Eating for $1 a day..

[kyrasdad]

http://www.hungryforamonth.blogspot.com/

Found this of interest, even though it's predictable that all he can afford is starches. It kind of reinforces that the poorer you are, it's likely the fatter you will be because the kind of food you can afford is exactly what will make you fat.

From the blog...

What can you eat for $1 a day, he asks, and his short answer is: "starch." I haven't gone through the entire blog, but hope to when I can snatch a few minutes.



http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8045/4182/400/grocery1.jpg

Food is just one of those things that makes people feel comfortable and good; it’s like Hugh Grant movies or silk boxers. And since it’s a little assuming to hand out silk boxers at most potentially awkward business receptions, they tend to hand out food.

So was the case today, ironically the first day of this little experiement. I knew I would encounter my fair share of free food, but it hadn’t really occurred to me how many “functions” I go to that dole out the chicken wings by the barrel.

Given that I had only been doing this for 12 hours, passing up on the food wasn’t too hard. The bigger problem was ducking all the people that kept trying to give it to me without being a jerk. There’s something locked away deep in recess of the reptilian part of our brains that just instictively tells us to eat when food is presented, as if you don’t know when the next meal will come along. So when you see a bunch of food and some guy with the gall not to eat it, the first thing everyone seems to say is, “Grab yourself a plate buddy.” I would of course respond by that ridiculous grabbing of my stomach and leaning back as if to prentend I had just gorged myself out of sight.

Anyway, sticking to my plan that I’d only take free food that would be readily available to the average person, I had a glass of lemonade. I figure that was in the same category as a free cup of coffee or something the like.

Aside from that, I only ate one meal today. Two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches plus a packet of chicken Ramen. It was OK, although I can tell you I�ll be bored with that meal pretty quick. It came in at a grand total of $.90, which means I can bank roll that dime for a latter date.

[Lisa N]

Sheesh...if the menu's gonna consist of nothing but Top Ramen and Peanut butter sandwiches, he'd be a better off getting 2 1/2 dozen eggs ($2.50 at Costco) twice a week and spending the other 2 bucks on some butter from the Save A Lot or Aldi (less than 2 bucks, actually) and at least not be so hungry and getting a decent amount of protein and fat. :idea:
I imagine 8.5 eggs a day fried or scrambled in butter would be more filling for longer than Ramen noodles and bread with a little peanut butter.

[ysabella]

The peanut butter is the only thing there I would eat, although ever since reading Bigger Secrets (http://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Secrets-Things-Prayed-Never/dp/0395530083) I can't buy cheap peanut butter (because it discussed minimum government standards for peanut butter - things like insect heads).

:eek:

[mike_d]

I can't buy cheap peanut butter (because it discussed minimum government standards for peanut butter - things like insect heads).I worry more about the hydrogenated and rapeseed oils-- for me dried insects and grubs are just another protein source :lol:

[64dodger]

I eat three scrambled eggs with butter every day for breadfast and it costs me a grand total of 42 cents per day.

[Nancy LC]

Is that all you eat?

[kyrasdad]

The peanut butter is the only thing there I would eat, although ever since reading Bigger Secrets (http://www.amazon.com/Bigger-Secrets-Things-Prayed-Never/dp/0395530083) I can't buy cheap peanut butter (because it discussed minimum government standards for peanut butter - things like insect heads).

:eek:

I buy the overpriced "natural" peanut butter to avoid added sugar. The kind that you have to stir & refrigerate. You can actually taste peanuts in that peanut butter, and not sugar. No wonder kids love the spreadable sugar that passes for peanut butter for the most part. His peanut butter, I assume, would be of the sugary variety.

Eggs and me don't get along, so I don't know that I could get away with doing things for $1 a day; I'd be down to lunch meat and hot dogs -- and that might be a stretch.

I treat good food as an investment--probably the best investment I've ever made--but definitely an expensive one.

[waywardsis]

Thanks for this! Some of us are discussing the link between poverty and obesity here, if anyone's interested: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=318400

It's pretty bad that the healthiest foods tend to be more expensive. If you're trying to make the dollars stretch, it's easier (or at least seems so) to get starchy stuff like pasta etc. I think too that some people see the price on a roast, for example, and think only about how much they'll be laying out at once fo rit rather than how long it would stretch and therefore the daily cost of that roast.

PS: Give canned fish and veg to your local food bank ;)

[serrelind]

I understand that natural peanut butter is better due to the lack of trans fat, but in terms of carb content, there isn't a gross difference between natural and non-natural. There's maybe a 1g of carb difference? Am I missing something?

[gryfonclaw]

I did (and do) low-carb on a budget of $40-60 a month.

Trust me, eating 6.5 cartons of eggs in one week blows.

[Angeline]

I read the whole blog, including the comments. It was an interesting experiment. The two comments that stood out from his experiment were that he was surprised how easy it actually turned out to be, to eat significantly less and how boring his diet was.

He lamented the lack of flavor in his food. All he used for flavoring was pretty much salt. Although, as was pointed out in the comments, it didn't have to be that way. He could have used more spices and condiments while remaining within his budget.

Part of his goal was to experience part of what it is being poor. I'd also add, that he experienced the situation of a poor person with poor culinary skills that must resort to prepackaged food and simple cooking methods.

It would be interesting to see if this experiment could be reproduced but using healthier food and making it as tasty as possible. That would be an interesting challenge.

A harder challenge might be to do this while still low-carbing (and having a diet that consists of more than just eggs).

[Angeline]

I buy the overpriced "natural" peanut butter to avoid added sugar. The kind that you have to stir & refrigerate. You can actually taste peanuts in that peanut butter, and not sugar.

I wonder how much cheaper it would be to make your own peanut butter by buying peanuts in bulk. After all, all you need is a good food processor.

[KvonM]

this is one of the reasons i love costco so much. the last time i went (about a week ago), i spent $200, about $150-ish of which went toward meat. i got enough to last me and my fiance for about a month... so about $40 per week, give or take. if i'd gone to the grocery store, i'd've EASILY spent twice that each week even assuming i hit nothing but sale items, especially considering that for the price, costco's quality is INFINETELY better than anything at the store. even considering how little i bring home, i don't have to panic because i know i'm only having to go shopping once a month.

[Nancy LC]

I don't recall natural peanut butter being expensive. I get it at Trader Joe's, I'll have to look at the price next time.

[ysabella]

I know some brands of peanut butter add sweeteners, like corn syrup. I buy the natural stuff myself, and just keep turning the jar upside down and back again so I don't have to stir as much.

I'm not sure about comparative prices, actually. And I'm not sure whether grinding your own is cheaper, I guess we'd have to price the peanuts in the bulk bins to figure that out?

KvonM, I love CostCo too. CostCo, and Ziploc freezer bags.

[SkySamChew]

Im married to a hunter and we never buy meat at any store. Our freezer is packed full of Elk and Deer, some Antelope and pheasant. We dont have to spend much each month on LC stuff. Just eggs, and some veggies.. great lifestyle for hunters! lol

[ChicknLady]

I compromise on the peanut butter- I buy Skippy "Natural" PB made with Palm Oil (and insect heads!). It has 6 grams of carbs per 2 Tbsp, but I don't use much anyway. The boy likes it, and I don't think there's too much in it to do any harm.

[KvonM]

Im married to a hunter and we never buy meat at any store. Our freezer is packed full of Elk and Deer, some Antelope and pheasant. We dont have to spend much each month on LC stuff. Just eggs, and some veggies.. great lifestyle for hunters! lol
that's it... i'm coming to your house for dinner. you have no idea how much i miss vension, pheasant, squirrel, rabbit, all those yummy little creatures that look so cute in the woods and even cuter on the table.

my mom used to make cassolet (translation = game meat stew that'll feed 8 hungry hunters for a week)... i could eat that every night until the day i die :yum:

[MyJourney]

I personally love the peanut butter at whole foods. They have the machine where you grind it yourself so I am less concerned about the rancid oils in the stir-as-you-go-style peanut butters and it tastes better. It doesnt get hard or greasy and oil doesnt form on the top and you can just get it fresh in small quantities as often as you need it and the price is comprable to on the shelf PB. Plus, no insect heads in there!

[MyJourney]

Okay, so for my own curiosity I went to safeway.com and plugged in my local grocery store and decided to see what I could do for a low carber who wanted to eat on $1 a day or less.

Here is what I put together
Freebies:
butter pats, ketchup packets, mustard packets, salt, pepper, mayo packets, bbq sauce packets, cinnamon, cocoa, splenda, taco sauce packets, salsa packets, dressing packets, half and half

36 eggs - $4.89 (18 meals) ~2 eggs per meal
32oz cottage cheese - 1.75 (8 meals) ~4oz per meal
6oz tuna can - .66 - $6.60 (20 meals) ~.5 can per meal
6 pounds chicken thighs - $6.00 (16 meals) ~6oz per meal
6 pounds pork chops - $7.74 (16 meals) ~6oz per meal

14.5 oz grean beans canned - $.69 (10 meals) ~3oz per meal x2
1 pound spinach fresh- $1.49 (8 meals) ~2oz per meal

The portion sizes were reasonable at 6oz of chicken or pork. It could have obviously been cheaper if I tried but I wanted to make it somewhat realistic with a little more variety. I also tried to stick to more whole foods, so I avoided things like spam. I am sure if I really had to do this I could probably find things even cheaper and make the diet more entertaining but this is what I do when I can't sleep on a Friday night lol.

Also, I live in San Jose and the groceries arent cheap here. This was for my local safeway. I am sure if I really needed to I can look for a wal mart or somewhere else that would have even cheaper groceries.

[Nancy LC]

2 eggs is a meal? In what country? That's only 150 calories. To make it realistic try to get 1700-2000 calories out of that food you listed. It'd be very difficult to do that on $1 a day without resorting to cheap carbs.

[KoKo]

That’s just bad choices.

I can’t say that everywhere has the same specials in the stores every week, but around here your just silly if you pay regular prices for some things.

Salmon is always on sale, I happen to like red which is more expensive but you can get pink for between .69-.99 cents for an 8 ounce can. Two cans make 8 breakfast or luncheon servings or 4 dinner. Tuna is on sale almost every week for .69 for an 8 ounce can. This week lean ground beef is on sale for 1.50lb, regular ground beef for .99 a pound. Cheap roasts are on sale for 1.69 -1.99 on an almost weekly basis. Chicken legs are always on sale somewhere often as low as .69lb. A big bag of carrots is .69, I recently got 10lbs of onions for .99, fresh cabbage is very cheap and frozen vegetables are not expensive when you break it down to per serving cost. It costs about 1.29 for a bunch of broccoli that will do one person as a veg for several meals. Dry beans and legumes cost about .99 for a bag (ok not for most of you low carbers but for other people a good choice) if you take the time to cook your own instead of buying them tinned. Real oatmeal is cheap. As others have said eggs are always cheap.

To some people it might not be easy, it takes planning and maybe some time to get your self stocked up with the basics it’s really very easy and of course it’s more work, it’s a lot harder to save all your chicken bones and then boil them up with the base and leaves of the celery and a couple of carrots and onions and then strain it to make your own broth than it is to buy a can. I don’t say we eat for a 1.00 day each. Fortunately we don’t have to, but if we did I could do a lot better than that sample provided. Even if the items purchased are not low carb there are certainly better choices than what that guy bought.

There was a time when I did have to be really budget conscious. Single mother, one child, not so great job. In those days, junk food was a TREAT I seldom thought I could afford to buy a bag of chips or canned pasta product for my son because that meant there was one item less of REAL food in the cart. This is why I never really understand people thinking that a healthy diet is expensive. I see people buy bags of taco chips (or whatever those Dorito things are called) and pay about 2.69 - for THAT I could cook a whole nutritious meal. Now that I can afford more, I don’t mind paying the price for more expensive items. I frequently buy salmon or rainbow trout fillets which might seem expensive but as

kyrasdad says

I treat good food as an investment--probably the best investment I've ever made--but definitely an expensive one.
__________________

I don’t exactly look on it as an investment, but it is what we keep our bodies running on and I don’t mind paying for the good stuff.

[ysabella]

Freebies:
butter pats, ketchup packets, mustard packets, salt, pepper, mayo packets, bbq sauce packets, cinnamon, cocoa, splenda, taco sauce packets, salsa packets, dressing packets, half and half
You remind me of a page I found somewhere on the web (can't find it now) where a guy made a sort of barbecue sauce out of takeout condiment packets in his office kitchen - he used ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, and honey. :p

Also, I live in San Jose and the groceries arent cheap here. This was for my local safeway. I am sure if I really needed to I can look for a wal mart or somewhere else that would have even cheaper groceries. I'm not sure how far you care to take your research on this, but possibly getting some things at Cash&Carry? I don't know where in San Jose you are, but there's one on San Carlos near Bascom (and if you like the sugar-free Torani syrups, that is totally where to go for them).
Also, don't overlook little Mexican shops. Some of them are butchers as well, and have really great meats, like pre-marinated chicken.

[MyJourney]

2 eggs is a meal? In what country? That's only 150 calories. To make it realistic try to get 1700-2000 calories out of that food you listed. It'd be very difficult to do that on $1 a day without resorting to cheap carbs.

I eat 2 eggs as my breakfast most mornings. Once in a while I add one or 2 strips of bacon tops if I am really hungry but usually its 2 eggs fried in butter and ketchup or 2 hard boiled eggs and a drop of mayo. I have that at around 8:30am and I am normally not hungry again until 2-3pm and usually I just end up skipping lunch due to lack of time and eat a fairly large dinner and get 90% of my calories then and then go for a long walk to digest it lol. I should add that I do drink 12 oz of coffee every morning which seems to completely suppress my appetite.

[MyJourney]

You remind me of a page I found somewhere on the web (can't find it now) where a guy made a sort of barbecue sauce out of takeout condiment packets in his office kitchen - he used ketchup, mustard, soy sauce, and honey. :p

I'm not sure how far you care to take your research on this, but possibly getting some things at Cash&Carry? I don't know where in San Jose you are, but there's one on San Carlos near Bascom (and if you like the sugar-free Torani syrups, that is totally where to go for them).
Also, don't overlook little Mexican shops. Some of them are butchers as well, and have really great meats, like pre-marinated chicken.

There is a cash and carry not far from me but I have actually never been there. I go to smart and final to get the syrups and sometimes I get them from bevmo. Bevmo around here has the best stilton!

I usually get meat from costco or whole foods. I may check things out around here and look at prices. It was sort of surreal for me to try and just put $30 of food together and think about living on that for a month. I mean my cats food cost more than $30 a month. I have been poor in my life but that was as a college student and then I just sort of had guys buy me food or would find other ways around it. I did eat a lot of ramen noodles.

I guess it would be an interesting experiment to try and eat LC on $30 a day.

[Nancy LC]

I guess it would be an interesting experiment to try and eat LC on $30 a day.
Sounds like foie gras and grass fed steaks for me. Did you mean month?

[MyJourney]

Sounds like foie gras and grass fed steaks for me. Did you mean month?

lol I made that same mistake when speaking to my boyfriend and he asked how it jumped from $1 a day to $30 a day. Although when I look at the food bills it does work out to be around $28 a day spent on food, but that is between my boyfriend and myself and it includes eating out a few times a month.

[Nancy LC]

$5 a day, I think is do-able, barely. $1 a day... I don't think so. You'd be on starvation level of calories and short on major nutrients.

[winterlily]

For me, the trick to keeping it reasonably priced (and I'm a single parent - no childsupport, so just my one paycheque) - is quite easy - go early when meat is marked down during the day, buy in bulk, and buy on sale - safeway always has stuff on 2 for $5 or 3 for $5 - I buy eggs in the big double size, I buy huge bags of premade salads, I buy 1kg bags of frozen caulifower, broccoli and green beans (they are typically alwasy 2 for 5 dollars). Tuna I get at london drugs - usually always 79 cents for the big can, olive oil at london drugs - 4.99 for the BIG size, etc...the thing is, if you shop around,you can live easily in this way of life.

[ysabella]

There is a cash and carry not far from me but I have actually never been there. I go to smart and final to get the syrups and sometimes I get them from bevmo. Bevmo around here has the best stilton!
Yeah, Smart&Final is the same company. I'm not sure if their stores are the same, it's been a long time since I've seen one (but we have Cash&Carry up here).
I just love BevMo. Great store!

I usually get meat from costco or whole foods. I may check things out around here and look at prices. It was sort of surreal for me to try and just put $30 of food together and think about living on that for a month.
Given the high cost of living in San Jose, it's probably worth tracking a little. It takes so much just to survive down there!!

I guess it would be an interesting experiment to try and eat LC on $30 a day.
Well, or just to have the occasional $1 day, and others be higher. You should be able to find cheap produce in California, since so much is grown there - but cheap meat is harder to manage, and coupons for meat are rare.

[danabear]

You could do beans, while not low carb they sure are cheap, and better for you than Ramen! I know from experience! Same for Bananas. And potatoes. Most vegetables are inexpensive and go a long way. And I could go on. Again, probably not low carb, but real food at least.

[Lessara]

I know some brands of peanut butter add sweeteners, like corn syrup. I buy the natural stuff myself, and just keep turning the jar upside down and back again so I don't have to stir as much.


Actually that is a trick I learned to do, but when I bring the pb home I store it upside down. I never have to stir :)

[GeorgeMead]

$5 a day, I think is do-able, barely. $1 a day... I don't think so. You'd be on starvation level of calories and short on major nutrients.I totally agree on the $5.00 theory, actually, I think that is the reasonable threshold. It also happens to be what food stamps provide, $155/mo for a single person, (I had the unfortunate experience of that recently when my unemployment benefits were cut off by a bureaucrat because I declined a job offer 100 miles from home...). I disagree on the calorie level, it would be fairly simple to make 2000 cals/day on $1, but as you say, nutritionally deficient.

Unfortunately, for many, if not most people caught in that trap, they simply do not know how to shop efficiently. Also, the depression that goes with such economic deprivation is its self destructive.

[Nancy LC]

George, I was meaning $1 on low carb, non-starchy food. You could probably get 3 boxes of macroni and cheese for about a buck, but that isn't exactly nutritious.

[gryfonclaw]

$5 a day, I think is do-able, barely. $1 a day... I don't think so. You'd be on starvation level of calories and short on major nutrients.


You can do LC on $1 a day. Your menu is eggs for all meals and maybe a piece of bacon with each meal. Unfortunatly, I know from experience....

It sucks. :D

[Nancy LC]

How many eggs did you eat? How much bacon? I can't imagine you could afford enough of either one, at $1 a day, to approach 2000 calories.

[MyJourney]

On another thread someone said they can get an 18 pack of eggs for 99 cents. I suppose 12 eggs, 9 slices of bacon and 4 slices of american cheese a day will be pretty inexpensive and over 2000 calories.
My costco has 4 pounds of costco brand bacon for like $6 but I am sure other places like smart and final or wal mart that do not require memberships can get it cheap too and American cheese is 32 oz for $4 at safeway (safeway brand)

[gryfonclaw]

How many eggs did you eat? How much bacon? I can't imagine you could afford enough of either one, at $1 a day, to approach 2000 calories.

I typically didn't make 2000 calories, that's the thing. :( I topped out at 12-15 eggs a day. I made a pack of bacon stretch about a week. The eggs generally were on sale for $0.88 for a dozen medium. (At least in my area.)

I also had to stop exercising, albeit temporarily, because I wasn't really getting enough food. Of course, I could have just bought some ramen or something, but I just didn't want to go there again. (Eating issues, and whatnot)

It was no fun and I sure got tired of eggs, but for awhile I only had a $30 monthly food budget. Low-carb on $1 a day can be done, but barely.

[Nancy LC]

Huh! Well, I never would've guessed you could buy stuff that cheaply. Dang, that's a lot of eggs! Still, 15 eggs is well under 2000 calories. A slice of bacon is probably 60ish calories. So around 1200 calories for that. If you're dieting, not bad. But if you're trying to maintain your weight, it would be bad. If you were trying to eat a healthy diet, it'd be pretty awful.

Good grief, I don't know how you did it. :p

[kallyn]

Huh! Well, I never would've guessed you could buy stuff that cheaply. Dang, that's a lot of eggs! Still, 15 eggs is well under 2000 calories. A slice of bacon is probably 60ish calories. So around 1200 calories for that. If you're dieting, not bad. But if you're trying to maintain your weight, it would be bad. If you were trying to eat a healthy diet, it'd be pretty awful.

Good grief, I don't know how you did it. :p

15 eggs by themselves are 1200 calories, but you could also stock up on those free little butter pats from the salad bar to pad out the calories and to make a change from a constant stream of hard boiled eggs.

[gryfonclaw]

Huh! Well, I never would've guessed you could buy stuff that cheaply. Dang, that's a lot of eggs! Still, 15 eggs is well under 2000 calories. A slice of bacon is probably 60ish calories. So around 1200 calories for that. If you're dieting, not bad. But if you're trying to maintain your weight, it would be bad. If you were trying to eat a healthy diet, it'd be pretty awful.




Well, the good thing was that prior to my 'surprise' food budget (a bunch of extra expenses cropped up in a very short period of time), I had purchased about a gallon of coconut oil- I tended to ladel in the stuff to raise my calorie count, but I got sick of it after awhile. :Puke:

Also, I think that compared to where you live in California, where I am in the South food in general may be cheaper.

Good grief, I don't know how you did it. :p


I don't either. :)

[gryfonclaw]

15 eggs by themselves are 1200 calories, but you could also stock up on those free little butter pats from the salad bar to pad out the calories and to make a change from a constant stream of hard boiled eggs.

Yeah, I did stuff like that- grabbed 'free' Splenda, those little butter packages...I also asked some friends if they wanted whatever canned tuna or meat they had collecting dust in their panry. :lol:

[yellowman]

Perhaps if you intermittently fasted then this could be doable?

[Angeline]

Regina at Weight of the evidence (http://weightoftheevidence.blogspot.com/2007/05/can-you-feed-yourself-with-300-day.html#links) conducted an interesting experience. She tried to see if she could eat well, and satisfy all RDA on $3.00 a day/per person which represent what you receive if you must live on food stamps.

It's interesting to contrast her menu with the $1.00/day experiement. Of course it's 3X as much money, that's obvious. But also a fundamental difference is that Regina cooks and is creative about her food choices, whereas this guy had a limited cooking ability. I bet it makes a huge difference.

[Nancy LC]

Oh yeah, the natural peanut butter at Trader Joe's is 1.69.

[tom sawyer]

SkySam how much does your husband spend on hunting/fishing licenses, firearms and ammo, fishing poles and bait? In my experience, wild game isn't usually that cheap.

Now roadkill, that is some cheap eating.

My 90-yr-old uncle eats on about $15 a week. He has oats in the morning, vegetable soup with every meal and a small portion of some kind of meat. A package of bologna will last him over a week. He weighs 100lb soaking wet, of course.

[CLASYS]

Back in the dark days when I was single and unattached [and doing a whole lot of good computer programming, being virtually "hermitically sealed" [that's not a spelling error, just a pun describing what I was doing self-isolated to concentrate, etc.] I would eat a fairly routine diet I created having read the original Atkins book when it was first available:

Hebrew National kosher pastrami with deli mustard and an occasionally full-sour pickle or pickled green tomato. [See, meat and veggies!]

Kosher deli brisket with lots of mayonaisse with the same condiments. [Never put mayonaisse on pastrami, but perhaps mustard on the brisket.]

Hebrew National kosher salami with deli mustard otherwise same as pastrami regarding the condiments as well.

Boar's head cracked pepper-mill turkey or maybe their sausalito with lots of mayonaisse and the same condiments as well.

The occasional break in the diet was going over to a friend or relative and having skirt steak on the grill, and some broccoli with my butter.

When I bothered with what some people called "breakfast" [regardless of actual time clock - world or body] I would make a so-called 1lb bacon package and six scrambled eggs in the bacon fat, possibly adding some butter for additional taste.

Also occasionally had Hebrew National knockwurst with the same stuff as above, but also could be added to the eggs instead of the bacon. Or maybe the salami instead of the hotdog slices in the eggs, etc.

Hotdogs get boiled; the sliced meat gets steamed; the bacon fries in its own grease; the eggs always needed the bacon grease to avoid burning; the butter by itself didn't quite work.

Along the way, I went to the deli a whole lot of times. This was pretty much what I did for about 8 years. There were occasional changes when friends came to visit, we instead ate szechuan chinese food in NYC's Chinatown, etc. Actually some of them weren't local and craved the deli food!

I drank a whole lot of water, and lots of Sacharrine-flavored soda [this is the pre-aspartame days] mostly NoCal [a famous New York bottler. Some other local names are Cott, Hoffman's, Needix. New York was famous for various bottled liquids, not to mention all of the beers like Ballantine, Rheingold, Schaefer, etc.] and occasionally some cheap store-brands. [I avoided Tab, which always sucked, and Coke sold it in three-liter bottles eventually.]

Emotionally, it wasn't really a great time, but mentally and physically, it was really quite good. I tended to stay within a weight range of 169-189 depending, which one could argue was a tad too much, especially since essentially sedentary. [Programmers exercise their fingers and not much else!]

A side issue about the deli: someone mentioned bumming things like butter pats from various food-court or fast-food-type places, here's a variant:

Each time you goto the deli, they give you their estimation of "enough" mustard in relatively small containers, to match what you purchased. While I really like mustard, and did use a fair amount of it, I felt that throwing away the excess was wasteful, so I saved it in the fridge.

At odd times, when reorganizing the fridge, I would transfer the contents of all of those little plastic containers into a cleaned-out gallon glass bottle [which had the Hellman's extra-heavy in it when purchased; today they are plastic, this was back in the glass days!].

Over the course of about 8 years, I filled THREE gallon jars with excess mustard. [One was donated to a large picnic, etc.]

After this period in my life, a more normal socialization occured. Thus, I was then on an emotional roller-coaster, the result of relationships that don't last, and my weight suffered, which is what happens when you are not your own food master any more, etc. Life can overtake you eventually if you don't fight back hard enough, etc.

Those of you who know of my more recent history [this tale is from the 1970's] are aware that I currently have a life partner who isn't a food/health enemy, but rather an ally and a great cook [who has had to drop some of her carb-loaded favorites).

But health-wise, I really did better in the '70's than in the '80's into the early '90's

cjl (Anyone know how long sealed gallon bottles of deli mustard last?)

[TimesTwo]

I know some brands of peanut butter add sweeteners, like corn syrup. I buy the natural stuff myself, and just keep turning the jar upside down and back again so I don't have to stir as much.Actually that is a trick I learned to do, but when I bring the pb home I store it upside down. I never have to stir :)You could just stir it very well once, then store it in the fridge. That's what my Smucker's jar says to do, and it works.

[ysabella]

Turning it upside-down is actually lazier than stirring it. Even stirring with a chopstick, I always seem to splash some oil onto the counter.
You just let it mix itself. I usually put it upside-down in the pantry for a day or two, then park it right side up in the fridge.

[SaintAnger]

I just lost my job, so I've been scrambling to budget my spending.

I eat generally 10 fatty chicken thighs and some lard per day. Some days I eat some red meat or whatever, but generally spend about 5 dollars a day to eat.

35-40 dollars per week to eat will last me probably 2 months even if I don't find a new job.

It's not hard to eat "healthy" and cheap, you just have to be creative.

[Java Finch]

http://www.deanesmay.com/archives/007598.html

I stick with Skippy Natural.