Economics of Eating: No Hunger on 50 cents per day!

Depends on how much land you have, and how much you are willing to farm.

Soup can be made in many different forms, and it can be made over and over. You just have to have the right ingredients, to start, and some of the left over soup can be made into casseroles. Bullion cubes or grains help with the flavor, and spices. You can make fried bread to eat with it, that is just self rising flour and water, made thin enough to pour in a oiled pan small amounts at a time. They look some what like a pancakes, you brown them on both sides.

Dry beans can also be very cheap you can make good soup with them or eat as they are when cooked. You can and rice, tomatoes and garlic, onions to most beans. Pinto beans are the best they taste better, after you reheat them the next day and the next.

If you want cheap meat, try liver. At our fast food chicken joints they sell breaded chicken livers. I can get 4 for 25 cents. Sometimes I buy them for my cat as well. He loves them, and it is cheaper than cat food. It's even less expensive if I buy them at the supermarket and cook them myself.

Cheap protein = Liver, eggs, dried beans, and milk.

I think that is the only protein you can afford if you want to try to get by on $15 a month.

Rice and oatmeal are your cheap grains. Noodles would work into your budget as well but I doubt you would be able to afford sauces and seasonings to go with them. So you could afford spaghetti but not spaghetti sauce.

I don't know what fruits and vegetables are cheap in the USA. Here it is bananas, papayas, potatoes, onions, and peppers that are cheap. I could easily buy a month's worth of the above produce for $5.

For cheap fats, the only things I can think of are vegetable oil and margarine. There are others that are cheap as well, like peanut butter, but it's not cheap enough to make your budget.

If you want cheap meat, try liver. At our fast food chicken joints they sell breaded chicken livers. I can get 4 for 25 cents. Sometimes I buy them for my cat as well. He loves them, and it is cheaper than cat food. It's even less expensive if I buy them at the supermarket and cook them myself.

Cheap protein = Liver, eggs, dried beans, and milk.

I think that is the only protein you can afford if you want to try to get by on $15 a month.

Rice and oatmeal are your cheap grains. Noodles would work into your budget as well but I doubt you would be able to afford sauces and seasonings to go with them. So you could afford spaghetti but not spaghetti sauce.

I don't know what fruits and vegetables are cheap in the USA. Here it is bananas, papayas, potatoes, onions, and peppers that are cheap. I could easily buy a month's worth of the above produce for $5.

For cheap fats, the only things I can think of are vegetable oil and margarine. There are others that are cheap as well, like peanut butter, but it's not cheap enough to make your budget.
-------------------------------------

I think that some food prices are higher here than there. There are no fruits or vegetables (that I have found so far) that you can buy from a store that will work in. (Thank goodness for the garden!)

Eggs are too pricey for common use, if I am to get enough calories per day. (And I have egg laying chickens. Even the price of their keep makes the unit price of eggs to expensive, though less so if they were truly free range birds, but so far they are not.

That is for common use with the needed caloric level, by the way, otherwise they run about five cents per egg. (Which has about 70 calories or so.)

You are right about the peanut butter!

I have managed some bean/grain combining for protein. So far so good on that. (of course you get a long while before lack of protein harms you overly, if you are an adult already.

My biggest worry is vitamin C. Still some of the garden fruit should help with that a little. Tomato's have some for instance.

* It is FAR cheaper for me to make the noodles myself than buy them ready made.

**I too am at a lose as to sauce, but perhaps something herb based? Oil and Rosemary lets say? Or Basil?

I will have to try and figure that one out!

Thank you for your suggestions and input, I would like to here more about what the food prices are there for comparison, if you get the time?

2000 calories is too many, you should be able to get by on 1200-1500 (admit it, you're probably overweight anyway).

I'm thinking lots of rice & beans. And don't ignore restaurant dumpsters...

Just because I may try this in a couple days, has anyone here ever tried an oil and vinegar sauce for noodles? I can add spices if I am careful, and it will be cheap enough. (Vinegar is cheap, but has no discernible calories.)

If so, how did it taste? OK? Bad? (I pretty much will have to eat it, even if it bombs, so research before hand seems like a good idea!)

Thanks for the info.

I used a little olive oil mixed with balsamic vinegar (the
cheap version) and really liked it on the Raman noodles.

Dress nice and hang out in funeral homes

This is BS. There is no way to survive on .50 per day unless you jackasses are eating Ramen noodles everyday. I won't eat that crap again. That is for college punks, I'm old and I need a damn steak like god intended.

Then go out and kill a deer like god intended.
I do, they taste great. And do it for less than 50 cents per day.

You must use cheap bullets and be an expert marksman.

This is BS. There is no way to survive on .50 per day unless you jackasses are eating Ramen noodles everyday. I won't eat that crap again. That is for college punks, I'm old and I need a damn steak like god intended.

Then go out and kill a deer like god intended.
I do, they taste great. And do it for less than 50 cents per day.

You must use cheap bullets and be an expert marksman.

Dude, he's not eating a deer a day.

My balsamic vinegar turned into alcohol. Kind of ruined now. It's what I get for trying to tough things out and help the environment! :)

I didn't know it could even do that. I thought it was the
other way around and you have wine turning into vinegar and
losing it's alcohol content. I don't know much about vinegar
(other than I love balsamic and even got to try the real
expensive stuff once) but I did take some aged stuff out of
a cupboard where it's gotten hot quite a few times already
since put it there. Aged, but not terribly expensive and
it will be a few more weeks before I open it. I hope it's
not ruined. I'll be pissed.

Catfish in a barrel, and more...
[link to www.freewebs.com]

And those "flavor packs" are loaded with MSG. Not good stuff.

I never use those anyway. Too bad you can't just buy plain
Raman and save some money by not including those packs.

Dumpster diving.

I used to have a job at a local zoo in the summer (college daze) and we would get a weekly truck load of meat and food stuffs from the local supermarket.

Some we could use, the rest was trash.

There was all sorts of canned and prepared foods, pastas, breads etc that went in the trash because of the best before date.

So they gave this stuff to the zoo, and the meat, eggs and fruit and veggies were welcome, but the rest could have gone to a homeless shelter and they would have had good food.

I notice that supermarkets padlock their bins.

Why?

So poor and desperate people won't get the food for free.

I don't think I could eat on $.50 a day. My cats' food is about $.50 a day EACH!
I could do $.50 for breakfast and lunch, but not for dinner, since I eat chicken and turkey.

Have you considered pesto? It's a herb & oil mixture you put on pasta. Many Pesto recipes have parmesan cheese. I leave the cheese out and it tastes very good.

Tomato Bruschetta is something else you might like to try, since you have fresh tomatoes. Bruschetta can be eaten on bread or pasta noodles.
It is something like salsa.

[link to www.food.com]


Good luck with your experiment OP. I would lose weight eating what you are everyday.