<story><title>Eating Healthily for $3 a Day</title><url>http://www.miketuritzin.com/writing/eating-healthily-for-3-a-day/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mmaunder</author><text>My wife and I tried to do this recently on $1.70 per person per day. We didn&apos;t last our intended 28 days. A few observations we found:&lt;p&gt;Meat and organic food was too expensive.&lt;p&gt;Fruit is crazy expensive so we bought OJ from concentrate with no additives as a cheap source of Vitamin C.&lt;p&gt;Eggs were are very expensive, but we needed the protein and nutrients, so rationed ourselves to 3 each per week.&lt;p&gt;We had to remove all sugar to save on cost and sugar crashed badly.&lt;p&gt;We decided that Costco was cheating due to the $70 membership fee and so we alternated between Safeway and Walmart.&lt;p&gt;You quickly learn the difference between broccoli florets and stems. [Stems are cheaper]&lt;p&gt;Baking your own bread is incredibly cheap and if you&apos;re using a sourdough starter you just need flour, salt and water. It&apos;s a great staple and adds taste to the meal. I scraped the unused flour off the work bench and dumped it back in the sourdough starter to save on cost.&lt;p&gt;Lentils are the most complete non-meat protein source.&lt;p&gt;Combining beans and rice give you a complete protein.&lt;p&gt;Cheese is too expensive and you can&apos;t make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk. It just doesn&apos;t set when you add the rennet.&lt;p&gt;You can buy coffee for $1 for a months worth of ground coffee at walmart. It&apos;s called Master Chef and it tastes like a used catbox.&lt;p&gt;Before we did our experiment we found a few &quot;living on a dollar a day&quot; blogs, but every single one bought in bulk and then calculated the cost of each scoop they took out of the bin. They also didn&apos;t care about nutritional completeness and basically starved themselves for the period.&lt;p&gt;After trying to do this on $1.70 and failing, I think Mike&apos;s budget of $3 is probably a realistic per person budget if you&apos;re going to stay healthy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>danssig</author><text>Good lord, is the point of this kind of thing to see how much money you can move from your food budget into your health care budget?&lt;p&gt;Of all the places to save money, food is the absolute last on my list.</text></comment>
<story><title>Eating Healthily for $3 a Day</title><url>http://www.miketuritzin.com/writing/eating-healthily-for-3-a-day/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mmaunder</author><text>My wife and I tried to do this recently on $1.70 per person per day. We didn&apos;t last our intended 28 days. A few observations we found:&lt;p&gt;Meat and organic food was too expensive.&lt;p&gt;Fruit is crazy expensive so we bought OJ from concentrate with no additives as a cheap source of Vitamin C.&lt;p&gt;Eggs were are very expensive, but we needed the protein and nutrients, so rationed ourselves to 3 each per week.&lt;p&gt;We had to remove all sugar to save on cost and sugar crashed badly.&lt;p&gt;We decided that Costco was cheating due to the $70 membership fee and so we alternated between Safeway and Walmart.&lt;p&gt;You quickly learn the difference between broccoli florets and stems. [Stems are cheaper]&lt;p&gt;Baking your own bread is incredibly cheap and if you&apos;re using a sourdough starter you just need flour, salt and water. It&apos;s a great staple and adds taste to the meal. I scraped the unused flour off the work bench and dumped it back in the sourdough starter to save on cost.&lt;p&gt;Lentils are the most complete non-meat protein source.&lt;p&gt;Combining beans and rice give you a complete protein.&lt;p&gt;Cheese is too expensive and you can&apos;t make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk. It just doesn&apos;t set when you add the rennet.&lt;p&gt;You can buy coffee for $1 for a months worth of ground coffee at walmart. It&apos;s called Master Chef and it tastes like a used catbox.&lt;p&gt;Before we did our experiment we found a few &quot;living on a dollar a day&quot; blogs, but every single one bought in bulk and then calculated the cost of each scoop they took out of the bin. They also didn&apos;t care about nutritional completeness and basically starved themselves for the period.&lt;p&gt;After trying to do this on $1.70 and failing, I think Mike&apos;s budget of $3 is probably a realistic per person budget if you&apos;re going to stay healthy.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dilap</author><text>I&apos;m surprised you found eggs to be expensive. Where I&apos;m at (Eugene, OR), you can find eggs for $7 for 5 dozen -- an incredible deal per nutrient dollar, even on your extreme budget. (This is at the Red Apple, if any Eugene locals are curious.)</text></comment>