Ok, some of us Dopers, as I’ve gathered from a few threads, are definitely on a fixed income and I don’t mean social security.
Not to elaborate on my particular diet, which is terrible, let us instead propose the following question:
What is the minimum amount of money I can expect to spend and still satisfy all my nutritional needs? I understand that this will involve generalizing quite a few prices, but we should be able to come very close.
Can we leave out some foods that are implicated in some semi-common allergies? (fish, peanuts, etc)
I am not concerned about variety! If it has to be the same damn thing every day then so be it.
It has been said that you can live on ten pounds of potatoes and a quart of whole milk a day. That’s more than enough calories and supposedly it also provides all the minerals, vitamins, and protein you need. Around here that would cost about $2.75. But when I lived in W.Va. not many years ago, I used to get potatoes for 8 cents a pound and milk for $2 a gallon, which would bring down the cost to about $1.30. If you bake your own white bread, you could probably get the calories cheaper, but it doesn’t have the same amount of vitamins and minerals as potatoes.
Holy shit, ten pounds of potatoes a day?? I pity the toilet in that house!
Incidentally, I wonder about the cooking methods one needs to use for the potatoes. Boiling them, for example, will sap some of the nutrients, so no smashers
Maybe just eating them raw? I suppose if one splurged on some salad dressings that could be a real alternative to my peanut butter and jelly diet.
I was thinking the restriction on allergic foods is a little tough for such a general question.
I would think that bulk rice nad beans plus a multivitamin would be the way to go. Here all sorts of dried beans are avalible for $8-10/25lb bag (plus some shipping, I suspect.) A 25lb bag of rice is under $8. Now, I realy don’t know how much rice and beans any one person would eats, but I would think that 25lbs of rice and 25 lbs of pinto beans (~$16.50) would support a person for a long damn time.
Back when I was a fresh college grad earning nowhere near as much money as I had hoped, I found a few ways of trimming down the food budget, as that was the most flexible of monthly expenses.
A 25 or 50lb sack of rice can be dirt-cheap, as Manda JO commented. Plain white rice day in and day out got somewhat bland, so I’d occasionally spice up life by using a can of cream of chicken soup instead of water when making the rice. Nice and creamy, and only another $.50 or so.
Generic store-brand macaroni and cheese is cost-efficient as well, but not as cheap as the sacks of rice. Depending on the store, you can find individual boxes of mac-n-cheese for $.10 or less. Butter and milk raise the price somewhat, but it’s possible to make the macaroni and cheese with just water. (Don’t expect to enjoy it, though.)
Ramen noodles, if you don’t care about sodium.
It is a good idea (from my limited knowledge) to pick up a bulk jar of multivitamins from your local pharmacy. $10 got me a jar with 365 tablets.
And, of course, there’s the eternal art of learning how to scavenge donuts and leftover pizza from meetings at work. On a good day, I won’t spend a cent to feed myself.
Other than the fact that rice does not contain all the vitamins you need on a daily basis, it is not a source of complete proteins. (It does not contain the 8 essential amino acids.) Combine it with beans or any other legume and you have it. Soybeans is acceptable, as it is a complete protein.
Of course if you are going to include pills, you can eat anything, provided you take your nutrients in pills, which can be expensive. So, my choice would be rice and beans, and take powdered vitamin C in water. (Powdered C is cheap.)
Rice, beans, cheap cuts of meat & fish & potatoes can be made way tasty with the addition of spice. Stir fried potatoes with curry powder, rice & beans with dried chile peppers & salt…doesn’t have to be exotic.
You can neutralize a lot of the high sodium and fat in ramen by not using the “flavor packet” which has a lot of MSG. I once lived for about a month on nothing but ramen (no flavor packet) with carrots sliced and boiled in the same pot.
Ok, so we have the rice & beans diet-- any kind of legume you say?-- and some multivitamins. That definitely takes care of the protiens and carbohydrates. For potassium I guess we need to tack on some bananas because I’ve never seen a multivitamin which has enough, and I ain’t taking three a day or that’ll cause some serious problems.
Keep in mind, people, I’m going to do this! Not that I can hold anyone responsible, just sayin’…don’t kill me! Although I must say it couldn’t be worse than PB&J and egg&cheese sandwiches every day. Seriously.
I can deal with the nice sacks-o-rice and some nice bags-o-beans (which are super cheap, I make split pea soup all the time and all those dried suckers are cheap). So I really don’t have to eat meat? And banannas and multivitamins. OK. I’ll check the store tomorrow and get the cost for this, though I just know something there is gonna tempt me.
OK, got down my vitamins. Bayer’s One a Day for Men. Vitamins I’m missing after taking 1 vitamin: magnesium (25%), potassium (1% --like I’m not even getting any). Chloride too, but I’m gonna take a wild guess that I’ll get that from salt intake and not worry about it. Hmmm, after doing a search I find this which says that beans in themselves are a good source of potassium.
Folks, I think we’ve got it here, and by buying some decent spices and some bullion to, er, spice it up a bit everything should be OK. Wow, I wonder if I’m gonna lose weight from this, too.
One extremely dirt-cheap way to get meat in your diet on a limited budget is to buy whole chickens. There’s a lot of meat there for very little money (little processing, so you save). The meat off that one chicken can make several meals and stretch others and make them more hearty.
Not braver, just poorer. But hey, I can usually stand to a few pounds. I bought those carrots wholesale at produce warehouse. Try making $20 stretch for 4 weeks sometime. The whole experience reminded me of an essay Phil Dick wrote during one of his times of poverty. He said that if you’re poor, you have to be a really good accountant, because mis-estimating your budget by 25 cents may blow half your food budget for the day and you go hungry that night.
I had another closer encounter with starvation when I went to Japan for a semester. The host family was really poor and blew all my food money on themselves and completely stopped feeding me. I was actually starving because I didn’t know much about buying food in the local places. I didn’t get fed at all for about 2 weeks and lost about 35 pounds over a month due to the lack of food and commuting on foot. At first I tried to survive on Pocky and CocaCola from the vending machines, but finally I figured out the local 7-11 had bento. But it was costing me a fortune, and I was supposed to be eating off that $600 food fees I’d paid with my tuition. Well, finally I got the school to get me a new host family, they ran a lodging house and the food was absolutely luxurious. But I was still losing weight, so I ate extra meals. I was eating 5 meals a day and still losing weight. I went over to Japan at 240lbs and came back at 200lbs. I bottomed out at about 195 a month after I got to the US and gradually recovered back to about 210, which was pretty trim for my size. And darn it, I wouldn’t have bought new suits and those expensive Versace jeans if I’d have known I wasn’t going to STAY at 210lbs. Now I’m back to 240.
If you live in an area that grows citrus, such as AZ, CA or FL, you can pick the oranges and such from ornamental trees along roads. Another suggestion is to look at the ones growing at hotels; often they are better tasting and are not sprayed with heavy pesticides. This gives you great nutrients!
Do you have a Long John Silver’s fast food store near you? Buy a piece of chicken and ask for “crispies” on the side. These are fried crumbs from the food. They are like free, fatty french fries.
Grow your own food. Easy enough.
Know your food! If you are getting plenty of Vitamin C from your free oranges, no need to buy vitamin supplements containing it.
If you are near a large woods, learn what plants are edible. One cup of violet leaves contains as much vitamin C as 4 oranges. The tender new leaves are great with a little salad dressing. Forage freely, just try not to tresspass.
If you need a little sugar, salt or ketchup, go to your local fast food emporium and grab a few. Coffee shops sometimes stock half-and-half that you can yoink a lot of when they are not looking, and pour it on your cheapo cereal for a quick and easy treat. The milk fats and calcium will help your body too.
Spices, as mentioned before, also sometimes contain many nutrients.
Cheap foods, such as potatoes and rice will help stop the hungry feeling, while your higher nutrient foods will plug the gaps.
If you are going only with potatoes and rice, at least buy OJ. The nutrient-packed juice will help your body too.
I agree with this, and would like to add that we find that pre-cooked whole chickens (like in the deli section of the supermarket) are actually cheaper than fresh ones. A whole roasted chicken from the deli counter usually costs about £2, whereas a fresh one of the same size is more like £3.50. We figure perhaps the grocery store is trying to recoup some money by using chickens that have reached their sell-by date…?
Actually, the suppliment I possess has plenty of B12. The only problem was accessing the correct protiens, and getting enough potassium (which is crucial for the SDMB!).
I am not on any tight budget for food, I am just very lazy about cooking and eat a lot of cereal, fruit, vegetables… I am in Washington DC which is not cheap by any means compared to other parts of the country. I do not go around looking for free stuff or anything, just buy what I want in the cheaper stores. I have a full nutritious diet and I should probably eat less of it since i have been gaining some weight. I just checked my accounts and my expenditure for groceries is under $100/mo or just over $3 a day. If my finances were tight I could probably easily go to $2/day and still get a full, nutritious diet.
IMHO, if you do not have $60/mo to spend on food, then you really should not be looking at ways to spend less on food but rather on ways to get the $60.
Going into extremely limited diets to save money is just foolish. It is easier to earn some money I would think or save it from some other part of your budget.
I would get a second job if I could. I cannot, since my primary job involves travelling quite a bit.
As well, my food budget is actually pretty large because of my laziness; I eat fast food for lunch quite a bit, and that adds up quick. I also order pizza entirely too much
My obsession with this is simply that I was definitely raised poor, and that I definitely went without food, and my mom already worked almost 80 hours a week just to pay the bills.
Food purchases is actually the one area of my life where I can cut significant costs, which can then go to pay off the credit cards–the reason I’m trying to cut costs in the first place. I don’t pay for the internet, I have no long distance carrier so I don’t even pay a fee for that. I don’t use excessive electricity and definitely don’t have air conditioning. My entertainment involves designing my own web page or reading, two cheap hobbies, since I’m only reading books I’ve purchased but haven’ gotten to read yet. I live a whopping 12 miles from work, so gas isn’t even a problem.
If I could cut my food bill down to just over $30 a month, that would amount in a huge savings.
