "free" ingredients in
here)

\- 1/4 zucchini

\- 1/4 bell pepper

\- 35g bacon

\- 100g spaghetti

\- 50g peas

\- 10g "value" brie cheese

\- 1 clove of garlic

Apart from some lemon juice and spices she added to her dinner, that's about
it.

What I consider to be a scone costs about $1 alone where I live here in
Canada. I would be a bit worried to eat one that cost over 10x less and the
seller was still able to make a profit.

I remember paying ~$4 for an apple once when visiting France. Brian got his
for free somehow. Perhaps he has a tree in his backyard.

Not to mention the massive overhead costs involved here with the fact that he
could easily boil water to cook his spaghetti and a nice knife and cutting
board which allowed him to make his sandwhiches. Plus a fridge to keep those
remaining 29 unethical eggs in.

At the very least, it's a good read to get people thinking about efficiency.

~~~
rgbrenner
So I wasn't the only one that noticed the free apple... Around here a single
apple is $0.50-$1 depending on the size. I too can eat for less than a dollar
by simply not counting the expensive parts.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Perhaps she scrumped it?

------
frou_dh
Bread, jam and biscuits is "healthy"?

The ridiculous dietary-fat-fearing, obsessed-with-fruit Food Pyramid looms
large in this article.

------
gnosis
Here[1] is a similar experiment, which initially started with a $1 per day
budget for 30 days.

 _"Here are the rules:_

    
    
      1. All food consumed each day must total $1 for each of us.
    
      2. We cannot accept free food or “donated” food unless it is
         available for everyone in our area. (i.e. foraging, samples in
         stores, dumpster diving)
    
      3. Any food we plant, we pay for.
    
      4. We will do our best to cook a variety of meals; ramen noodles
         can only be prepared if there is no other way to stay under one
         dollar. (We have six packages and will buy no more)
    
      5. Should we decide to have guests over for dinner they must eat
         from our share; meaning they don’t get to eat their own dollar’s
         worth of food.
    

_"Each day one of us will post an entry here with a photo that details how
things are going..."_

[1] - [http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/it-
star...](http://onedollardietproject.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/it-starts-
today/)

~~~
tracker1
When I was 19, I spent about six months pretty much eating ramen, rice, and
apples... It sucked a lot.

------
peripetylabs
I've always disliked the perception that poor people necessarily eat poorly.
Rice, wheat, barley, oats, beans, and root vegetables are grown in abundance
in developed countries and so are inexpensive; they do not spoil quickly; and
are very healthy. Most vegetables will keep for weeks in a refrigerator and
months in a freezer. Sardines (fresh) and eggs provide much better protein
than meat.

I think the cost of "healthy food" is mostly rooted in ignorance and a taste
for simple sugars:

 _"For a Brit, there can be no greater comfort food than a custard cream."_

There's your problem.

------
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.

------
dobbsbob
A loaf of bread where I live is $4. Blew his daily budget with one purchase.
Cant buy single eggs even from a local farmers market here so thats another
$4-6. Cheese is probably the most expensive item at $10. If you bought
everything this guy ate youre looking at $60 or so and it will last about 5
days, which is 7gbp per day. Must be cheap food in the UK

~~~
cbhl
The trick to the author's math is this:

A loaf of bread has, say, 24 slices in it. If you ate two of them, then the
cost of bread was that day $0.34, when you amortize the loaf of bread over
twelve days. If you can find a $2 loaf of bread with 24 slices, it's only
about $0.08 for a slice of bread.

But yes, I agree -- if you actually had to maintain this budget, you'd
probably buy one kind of breakfast, lunch, and dinner and eat it every day for
a week.

~~~
EliRivers
Here's a loaf from Tesco for fifty pence (seventy-seven US cents). Looks like
twenty or so slices, so call it 2.5 pence per slice; about four cents a slice.

<http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=262358089>

As I recall, however, you have to be quick. The cheapest bread tends to vanish
from the shelves within minutes of being put out.

~~~
xyzzy123
Also, you have to pretty much vacuum seal them yourself to stop them going off
in 3 days.

------
agilebyte
Red peppers, bacon, brie, Greek yoghurt? This woman is living!

Where are the old days of baked beans on toast and either oatmeal with salt or
sugar?

------
yesplorer
I see some of these posts as more of experimental (just like the motive of the
5000 Brits) than practical. You don't eat solely to sustain yourself or avoid
hunger. Enjoying the food and being comfortable with whatever you are eating
really counts as well..

 _"But when it is your way of life, and you haven't got any choice over it,
it's not a fun experiment."_

------
bshastry
Here's a more realistic experiment about being poor (in India):
[http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/barefoo...](http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/barefoot-
the-other-side-of-life/article2882340.ece)

Appendix: Rs. = Indian rupee; 1 USD ~ 55 Indian rupees

------
wklauss
I see a lot of anger in the comments, some of them questioning the
practicality of it or the actual approach you'd use if money was an issue in
your household.

The BBC didn't do this in order to educate people on how to eat cheap. This is
just a flashy piece intended to provoke the "oh look how easy is to make
something cheap look nice and healthy" reaction.

In that sense its similar to the "deconstructed McDonalds meals" by famous
chefs or the "how to substitute x by y and make your children eat y" ones. No
one who has to leave on £1 a day will look here for practical advice and
discussing the practicality of it is, therefore, pointless.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _No one who has to l[i]ve on £1 a day will look here for practical advice
> and discussing the practicality of it is, therefore, pointless._ //

If it was actual advice on that then yes I would have found that useful.

The BBC should be doing better than this sort of Broadsheet newspaper piece -
they're probably employing poor people, perhaps they should have spoken to
some of them about it.

------
ctdonath
It's a fun exercise. I do the "A Buck A Plate" blog
<http://abuckaplate.blogspot.com>

------
captainbenises
Why is this on hacker news, I don't get it - most readers here would earn a
decent wage - what's the interest in super cheap eating. Is it because people
want to self-fund their projects and live as cheaply as possible while doing
so?

------
cncool
I did the math before to see how cheap I could live on a slight deficit and I
got $2.00 CAD for 2000 calories (about 75 grams of fat, 200 carbs and 125
grams of protein)

------
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.

------
yoster
The easiest way for everyone to save money is to cut fastfood out of the
picture. Another way is to invite friends over for Friday night instead of
drinking at the bar. Personally, I went through a period where I got lazy and
worked sporadically for a year, and only worked to pay bills and survive. Life
was honestly pretty crappy that year looking back on it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _The easiest way for everyone to save money is to cut fastfood out of the
> picture._ //

That's not going to work for _everyone_.

