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