It's over... for now...

It’s Saturday morning and I’m writing this over a nice cup of coffee accompanying Marmite and egg on toast. It feels pretty decadent to be eating a meal I have no idea of the cost of.

My week of ‘Living Below the Line’ is over, so what have I learned?
It certainly seems to be possible to get enough to eat on a pound a day. I wasn’t really any hungrier than I am usually before a meal, at any time. However I did lose about two pounds over the five days, so my suspicion that I wasn’t getting enough calories seems to be correct. I’m also painfully aware that it was possible to live on a fiver for food over this time because in reality I have access to more money than this.

The cheap ‘value’ products came from an out of town Tesco, which I drove to – at a non-negligible cost given the budget and the cost of petrol (approximately two pounds, I think). My local co-op, which I could walk to, doesn’t offer this sort of bargain-basement ‘value’ stuff. I bought in bulk, meaning I had to have the assets to pay upfront. And I had a refrigerator, running on electricity, to preserve the perishable goods I bought.

It had an impact on my social interactions, in that I was unable to meet friends and colleagues for coffee or go down the pub, without feeling I was drawing attention to myself.

Over a longer period, or with more people grouped together to share food, it might have been possible to have a more varied diet – I couldn’t buy veg in small enough quantities for my budget and so I was getting at best three portions of fruit and veg a day. Even so, over the long term I think it would have been difficult to get enough vitamins and minerals. It’d be interesting to do a more detailed study. I have certainly also consumed a huge amount of refined starchy foods.

However, for me it has certainly been a very worthwhile exercise, and not just because of the money I have raised, thanks to the generosity of my friends, family, and colleagues. It’s got me to genuinely think about what it’s like to be very poor, both in this country and abroad. And whilst the money was very welcome and very necessary, this was what it was really all about for me. So I’m planning not to finish this exercise at all, but to have a ‘pound a day’ day once a month from now on. If I come up with any better recipes… I’ll post them…. J

Nearly at the finishing line...

Today is Friday - pub night. Normally if I was on a health kick and not wanting to drink I'd drink fizzy water but there's no way my budget stretches to that. Besides which, it feels like the extravagance to end all extravagances after this week. So rather than sit selfconsciously with a glass of tap water I'd decided to stay in. However my dear friends have adjourned to someone's house, so it looks like I'll be sitting slightly less selfconsciously with a glass of tap water round at a friend's. Thanks girls :)

It's the last day, and I'm already promising myself what I'm going to have for breakfast tomorrow... I even managed to burn my porridge Goldilocks-style this morning, so I feel I've earned it!

More tomorrow...

Three pounds twenty-five

Today I woke up and put my back out. I spent the first hour of the day lying on the floor trying to find a comfortable position before finally going out and buying some ibuprofen - which really helped.

 

£3.25

 

That's what my painkillers cost - just over three days' food allowance. Four days in, that's how I've taken to measuring everything, and it's really sobering to look at things in those terms. Go hungry, or treat the pain. I'm lucky that I genuinely can't imagine what it must be like to make those choices.

 

On more mundane matters, I'm pretty sick of my diet of rice, pasta, lentils and porridge. I don't eat meat anyway, so that's no loss, but the sheer repetitiveness borne out of having to buy in bulk to achieve the price point means my diet is not exciting. By far my worst meal of the three is lunch - pasta, special offer 'greek style' cheese, and chives and marjoram from the garden. I'm no fan of pasta salad at the best of times and it's not improved that the budget doesn't stretch to any dressing. Here it is... as photogenic as I could make it.....

 

 

 

Next year I will have to make more effort to work vegetables into the menu!

 

 

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-what-is-extreme-poverty



The Half-Way Point...

I'm now half way through the challenge and I'm still, if I'm honest, not really feeling that hungry. However I am feeling other effects - slightly headachy (missing my morning coffee?) and not a little woolly-headed - concentration has been an issue. It could be coincidence, but at the moment I'm putting it down to lack of nutrients. I am, however, drinking a lot of water, which has to be good for me.

Of course, the challenge doesn't include water - to really be an authentic taste of how those in extreme poverty live, I'd likely have to walk some way to fetch water, perhaps of dubious quality. Instead I get to open a tap in the wall, and know it's safe. For me this is perhaps our greatest luxury.

I have a friend coming round later. Usually we crack open a bottle of wine but tonight she's agreed to join me on the water diet. I've put a jugful in the fridge, to make it more palatable, an option which I'm guessing none of the 1.2 billion who live in extreme poverty have...

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-what-is-extreme-poverty

Day 2

Two days in and I'm getting into a routine. Living alone, I don't normally cook much but each meal has needed careful preparation and measurement to eke out my ingredients over a week. Slightly to my surprise, hunger hasn't been an issue, mostly because I've chosen to spend my money on bulky goods like rice, pasta and oats - and as far as the pasta and oats goes, I honestly can't tell the difference from the 'branded' items I would usually buy (but no more...).

What would be an issue though, over the long term, is the nutritional value of what I'm eating. I've calculated I'm getting 1300-1400 calories a day, if the values on the backs of the packets are in any way accurate, compared to the recommended 2000 calories a day for an adult woman. So you might say I'm on a Reverse-Atkins diet. I weighed myself at the start of the week (10st 5lb) and I'll be interested to see if I lose any weight. A couple of people have already asked for my recipe 'book' (it's a sheet of paper, folks!). I sit at a desk all day so this isn't an issue over the short term, but I'm thinking there are hundreds of millions of folk all over the world that do manual work on this kind of diet.

I'm also getting nothing green, save a few chives and marjoram cut from the garden (free!). I'm certainly not getting 'five a day', but with lentils, tomatoes, oats and onions I'm hoping I'm getting a reasonable variety of vitamins.

Here's my dinner tonight: lentils, tomatoes and onion flavoured with garlic and curry powder and served with bargain-priced rice. At 59p it has to be my main meal, but was surprisingly tasty....

 

 

 

 

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-what-is-extreme-poverty

The preparation....

So, I've signed up for the 'Live Below The Line' challenge, mostly as a personal challenge, to see what it feels like to be among the poorest 1.4 billion (yes, billion) in the world. There's always a financial side to these things though, and my friends, family, and colleagues have been extremely generous in support both monetary (to UNICEF) and moral. I'm hoping their support is matched by their good memories from tomorrow, when the challenge starts, and I don't have to stump up the willpower to turn down too many coffees and treats...

The challenge is all about walking a few days in the shoes of those who can only afford to live on what you can buy in the US for one dollar and 25c each day, or £1 here in the UK. So, assuming that's all food, what is that? I did my 'fiver shop' earlier today, and this is what I'm living on for the next week (other value brands are also available...):

 

 

 

I was chuffed to bits to find rice a whole 89p cheaper than I'd found it when checking prices online - this gives me enough change to have a little milk with my porridge and some garlic with my lentils. But now I'm thinking... the 'value' brands are so much cheaper than the 'name' ones, what's going on here? Are the people who produce it - maybe some of the 1.4 billion - getting a fair price? This is more complicated than I thought...

 

More tomorrow....

 

https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-what-is-extreme-poverty