My wife and I tried to do this recently on $1.70 per person per day. We didn't last our intended 28 days. A few observations we found:
Meat and organic food was too expensive.
Fruit is crazy expensive so we bought OJ from concentrate with no additives as a cheap source of Vitamin C.
Eggs were are very expensive, but we needed the protein and nutrients, so rationed ourselves to 3 each per week.
We had to remove all sugar to save on cost and sugar crashed badly.
We decided that Costco was cheating due to the $70 membership fee and so we alternated between Safeway and Walmart.
You quickly learn the difference between broccoli florets and stems. [Stems are cheaper]
Baking your own bread is incredibly cheap and if you're using a sourdough starter you just need flour, salt and water. It'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.
Lentils are the most complete non-meat protein source.
Combining beans and rice give you a complete protein.
Cheese is too expensive and you can't make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk. It just doesn't set when you add the rennet.
You can buy coffee for $1 for a months worth of ground coffee at walmart. It's called Master Chef and it tastes like a used catbox.
Before we did our experiment we found a few "living on a dollar a day" 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't care about nutritional completeness and basically starved themselves for the period.
After trying to do this on $1.70 and failing, I think Mike's budget of $3 is probably a realistic per person budget if you're going to stay healthy.
This diet is pretty much the standard in many poor parts of the world - rice, beans, and fresh vegetables (in season). Billions of people across the planet have figured out that it's cheap and nutritious. Glad he could figure it out on his own too.
Many people in poor parts of the world get their daily B12 from fecal contamination in the water supply. It's actually an issue because cleaning up the water supply makes them deficient.
I can't find the original article unfortunately, but I can provide a bunch of information that supports that claim:
* Well, meat is no a large (or any) part of the diet of people in many of the poorer parts of the world.
* Animal sources, are the only real sources of vitamin B12 (though yeast is an animal source, so this doesn't necessarily mean 'mammals' or 'fish').
* Feces contains B12[1][2]
* B12 is water soluble.
* In parts of the world where the water is 'untreated,' it is contaminated with feces to some amount. Obviously, the more people and animals that use the water source, the more this is true.
Vitamin B12 is not found in vegetables: it is available,
however, from faecally contaminated water, and this source
is important in the poorest vegetarian societies.
So if you went to such a society and decontaminated their water supply, you would end up with a population suffering from B12 deficiency.
I'm surprised you found eggs to be expensive. Where I'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.)
Are cheap those eggs laid by anaemic, malnourished battery hens who are given growth steroids/antibiotics though? I realise that it is possible to find good deals direct from farmers but those prices sound insane!
Personally eggs and meat are things I will pay the extra for the animals to be free range and fed a natural diet, and I eat a lot less of them. With a diet such as the one in the post such things can become an occasional treat and their true value is appreciated.
A non-trivial part of the problems facing the human race is related to the growing expectation of a never ending, abundance of cheap meat.
When I was in the UK recently, I saw some exposes on supposedly "free-range" farms. The reporters used hidden cameras to record the atrocious conditions showing many sick and dead birds on excrement-covered floors that had obviously never been cleaned. Dead birds are supposed to be picked up every few hours, but it was clear some of the dead birds had been lying there for days.
Of course, the eggs laid by these sick, overcrowded birds were still sold at a premium, as was their meat. After the expose, the farms were closed down due to health violations, but it makes you wonder how many more such supposedly "free-range" farms are getting away with this sort of thing just because they haven't been unlucky enough to have been the targets of an undercover news story.
The rules in the US are similar. You merely have to have a door that the (often sick) chickens could theoretically leave through.
I'm fortunate enough to live in the Midwest and I know all my farmers personally. I know what I'm getting, but I understand this isn't possible for everyone. However, it wasn't long ago when people raised chickens and pigs in New York City.
If you want the best nutritional value for your buck, it's best to grow your own. For less than $50, I'll have 60 to 70 percent of my caloric intake grown this year.
My grocery budget for a family of 3 comes out to less than $50/week in the winter and around $20/week in the summer.
IIRC in the US (or maybe in Canada) the requirements to claim that your chickens are 'free range' is that they get 15 minutes of time outside of their cages per day.
When I was still eating eggs, I remember a few brands labeling themselves as 'cage free' instead. Though they still do things like burn the beaks off of the chickens so that they don't peck each other in the crowded conditions.
The short answer: Eat in season; grow your own; buy in bulk; plan better; reduce waste.
The long answer:
1. Learn to cook well. Not like a few dishes well, which is what many people say you should do, but learn the basics of food science. My mother was a chef and my grandmother a restaurant owner, so a lot of this comes naturally for me, but knowing how to turn an egg into hundreds of possible dishes is an asset. The basics (flour, eggs, salt, butter, milk, sugar) can be purchased cheaply and become a lot of things. I never ate ramen in college. When most people say they "have nothing to eat" in their kitchens, they mean "we have no idea to make due with what we have right now." The modern kitchen is a series of boxes and canned goods with limited applications. I avoid that stuff.
Basically, we try to move up the chain. As food moves further away from its natural state, it becomes more expensive per calorie because each producer makes their money on the value-add. Why buy old pasta or bread when I already have flour, salt and eggs and can make it fresh at a fraction of the cost or, at least, at the same cost for comparable quality?
For example: A whole chicken costs me about $6 from my farmer, but I have to break it down. At the grocer here, you'd pay about the same price for a couple of sickly looking breasts. That chicken becomes several meals, stock and dog treats.
Have a plan for what you're going to eat. I know exactly what I will have in my house at any given time and will have a meal plan set out for the week, often with ingredients playing off one another to maximize their usefulness. Rarely do we stumble outside of our budget because we know exactly what we need.
I'm also comfortable enough in the kitchen to make changes on the fly if we have unexpected company or forgot some necessary ingredient.
2. Gardening and canning. My wife does most of this, which she picked up from her father, a master gardener. We're fortunate enough to have plenty of land in a region with wonderful soil, but you can easily cut down on food costs by growing much of your own food. What we don't eat immediately, we save--and make sure to use. I really despise waste. Anyway, seed costs pennies per calorie and if you're able to save seed, the costs decrease over time, but you have to pay for it in hard work. Some people don't want to invest the time. It's a hobby we enjoy.
3. Forage. This is ridiculous to most people, but when I walk through a park I see dozens of edible things and sometimes I eat them. I grew up spending a lot of time in the woods, so this is another thing that's second nature to me, but I never pay for expensive things that can easily be had for free (like mushrooms and berries like gooseberries, elderberries or raspberries grow wild all around me, along with all sorts of wild greens). I go so far as tapping maple trees. But then again, I'm an adventurous eater.
4. Hunt. Many people don't have the stomach for this sort of thing, but a deer can feed me and my family through a winter and a couple of rabbits can feed us for week. I know this is another ridiculous to people outside the Midwest, but for me it's more about survival a personal connection to food/nature than it is a hobby or a sport. I don't take a lot of pride in killing an animal, but it beats cognitive dissonance.
5. Cut back on meat. Neither I nor my wife are vegetarians (obviously), nor do we want to be, but meat is a luxury generally saved for special occasions or times when there is an abundance of meat, like in the fall when my beef rancher slaughters his cattle and hunting season begins. I honestly don't know if we save money here, since when we do eat meat, we tend to buy more expensive cuts. The price/nutritional value isn't cost effective for us. We eat meats 2 or 3 meals a week, on average. The same way we move up the supply chain for food, we move up the food chain itself. Micheal Pollan once wrote something along the lines of "Eat food, mostly vegetables." That about sums us up.
6. Cut back on calories. I feast a few times a year like most people, but normally our meals are very simple and hit our caloric needs fairly precisely. We're not ones to fret over indulgence, but we do have weight and exercise goals. Everything is measured. Related to #1, we rarely eat second helpings and we rarely have leftovers. I wish I could say we had a methodology here but its really something learned over time.
7. Know your farmers, buy in bulk. This one is harder for a lot of people in cities to do, but I know exactly who's making many of the things in my freezer that I didn't make. I buy organic angus beef from the same man, a quarter at a time, and pay about 2.00 a pound for beef he normally sells for $6/lb in the store. Again, if you're not sure of the basics of food science, this can bite you in the ass because you'll have no idea what to do with all the food. You have to have a plan or you'll end up wasting.
Also, a the kid at the grocery store will look baffled if you try to negotiate prices, a farmer will not, especially if you've known him or her personally for years.
You should look into things like joining CSA, which will force you to eat in season (in turn forcing you to learn to cook strange and new things) and are usually comparable prices to most markets. You can also negotiate on their bumper crops so you can store it.
8. You'll notice a pattern here that I'm kind of forced to eat with the seasons and eat pretty locally (this is what my family's been doing for generations, long before these things became recent trends). This is both good and bad for various reasons. I love ratatouille, but by end of summer I can't stand zucchini. Eating with the seasons, even if you're only shopping at the grocer, means you'll get the food at the best prices.
Winters are toughest here because we don't have fresh produce.
All that said, I like pineapple and citrus and that obviously doesn't grow here in the Midwest. But, I try to buy it in peak season, can and store the flavors into the next season as much as possible.
Most of my food budget comes from buying fresh produce in the dead of winter because I can't stand to eat another canned tomato dish, even though "fresh" tomatoes in winter are terrible. There are also things we just can't get freely or grow here. I could raise chickens, but that's a difficult investment, so I buy eggs from a local market who gets them from a local farmer. I can't use eggs purchased in bulk, so it is hard to beat the price. Milk is the same way. Same with meats that aren't raised locally, like lamb and, annoyingly, pork. Same with things like beans and rice.
Ultimately, I could probably bring those costs down even further, but then I'd be depriving myself and as an epicurean eater, I just can't justify it.
The trade off, or course, is time. I'm super sensitive about time. I can always make more money; I can't make more time. However, I find time savings elsewhere in my life (living closer to my job, don't watch much television, etc.).
It's easy to just pop a frozen pizza into an oven. It takes time to make food from scratch. I'm willing to spend the time in this area because it pays off and beats reading Techcrunch. (Honestly, because we plan and keep it simple, most prep happens on Sundays for the week; 15-20 minute dinners are the norm.)
You could write a best-selling cookbook on this stuff.
Format the book to cater to people that can only buy their supplies, with separate sections on more self-sufficient things (like growing vegatables, knowing farmers, etc.) and link to/create a web directory of farmers' markets and farmers directly.
Yeah, I'd have to wonder about the conditions of the chickens with eggs that cheap too. These don't advertise as cage-free or anything like that.
Unfortunately, "very cheap" and "humanely, sustainably raised" seem to be in conflict. Terrible factory farming is efficient.
:-/
I get a lot of my eggs from my friends mother, who has something like six chickens running around on her farm. It's a great feeling to know exactly where your food is coming from (and fresh eggs are mucho-delicious).
Very cheap eggs and humanely, sustainably raised chickens are possible. You can buy baby chicks for about $2 a piece and they'll produce eggs for years, but you need favorable local laws, time and expertise.
Also, totally agree on fresh eggs. They actually look and taste so much better.
Unfortunately this doesn't scale well because in most places where you can keep chickens within city limits, roosters are forbidden. If you're only buying female chicks, then you're supporting the practice of just dumping all of the male chicks into wood chippers or just suffocating them by dumping hundreds of them into tied-up trash bags. (Note: Those are both 'industry-standard' practices. Some animal activist group tried to sue a farmer over those practices a while back and the judge ruled that he did nothing wrong because he was following the industry standards.)
$7 per 60 eggs (5 dozen) is approx. $2.33 per daily caloric budget, (per this, http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-egg-whole-i1130 assuming you do omelet) which is not incredible, but maybe acceptable deal, given this extreme budgetary constraints.
I, personally, consider eggs reasonably cheap, healthy and fast food, but I did not try to live on $3/$1 per day. (still havent' figured if I should worry about cholesterol)
Why did you set your target that low? (50 dollars / month)
The expected standard here in Uruguay is 100 dollars / month in food (and that with a 150 dollar minimum monthly wage)
I probably spend about 300 dollars per month in food (I do buy and/or eat out half the time), with a salary of 1200 dollars / month after tax. I'm pretty sure you make at least twice that.
On a budget, and for people trying to limit their saturated fat, cheese works best as a flavor-enhancer rather than a major source of nutrients. IE don't bother with pizza or macaroni & cheese dinners, but sprinkling some parmesan on your meal can make it taste a lot better without really adding a calories or costing that much. (If your goal is ridiculously low, like $1.70/day, it's probably still too expensive, but since the upper average is probably closer to $15-30/day there's plenty of wiggle room)
Sugar crash is a good sign. If you stop constantly pumping sugar into your body, your body will eventually starting maintaining your blood sugar on its own -- which is how it's supposed to work.
Starving writers have been known to buy horse meat at pet stores. I wonder if that's still legal? Also, I wonder if organ meats are cheap, since they're so unpopular in the U.S.? They can be very nutrient-rich.
Lentils and rice are incredibly cheap when bought in quantity. Asian grocery stores have great deals, though you might have to look a little harder there to find brown rice. I've heard textured vegetable protein can be a cheap protein source if you can overlook its aesthetic shortcomings (honestly, vegetarianism or extreme frugality are the only reasons to eat it) but the only way I've seen it sold is in a little bag at Whole Foods, which probably isn't that cheap.
Secreting insulin is the mechanism that keeps blood sugar down, which is only half the job of homeostasis. The other half is keeping blood sugar up when you haven't eaten a bunch of carbs recently, and it seems (anecdotally) that if people don't exercise that second half -- i.e., if they keep their blood sugar up by eating constantly -- that their body's ability to keep blood sugar up on its own atrophies.
When your body's blood sugar regulation is working properly, you can skip one or two meals without any dire consequences(+). You have a bunch of glycogen in your muscles and liver, for one thing, and your body just has to release that energy into your bloodstream as glucose. It's really that simple, but the impression I get from a lot of people is that their blood sugar regulation is only half-working. They take it for granted that if they miss lunch, they're going to be a wreck in the afternoon. They become tired and irritable, and they may even have headaches. That shouldn't be considered normal. A sugar crash isn't a normal reaction to a brief interruption of a healthy diet; it's a warning sign that your diet before the crash was not healthy.
(+) I won't swear this holds true if you exercise intensely, since I haven't tried it, but the paleo lifestyle guys say they have no problem exercising on their "lean" days.
I won't swear this holds true if you exercise intensely, since I haven't tried it, but the paleo lifestyle guys say they have no problem exercising on their "lean" days.
I don't have any problems having a rather intensive strenght training session after about 16 hours without food, and my performance does not seem to suffer. I didn't try anything more extreme than that (yet).
That depends on where you live. In some more urban areas, huge Walmarts and Wegmans are nowhere to be found. I find Safeway and Giant to be the bargin places when comparing to Harris Teeter or Whole Foods in my area. (Arlington, VA)
if you want to save on coffee, buy green beans and roast. I pay around $30 for 5lbs of green beans that are extremely high quality. you can do far cheaper than that though.
It definitely is cheaper, but pan roasting coffee on a stove can take quite a bit of time, is a fire-hazard, and causes quite a bit of irritating smoke and fumes for a few days. It sure tastes good though.
It's certainly cheaper than an official bean roaster. I'll have to buy one and see what a popcorn machine is, because I don't think I've ever seen one, and I assume you aren't talking about the ones at movie theaters.
You should be able to get $4-5/lb of green beans fairly easily. The lower quality roasted beans typically go for $6/lb. I roast my own beans for taste though, it truly is superior if you do a good roast.
If you live in the bay area, you can probably just drive to sweet maria's. The coffee capital of western hemisphere is supposedly in east bay where all the coffee comes in.
The taste of coffee is directly proportional to the length of time sitting on the shelf after roasting. Even the worst-grade green beans taste great after a fresh roast. I roast my beans in a $9 popcorn machine I bought at Walgreens.
no problem. the cheapest (and still good quality) can be found in many middle eastern shops. they wont sell them by the canvas sack, but you can usually get a pound or two for a couple of bucks and its going to be better than walmart brand.
I save money on coffee by not buying it. ;-) Instead, I found Jet Alert 200mg caffeine tablets. They're about $3.70 for 90 tablets. Each tablet is equivalent to two cups of coffee, which really means one cup of coffee, the way we tend to serve it. I usually take one around 10am, and another around 3pm.
The good: no, uh, 'intestinal distress', whiter teeth, better breath, no buzzy feeling like I get with coffee, and I feel like I'm alert for longer and more consistently. Also, I generally feel mellower than when I'm drinking coffee, and I have no explanation as to why.
The bad: I still crave the taste and ritual of coffee once in awhile. I have one or two cups per week, skipping the caffeine pill, of course.
Please do not do this. I am sure you don't have the equipment to measure an appropriate dose of caffeine (because scales accurate to 100 milligrams are not very cheap for household use...), and it is not safe to 'eyeball' it. You will start to notice unpleasant effects (restlessness, etc) around 200-500mg, and then above that (say 600-1000mg) you may start to get into what could be called toxic effects (palpitations/arrhythmias, GI bleeding, potential for seizures). Caffeine has a half life of 5-8 hours and so by the time you go for your next dose you probably haven't cleared the first one, so you can definitely build up serum concentration.
Your body can develop a dependency on caffeine and you'll get splitting headaches when you aren't taking it. I also had a friend in college who developed a light but unpleasant allergic reaction to caffeine after (ab)using caffeine pills.
It is not easy to die from caffeine toxicity, but it is definitely possible when you have powder on hand. One or two spoonfuls will do it, so if you have children in the house I recommend even more strongly against having this powder around.
Oh, and the stuff is BITTER. Really, really unpalatable.
EDIT: Oh, and don't base the amount you take on the size of a caffeine pill. Tablets, capsules, etc. are formulated with binders, preservatives, and inert ingredients that often take up much, much more space than the active compound. (I'm a pharmacist).
> I am sure you don't have the equipment to measure an appropriate dose of caffeine (because scales accurate to 100 milligrams are not very cheap for household use...)
The powder can be used by volume; it's not hard to be precise down to a quarter teaspoon or less...
> it is not safe to 'eyeball' it.
Huh? It's perfectly safe to eyeball it if you are not utterly incompetent at sizing up volume; it's a fairly bulky powder and I divided mine up over 3000 pills so I know each pill has less than 130mg. You can find studies that use up to a gram. The LD50 for my bodymass is somewhere upwards of 43 grams, as opposed to the 200mg or so that I use. As a heavy tea drinker, I have plenty of tolerance (http://www.caffeinedependence.org/caffeine_dependence.html indicates at 40mg per 6oz, and each mug around 12oz, I'm easily getting 2-300mg a day).
> You will start to notice unpleasant effects (restlessness, etc) around 200-500mg, and then above that (say 600-1000mg) you may start to get into what could be called toxic effects (palpitations/arrhythmias, GI bleeding, potential for seizures)
Where are these figures coming from, and why on earth are you presenting them without qualification as if they apply to either me or the comment I was replying to? I'm guessing from how these are lowball numbers that they are meant, if at all, for people who do not consume caffeine regularly or at all. I've used ~600mg to see what happens, and I didn't see your toxic effects as one would expect from tolerance; even 300mg doesn't cause the slightest shaking if combined with l-theanine.
And even if I had noticed such negative effects, it wouldn't bother me because I would have to error by 3x the usual amount of powder. A quarter-teaspoon doesn't even hold that much in the first place!
> Caffeine has a half life of 5-8 hours and so by the time you go for your next dose you probably haven't cleared the first one, so you can definitely build up serum concentration.
I am well-aware of this, and don't use any after 5 PM or so; with a Zeo sleep tracker it's easy for me to see the effect of night caffeine use. (I can't speak to whether the original commenter is also responsible. But this is an aspect of caffeine that is not a problem with half-sensible use.)
> Your body can develop a dependency on caffeine and you'll get splitting headaches when you aren't taking it.
As with every other one of your claims, one's mileage will vary... Every few weeks I do quit all substances. I get a mild headache for a day, and that's about it. I think the guy I was replying to (a regular user of caffeine pills, remember?) also knows how withdrawal affects him and whether it is a problem or not.
> It is not easy to die from caffeine toxicity, but it is definitely possible when you have powder on hand.
I also have enough water on hand to kill myself.
> the stuff is BITTER. Really, really unpalatable.
It's not nearly as bad as some other things like piracetam. Not that it matters at all.
> Tablets, capsules, etc. are formulated with binders, preservatives, and inert ingredients that often take up much, much more space than the active compound.
Hence the earlier point about powders coming with a volume->dose specification which makes measuring much easier.
> I'm a pharmacist
Ah, so that explains the well-intentioned - yet over-generalized and somewhat alarmist - advice.
While we're at it, I'd point out that caffeine comes with a whole laundry list of long-term effects - both positive and negative: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_caffeine#Over... Given the ambiguity, it's not worth worrying about long-term effects unless you are highly risk-averse.
I've heard of that. Besides the obvious dose management, I wonder how quickly it's absorbed by your body versus the tablet. As I mentioned, I feel like the tablet gives me a more consistent, less spiky boost than coffee does.
I find it amusing that the guy who has two double-shot lattes a day just likes coffee, but the guy who takes the same amount of caffeine in pill form has 'quite an addiction' when they are both consuming the same amount of the drug in question.
> you should find yourself a delicious decaffeinated coffee.
Decaf coffee is universally worse than caffeinated. It's impossible to remove the caffeine from coffee beans without also removing a good deal of the chemicals that contribute to the flavor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeinated_coffee
Amusing, yes, but not illogical. If I'm away for work chances are I'll be at a starbucks 4 times a day, sometimes same at home. I love it. But I've never had a caffeine pill, and if I don't drink coffee I don't notice any difference. (Exception being that if I'm massively underslept one morning a coffee does have a really good impact on getting me to feel less shit.)
>I find it amusing that the guy who has two double-shot lattes a day just likes coffee,
I find it amusing that you say that, since I never implied any such thing. My father drinks coffee every morning and is a grump without it. He's just as much of an addict as someone who takes coffee pills. Trust me, I'm not one to use the "addiction" word as a scare word or to pass judgement. Though I do find it funny how often HN is anti-drug about things that are less dangerous and addictive than some recreational drugs.
>I find it amusing that you say that, since I never implied any such thing.
really? because four servings of coffee a day doesn't seem that much over the median dose, at least among people I know, if you adjust for body size. When I'm on, I consume more caffeine than that. So, to me, suggesting that someone has a problem when the dosage is that close to the median suggests that you are criticizing the delivery method more than the dosage.
While technically speaking many people (myself included) are 'addicted' to caffeine, I think comparing coffee dependence to something like alcohol dependence does not make a lot of sense; If I started every morning with a nice glass of scotch and finished a fifth every time I had real work to do, I'd likely be dead at this point. If I stop drinking caffeine, I sleep a lot and have a hard time getting work done. Some people get headaches. Withdrawal from long-term Alcohol abuse, on the other hand, often comes with hallucinations and sometimes death. Caffeine dependency isn't in the same class at all. In fact, while I agree that caffeine can be addictive, I'm not at all convinced that caffeine dependency is a bad thing.
I'm not criticizing the medium at all. In terms of health benefits, eating a caffeine pill is healthier than consuming the equivalent amount of coffee. No doubt alcohol withdrawl is worse, but if we're performing comparative metrics, I can vaporize cannabis for two months straight and stop all of the sudden without so much as a thought. I drank a twelve pack of coke across 4 days and had headaches for that Friday and Saturday.
I just don't know what you want me to say. It's not an addiction? Okay. Do you feel better? It's a chemical stimulant that you notice when you stop consuming it. You consume it so that you stay functional.
You can sugar coat it or say that it's not like being addicted to alcohol, but it doesn't change the fact that if you cut it out for a few weeks, you'd be more productive without the cost, dependency or negative side effects of coffee. The fact that you KNOW that, and continue to drink it, quite frankly supports the notion that it's an addiction.
People don't consume it just to stay functional, there are positives associated with caffeine that may outweigh the negatives. In particular, if you have any dementia in the family, it is one of the only known effective ways to reduce that risk.
That's absolutely fair and I was slightly familiar with the idea of benefits of caffeine. Do I think that we were discussing these benefits? Not really. Like I said, I don't have a problem with people supplementing with caffeine. As I've mentioned, I do it occasionally, I just don't make it part of my daily routine.
>I can vaporize cannabis for two months straight and stop all of the sudden without so much as a thought.
Now, I have little personal experience, and I'm not an expert; but I /have/ seen people lose their jobs due to their performance being diminished because of habitual marijuana use. I've never seen anyone lose a job because of caffeine.
I mean, I know plenty of people who use marijuana occasionally on the weekends and seem no worse for wear; from my understanding, it's not as bad as alcohol, and you may be right that it's not addictive, but it's certainly more harmful than Caffeine.
>but it doesn't change the fact that if you cut it out for a few weeks, you'd be more productive without the cost, dependency or negative side effects of coffee.
This is not true for me. Personally, I tend to ramp up my caffeine use slowly over a number of months, because I do develop a resistance. During these months, I am /significantly/ more effective than without caffeine, even if I quit for months.
Now, I do build up a resistance, so every few months I quit for a while, as I do eventually get to the point where I have diminishing returns. For me, this doesn't result in headaches, just a few days of more sleep than usual and reduced performance. Assuming I get my 12 hours a day of sleep, the reduced performance is still much better than, say, a hangover. I'm up to baseline performance within a week. (my baseline performance is /significantly/ lower than my caffeinated performance.)
I'd love to see that claim backed up by one iota of science. Considering it takes less to overdose on caffeine, caffeine has actual chemical withdrawl symptoms, that cannabis has numerous anti-cancer properties that are acknowledged by everyone (including the governmental organizations tasked with analyzing it, etc) except the US government, etc.
You're still missing the point anyway. You continue to discuss all the merits of caffeine and how you use it that specifically DEPICT how it is a habit forming drug and support all of my points. That's my only point, and you and this other guy keep repeating yourselves about how you're "good people" or something and defending yourselves from attacks that I'm not making.
Thanks for the immediate downvote too. :) Cheers!
tl;dr: I point out that caffeine is a habit forming stimulant, fellow HNer takes offense at the categorization, goes on downvoting spree and defends himself against attacks that I'm not making.
Cool. Love to see that commenting continues to improve here.
wait, what? first, I didn't downvote you. Even if I could, I would not; and I can't. the downvote button doesn't exist for posts that are responses to mine. Next, I'm not arguing that caffeine is not a habit forming drug. It obviously is habit forming. What I'm trying to say is that because the side effects are so mild, it's not that big of a deal that it is habit forming. Next, I'm not saying people who use a certain drug are 'bad people' - just that some drugs carry higher levels of risk than others, and I believe that caffeine has a very low risk of causing serious problems, even though it is habit forming.
Now, you seemed to think that the guy ought to kick his caffeine habit, which would suggest that you think there are some dangers or other serious downsides to caffeine dependency, which is why I'm addressing that. If you do have evidence for serious side effects to caffeine use, please do cite references. As far as I can tell, caffeine just isn't a very dangerous drug when consumed in anything like the usual quantities, and the side effects are fairly mild for most people.
You seemed to suggest that marijuana is better than Caffeine because it is less habit forming. My point was that marijuana has some major risks associated with it; even if it's not habit forming at all, and my observations (that heavy users of marijuana tend to have significant and long-term loss of productivity) are mere coincidence and the stuff is completely safe from a pharmaceutical standpoint, there are very serious legal dangers associated with obtaining and using marijuana.
Now, maybe we are just talking past oneanother, but I'm not seeing how you are going from what I'm saying to "I'm a good person"
You're defending caffeine use. Please show me one place where I suggested he should stop or sad that using caffeine was bad. In fact, I've gone out of my way half a dozen times to suggest the opposite.
All I did was ask why, rather than replace coffee with caffeine, he didn't simply kick caffeine all together.
Heh, legal dangers aren't probably as severe a concern as dangers during acquisition. I would suggest that anyone using cannabis at work is as dumb as anyone drinking at work. If you want to light up after work, I don't really see how that affects your performance at work. You don't get a hangover from cannabis use.
Maybe my tone conveyed otherwise, but I was really just curious as to why it was easier for the (parent, parent, parent) comment to keep using caffeine in a different form if he didn't enjoy drinking coffee.
I guess I'm still surprised at the ease of which people can ween themselves off of what I would call large doses of it. But that skepticism really isn't fair of me, especially considering peoples' default opinion of cannabis use and how much all of my experiences and friends' experiences differ from the typical stoner stereotype.
I am curious now though, when you say "heavy users tend to have long-term loss of productivity", is that even when at work, not high? Is that even after they've stopped smoking for long periods of time? Because even anecdotally, I've never really heard of that. I mean, I ditched a friend because he was addicted to pot. He was addicted to cigarettes and drinking and attention and designer glasses and he used people to get his way so I don't really think cannabis was the root issue, but I'm surprised to hear of people in the tech industry experiencing people that suffer as a result of use.
Oh well, I'm way off topic. tl;dr, I think we were talking past each other, more just making different points. Sorry for any attitude I had earlier. It's no excuse but it's been a long day, had some major presentations going on.
>You're defending caffeine use. Please show me one place where I suggested he should stop or sad that using caffeine was bad
At the beginning of this thread, you wrote:
>That's quite an addiction you have. Have you considered kicking it?
Which I interpreted to mean that you thought this caffeine addiction was a bad thing, and that he should try to kick it. Of course, it's possible that you were asking if he had withdrawal symptoms when he stopped or perhaps something else entirely, but that's why I was defending caffeine use.
>I am curious now though, when you say "heavy users tend to have long-term loss of productivity", is that even when at work, not high? Is that even after they've stopped smoking for long periods of time?
Honestly, I don't know if the people I've known with those problems were high at the time or not; Either there was some sort of lasting effect, or the people in question chose to continue using when it was clear that they were damaging their career.
I mean, like I said, I know far more people who use every now and then and seem to be fine with it, but for some people, it can be (or, at least contribute to) a problem.
Please do explain how taking 400mg of caffeine per day constitutes an addiction.
I also take a daily multivitamin that contains ginseng, and a 'super' vitamin B pill. The latter makes the biggest difference in energy levels. I guess I'm 'addicted' to vitamin B, as well.
Please do explain how taking 400mg of caffeine per day constitutes an addiction.
I also take a daily multivitamin that contains ginseng, and a 'super' vitamin B pill. The latter makes the biggest difference in energy levels. I guess I'm 'addicted' to vitamin B, as well.
I would say the difference between addiction and supplementation is not in what you take, but rather what happens if you do not take it.
I'm supplementing with Vitamin D but I often forget to take it, sometimes for days.
Now would you be able to forget your caffeine? If yes, I'd say there's no addiction. If you'd start feeling cravings in a few hours, that's a different story ...
Are you kidding? You're taking a stimulant to get through the day and when one form of it is taken away, you supplement with another form.
How is that different than a junkie getting their fix to stave off withdrawl? You don't need to get defensive about it, but if you're taking a concentrated form of a drug to get through your day... and you notice when you don't take it... that's the definition of an addiction.
when one form of it is taken away, you supplement with another form.
Again, what? I decided to try caffeine in a pill form and found that I mostly prefer it to the coffee form. Nothing was taken away.
How is that different than a junkie getting their fix to stave off withdrawl
For starters, because I don't experience any withdrawl.
You don't need to get defensive about it.
I'm not the least bit defensive about it. Rather, I find it bizarre that you make so many assumptions, and view taking a legal, safe stimulant as an inherent addiction.
if you're taking a concentrated form of a drug to get through your day
Again, where did I say anything about 'getting through the day'? Where did I imply that I 'need' caffeine? I should not benefit from a chemical, which seems to have no downside for my body, simply because it offends your arbitrary principles? How is it a "concentrated form of a drug" when a single cup of coffee contains 150mg of caffeine, in what seems to be a more rapidly absorbed liquid form? (Incidentally, a Starbucks Tall drip has 240mg, while a Grande has 320mg)
I hope you see that you're projecting a lot onto my statements.
and you notice when you don't take it... that's the definition of an addiction.
I can't get over the amount of defending people do here of DOSING caffeine. Your first comment was specifically talking about the psychological effects that you're getting from the chemical stimulant caffeine. You find that going to the pure, drug-only, form of it is better for you. You clearly consume it for the stimulant effects, or why else would you take it.
> someone who is physiologically dependent on a substance; abrupt deprivation of the substance produces withdrawal symptoms
If you can quit caffeine when you're taking 400mg and NOT experience any side effects, go see a doctor because you're a modern miracle. It's a stimulant, you take it regularly. If it's not an addiction... it's certainly a habit that you seem to be unwilling to give up.
Note that NO where did I say it was a bad thing. I mean, it costs money, but I'm sure it's not a lot. I was merely curious if you'd actually tried to stop consuming caffeine. The response taking offense at me calling it precisely what it is... is telling in my armchair-psychiatrist opinion.
I can't get over the amount of defending people do here of DOSING caffeine.
Since I don't want to keep going in circles, I'm just going to say this: replace, "dosing caffeine" with the less inflammatory, "drinking coffee." Now, consider what the difference is.
Regarding your claim that you didn't say it was a bad thing, I will remind you that you wrote, "How is that different than a junkie getting their fix to stave off withdrawl." If that's not passing judgment on someone, I don't know what is.
You're not drinking coffee though, you're, I'm laughing here because I keep having to reiterate this...
You're not consuming coffee because you like coffee. That's obvious. You like the buzz. You like the stimulant effect of the drug caffeine. I am comparing in the motions of a junkie... I know caffeine addicts that are bigger caffeine junkies than some hard drug users I know. It's neither here nor there, but I could care less if you shoot heroin, let alone drink coffee or take caffeine pills. If it helps you do your job and it doesn't ruin your life, fine. Lord knows I'm sick this week during a week that I simply can not be sick, I'm using Aleve and Mountain Dew like they're going out of style.
I just wanted to point out that plenty of people are very productive without caffeine. Seeing as caffeine doesn't give you abnormal abilities... it seems to be that it would be better to not be dependent on it, or not use it as a crutch, or whatever it is that you're using it for.
> we found a few "living on a dollar a day" blogs, but every single one bought in bulk and then calculated the cost of each scoop they took out of the bin.
What's wrong with that? It's by far the cheapest way to cook. Bulk makes buying organic cheap too, as long as you don't shop at supermarkets. They have a habit of avoiding organic brands that are price-competitive with existing products.
You have to store those products somewhere. 25lb - 50lb bags or buckets of flour, rice, beans and/or other dry goods are not small. Buying produce in bulk may save you money, but you must use the produce before it goes bad which can start to happen within a few days or a week.
My biggest issue is with wastage. My budget is certainly not a few dollars/day - we eat out a lot and our schedule changes (last minute invites, etc) so it's hard to buy fresh things in advance without losing a fair bit along the way.
My idea is for a guide and cookbook that focuses on:
- ingredients that can be stored for a long time (tins of coconut milk, rice, etc)
- things that can be cooked and then frozen/saved for long periods
- shortcuts that aren't awful (frozen vegetables aren't always the devil)
- things you can make with fading vegetables (soups, stock, etc)
Have always wondered if it would be worth doing. Not a glamorous cookbook concept (like most that sell here as gifts), but might appeal to some?
I would buy that... would be very useful for my lack of schedule.
I've collected a fairly eclectic list of throw together recipes in my head than can be made from long life ingredients without being terrible for you.
I bet there's lots of tips to be found - stuff like freezing rice, freezing fresh herbs, other things alot of people dont know about.
For what it is worth 50Lbs of grain (in my case 2-row barley) fit neatly in two 5-gallon home depot buckets. And is enough base grain for five 5-gallon batches of beer.
I guess it's not a train smash, but most people don't buy flour by the bin. The main problem I had with their approach was not eating a balanced diet and it being unsustainable.
why do you need additional vitamin C from orange juice?
IIRC the RDA for vitamin C is easily achieved by eating plenty of vegetables, which you must have been doing since you shod meat.
Cheese is too expensive and you can't make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk. It just doesn't set when you add the rennet
Use a mixture of skim milk and cream. Or take a trip into the country and buy 5 gallons from a dairy farmer before it's homogenized.
Won't you spend as much on gas driving to wherever you decide to bulk shop (Bay area isn't tiny) compared to your neighbourhood supermarket, as you'd save by bulk shopping?
It really depends on what you are buying and the nature of the 'market'. It's not only bulk buying either; if you buy in a different way, you can save money depending on the market.
An example I am involved in is with wine. It is cheapest to buy wine by the case, en primeur (basically buying in advance). Yet many wine lovers don't want a whole case. So consortia are set up on wine forums to buy several cases and split them across tens of people. They are often setup when one member of the forum spies a 'parcel' of wine going for a good price at a reputable retailer. This can typically save around 40-50% and given these wines are generally £15/bottle, and in some cases a LOT more, the savings are pretty good. Normally delivery is arranged to go to one person in a given area, who then distributes to others or waits for the others to pick-up.
I've thought about putting together a brief founders' cookbook with a dozen or so of the recipes for things that I survived on in the lean days that you can make for about a buck or two and in about 20 minutes.
The real trick is not buying prepared foods at all. Things like flour, rice, eggs, beans, pasta, potatoes, fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, yogurt, cheese, ground beef, fish filets and chicken breasts are all reasonably cheap and you can have a lot of variety with a relatively small set of ingredients on hand. With some practice you get to where you know how to parallelize the cooking steps so that you can get everything done and even cleaned up faster than you could run out for fast-food.
Secretly I want our next office to have a full kitchen since one of the things I miss when I'm at our office is being able to cook in the middle of the day.
I have looked at it actually, and it's pretty neat, but for the way that I do things it has a fatal flaw: the ingredients are exotic (i.e. where I live they're expensive and you'd need to go to a specialty shop for some of them) and don't overlap much between recipes.
From the looks of things, he's a much better cook than me. The stuff I make is far more ghetto, but revolves around like 15 ingredients or so that I basically buy every time I go to the grocery store. That keeps me from having to actually plan meals. I usually cook in the opposite direction -- I look at what I have on hand and figure out what I can make from that.
My gut sense is that that would be more approachable for folks that are transitioning from fast-food and frozen pizzas.
the ingredients are exotic (i.e. where I live they're expensive and you'd need to go to a specialty shop for some of them) and don't overlap much between recipes.
I had a housemate who kept a copy of the Wycliffe International Cookbook. It was originally meant for overseas missionaries, written with the expectation that the user would have trouble getting access to the wide variety of ingredients specified by most cookbooks (which also made it useful for a college student kitchen).
To use the cliche - there's an app for that. It's called Epicurious and it's great. Not daily/weekly breakdowns but you can type in what you have in your fridge and it'll tell you what you can make with it. Of course if you have a smartphone or a tablet you also have google. Got a mind-blowing recipe for marinaded steak online that everyone loved :)
A few of those things are not particularly cheap in Australia: fresh fruit and vegetables, milk, cheese, chicken breasts. Eggs are also fairly expensive presuming you buy free-range.
3L of milk is about $3 if you buy generic/big-brand and $4.50 if you buy "Dairy Farmers" - many people (myself included) avoid the loss-leading by the major brands as they are trying to squeeze out smaller producers.
I'm sorry, but I really disagree with any sort of dieting advice articles appearing on Hacker News for multiple reasons. Reading this thread only backs up my own thoughts and reasons why I dislike these articles.
First of all, everyone has their own idea of healthy.
Second, there are so many different diets, fads, foods, etc to eat or follow that's it ridiculous to even argue one way or another. Some eat lots of protein, some eat lots of fat, some eat low fat and high carbohydrates and everyone believes their method or means of eating is healthy. I'm sure no matter which way anyone argues there is a book, article, pubmed article to back up your ways. Making statements such as that can't be healthy, or you need to eat vegetables, fats, a certain amount of calories, and other similar statements is only someone else's opinion or belief and everyone is different.
Go with what makes you feel good. The best diet is the one you can follow. Listen to your body.
I would down vote this, but I can't down vote yet.
I'll probably get down voted for all this text, but I feel that strongly about this.
Frankly, what else bothers me is that almost any time someone expresses disagreement, they get down voted. Thus, people who disagree often times probably end up never posting.
> First of all, everyone has their own idea of healthy.
> Second, there are so many different diets, fads, foods, etc to eat or follow that's it ridiculous to even argue one way or another...
> Go with what makes you feel good. The best diet is the one you can follow. Listen to your body.
Don't mistake the presence of disagreement as evidence for there being no fact of the matter. It's of course difficult to make strong claims about complex machines like people without large, expensive randomized studies, leaving the door open for people to argue for whatever preconceived ideas they have. But that doesn't mean there is no answer, nor that you should just do whatever makes you feel good.
That said, yes, these threads are largely useless.
> I would down vote this, but I can't down vote yet.
I don't think anyone can downvote posts (aka articles, links). (At least I can't with 1.6k of karma.) It's just comments you can downvote after you get <s>200</s> 500 karma or so.
Thanks for replying. I figured people wouldn't read into it like that, but what I have learned is that one has to state very explicitly on Hacker News.
I agree with you and I was hesitant to state what I did about that.
Off Topic: I really wish one could not up or down vote anything without requiring a comment in reply stating your reasoning. I think it could lead to much more active and interesting discussions breaking out.
Maybe I was a little harsh stating I would down vote the submission.
I probably should have prefaced my post stating that any post that talks about diet and/or nutrition on Hacker News ends up turning into geeks arguing about proper diet and nutrition and telling others what is and is not healthy.
Which by reading this submission seems to stay true to past submissions.
Diet and nutrition is one of those subjects everyone feels they know very well when they don't. Kind of like how everyone feels they are an expert at driving.
Some eat lots of protein, some eat lots of fat, some eat low fat and high carbohydrates and everyone believes their method or means of eating is healthy.
Well, there's too much fixation on micronutrients such as carbs, fats etc. 100g carbs from HFCS is not the same as 100g carbs from vegetables. 100g fat from industially processed seed oils is not the same as 100g duck fat.
I personally prefer not to eat anything that comes packaged, in a box, can etc. and go for meat, fish, poultry, fruit, veggies, nuts etc. But I guess that qualifies me as someone who "thinks his way of eating is healthy".
Go with what makes you feel good. The best diet is the one you can follow. Listen to your body.
Well, there are a couple of issues with that. I personally feel good on a diet with copious amounts of beer and pizza, add ice cream to taste. Side effects may be years or even decades away for a healthy person, but some of them may be irreversible by the time they are evident.
Your body will never tell you "oh I feel my bone density is 1% lower today" or "oh I feel my arterie wall is 0.1mm thicker today". Some people find out they have osteoporosis only when they suffer a broken bone.
The other thing is that all of us (with the exception of those with genetic disorders) posess the same biochemistry. So I'm not sure how far can you go with "listen to your body". Maybe someone can genuinely feel bad on a diet that mostly consists of fruit, vegetables, some animal products, some nuts and lacks processed sugars, grains, vegetable oils, trans fats and fast food, but I think I'm yet to hear about such a person.
>Second, there are so many different diets, fads, foods, etc to eat or follow that's it ridiculous to even argue one way or another.
I hate to invoke the name of Tim Ferriss for fear of the downvotes, but that's exactly one of the things he puts forward in The Four Hour Body.
To paraphrase, "Here's what works for me. It might not work for you. The only way to know if something works for you is to try it, and measure your results."
As a vegan on a limited budget, this approximates many of my meals (though I could stand to eat more nuts and seeds and fewer grains), and I can attest that any day I eat roughly this mix of foods is a day I feel superbly healthy.
I would suggest replacing the low-fat dairy milk with a non-dairy alternative such as soy or almond milk. Although this would up the cost to $3.50ish/day, non-dairy milks are usually fortified with more calcium than dairy milk contains naturally, and are often fortified with B12 as well.
If one can afford to invest in a soy milk maker, or persuade family to buy it as a present, making soy milk is extremely cheap. Also, what comes out of a soy milk maker is massively better than what you can get in a box.
I use a combination of soaked soy beans and ground coconut, for a grand total of about 15 cents a quart, including a bit of salt, vanilla, and a tablespoon of sugar (optional). It's a major dietary staple for me. I use the Joyoung CTS1048, reviewed here: http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/004154.php
Such a device pays for itself in a month or two, if one is a regular soy/nut milk aficionado.
* That isn't fortified with calcium + B12 (and all the other stuff like vitamin A and D) like the store-bought stuff.
* If you really want to be simple, you can make cashew milk in a blender with: 1 cup cashews + 3 cups water. (Works better than making almond milk as there is no pulp to strain out)
Thanks for the link. I didn't realize the machines and process cost were that cheap. Combined with a stand mixer and freeze bowl, one could churn out soy ice cream for two orders of magnitude lower cost than store-bought (which easily runs $10-$15/qt).
Just a FYI. I have personally read a lot of negative things about soy heavy diets. Not that I know what I am talking about, but if you do eat a lot of soy it's worth looking into.
PS: The human body can cope with horrible diets for reasonably long periods of time. Also, trying to balance everything correctly every day is vary hard and probably less useful than focusing on what you eat over a week/month.
No, it is not. Pointing out the idiocy of killing a thought out comment without an intelligent rebuttal is retarded -- supporting that retardation is worse.
Wow, the amount of protein in this diet is really low. And all those carbs may not be for everyone. This diet may be cheap, but not healthy.
If you are the type of person who puts on weight easily (like me), than I would suggest doing 50% to 60%+ of your calories from protein and 20% or less from carbs. The easiest source of protein are white eggs (in a carton), chicken (pre-cooked), beans (get low sodium), and protein shakes (whey during the day and casein at night). All these foods can be prepared with just the microwave.
Eating carbs is the easiest way to gain extra pounds. Removing carbs also removes any food coma you may experience after eating a meal, allowing you to be more productive.
I lost like 30 lbs without trying that hard by eliminating carbs and focusing on protein. The degree to which I'm in shape one day is correlated to how much carbs I have avoided in the previous few days.
And of course, take vitamin supplements. Throwing in some veggies for the fiber, or take fiber supplements.
Back when our diet was 54% carbs and 12.6% fats & oils, we were a lot thinner than today (43% carbs, 24% fats & oils).
I'd say there's too much fixation on "carbs" and "fats" and too little on the source. Would you agree that eating a fresh apple gives a different effect compared on eating a couple of teaspoonfuls of white sugar, even if the carb and caloric content is equal? I wish there was a breakdown for the source of micronutrients somewhere.
And of course, the total amount of calories and sedentary lifestyles contribute greatly to people being overweight.
But what does contribute to the growth in rates of cancer, diabetes, heart diseas and other "diseases of civilisation"? This is not so easily answered by just breaking down the food by carbs/fats/protein.
That may be so, but being thin dies not equate being healthy. Every body is different though, and such a diet might work for you, while I need a lot more protein and a whole lot less carbs. That being said, whatever works for you or me, does not necessarily mean we're healthy.
I think the daily changes in how "in shape" you are reflect how much water you have in your body from eating carbohydrate. Nobody loses a noticeable amount of fat in one day.
You lost weight by decreasing the amount of energy you were eating. Low-carb diets are an effective way to do this, because they are generally restrictive (less variety means less overeating) and because protein is very satiating. But there are other ways, and yes, some of them involve eating a lot of carbohydrates. The best thing is to choose something you can stick with. In that sense, your advice is not good, since 50-60% protein would make a lot of people want to barf.
I would go so far as to say there is no such thing as a diet that is "healthy" absent particular health goals. If you are overweight, one way to become healthier is to lose weight. In that sense, a low-energy diet is effective, independent of what foods it contains.
>since 50-60% protein would make a lot of people want to barf.
I don't think that's true. I'm currently on a diet that's fairly high in protein (and to go with the theme of the article, comes out to $4-$6 a day I believe). I don't think it's barf-worthy.
Example:
Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with a little salsa on top, bacon, mixed veggies
Lunch: Usually salad of romaine, spinach, mixed greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, cheese, grilled chicken, and homemade dressing. Sometimes I'll have chili instead of a salad.
Dinner: Usually a pork chop or chicken breast, some spiced lentils, and mixed veggies
I think that's a pretty well balanced high protein diet. I'd estimate it as 60% protein/20% fat/20% carbs. The veggies add relatively few carbs. The only thing it's really "missing" is starchy carbs. Sure, if your high protein plan was 2 pounds of beef a day, I'd go and say it's barf-worthy, but I'd argue most low-carb diets aren't.
A lot of people, not necessarily you :) My main point is that people have different psychological reactions which we shouldn't ignore.
Also, I think your diet is much higher in fat and lower in protein than you are estimating. For example, the protein sources in your breakfast are only around 30% protein, with 70% fat. Dressing and cheese in your salad are also very high in fat. My source for these numbers is nutritiondata.com. Every food has a percentage macronutrient breakdown, as well as vitamins, fats, and amino acids.
As tasty as your diet seems(and I bet it is), being Asian, I will barf within a couple of days if I did not have some rice or starch in the diet. And it has nothing to do with the food, it is just the way I have grown up. To me, a moderate protein diet is more palatable and hence more sustainable in the long run.
Yoy body will adapt if you give it the chance. Your mind, that's different.
Right now I will barf within a couple of days if I don't eat some fatty pork. I never eat rice and potatoes after 30+ years of eating them daily, and I don't miss them at all.
He priced a 50lb bag of brown rice. I wonder, could you eat that much brown rice before it started to go bad? (Brown rice keeps less than a year; a quick web search says about six months.) You'd have to eat over a quarter pound (uncooked dry weight) per day every day to finish a bag in six months.
Maybe he didn't take that into account. I doubt that he's eating that much rice every day. On the other hand, if you are cooking for more than one person you might be able to go through the bag in less that six months.
If you want to go low carb, I would suggest making it up with fat instead of protein. High protein diets can affect the kidney by increasing the load, especially important if you do not have perfect blood pressure. Milk thistle (silymarin) can help alleviate it.
Can I ask: What is the motivation of trying to limit the cost of your food to such a low (for first-world) amount? I am really weirded out by the number of me-too responses, the philosophy of such extreme saving on food is alien to me.
For me, delicious food is near the top of my priority list. I really do not stint at all, my grocery bill is abt $40/day for 2 people... that is $15k/yr, such a bargain considering: rent+utilities on my modest apt is $35k/yr, 2 cars (Subaru+Toyota... not fancy) abt $20k/yr all up (I live in Australia).
1. Perhaps they have substantially less spending money than you do. (I never understood cutting back on food expenses until my wife and I went through some tough financial times.)
2. Perhaps they don't value food as much as you do. I enjoy good food, but I'd never say that it is near the top of my priority list. I'd much rather have cheap food and a better broadband connection than the reverse.
3. Perhaps they are trying to scrape together every bit of money they can to put towards their startup. There is a reason that PG uses the phrase "ramen profitable."
I'm scraping together every bit of money towards my startup... but not skimping on food at all. Perhaps that's because it's a food startup and I'd feel hypocritical eating ramen everyday! But, really, it's more because I think there are better things to skimp on than food.. i.e. the fuel that makes us who we are and sustains us everyday.
Besides I've got 3 years of data to show that it's possible to eat cheaply and still get great food.. you just have to do a few things:
1. buy in volume
2. cook for yourself/others, don't eat out
3. cut back on meat
4. waste as little as possible!
Agreed, I don't get the stinginess on food either. Among price, healthiness, taste and ease of preparation, price is my last priority. I'd love to read a blog post or article that optimizes on the other three criteria instead.
Consider that you have $70k/yr in living expenses, and many people don't even come anywhere close to earning $70k/yr.
Food is one of the places you can cut a lot of your spending without needing to make major lifestyle changes, so it's one of the first places people look.
Also, I think you will find different people place different value on food flavor. I personally am very, very deep into "eat to live" territory, and I take a certain amount of pride in that approach.
Cut out the cars and he's down to $50k/yr. Though it can be a social disadvantage to varying degrees, it is possibly to live without a car in most urban areas in Australia. Still $20/day per a person is much higher than average. It's possible to cut down on that quite a lot and still enjoy nice food. Then again, it might be these people who will spend anything who are pushing the food prices up here. Food inflation has been rather significant in Australia in recent years (it's still at least a percentage point higher than general CPI). Though probably also a result of the duopoly held by Woolworths and Coles.
I agree with you. I don't understand why people try to save in food to keep their 'lifestyle'. I'd rather not going out (bar/club/coffe shop) than skimp in food (which is a source of health and happiness!).
This is including eating out for lunch on weekdays though, which costs at least 10 dollars a day.
Fruit and vegetables are more expensive. A decent apple will cost about 1.50 each. 1 metric litre of milk costs about 2 dollars, and 10 eggs wil probably run you around 3 dollars.
Meat, depending on the origin and cut, can cost you about 6 dollars for about 150 grams (or a much, much more).
You can get frozen manufactured food for fairly reasonable prices, but I'm kind of a snob and pretty much will not eat anything that has ingredients I don't understand in it.
Broccoli crowns are on sale this week at Lucky (in the Bay Area) for $0.57 / lb. This should allow the OP to shave at least $0.50 per day from his food budget. :-)
As the co-founder of AnyLeaf, I talk to lots of people about saving on food and groceries. Some people "trade down" to save money, e.g., by replacing meat with beans. My personal strategy is to determine the diet I'd like to eat and that I consider healthy (the Paleo Diet, in my case) and then plan my shopping around the weekly sales offered by grocery stores. The variation in the price of a given item at a given store throughout the year is huge. Almost everything goes on sale for at least 50% off at one time or another. Also, every week there's almost always a good sale being offered on some product in every category (meat, seafood, fruit, vegetables, etc). A typical meal for me is meat or seafood with some vegetable and some fruit for dessert. If there's a great sale on chicken breast, I'll have chicken breast. If the sale is on ground turkey, I'll have ground turkey. Likewise with fruit and vegetable choices. Shopping this way is a low-effort (if you use AnyLeaf) way to save substantially without trading down and compromising your nutritional goals.
He follows (old) USDA dietary recommendations, which stipulate no saturated fat, and 60% carbs. That is really, really bad. The ultimate reference is "Good Calories, Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes - it is meticulously researched and referenced, and is likely 40 years more up-to-date than your nutrition or medical professional.
Good Calories, Bad Calories is often based on incomplete science. It certainly does not make sense when viewed through the lens of some of the largest human dietary studies ever performed (such as the China Study; which Taubes "debunked" in his own unique fashion, but he can't alter the fact that it's among the best, longest, widest, and broadest studies of human diet available; to ignore it is to ignore good science and put your faith in hunches, which Taubes has a lot of).
The Japanese diet is one of several high carb diets that leads to excellent health and longevity. Many of the most successful regional diets are based heavily on rice, legumes, and vegetables, and are very carb-heavy. Ignoring those historically successful diets requires either an extremely myopic view of diet, or someone who has a controversial new book to sell.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting that following Taubes advice would necessarily be a bad thing. He recommends whole foods, and cutting out sugar and simple carbs and processed foods, which are excellent dietary choices to make. Most Americans would get healthier by eating as Taubes recommends. But, to claim that a low-fat, high-carb, diet is unhealthy, when there are mountains of evidence to the contrary in the form of several Asian and Mediterranean diets, is misleading, at best. The problem with the American diet is not in any one macro-nutrient...fat or carb. It is that we, as a people, eat garbage at every meal. Processed, sugared, stripped of everything good and injected with everything bad. 80% of the food at a supermarket is probably something humans shouldn't be eating, even in moderation, but most of us eat it daily and as the primary source of calories.
Taubes is another fad diet promoter. His fad diet is better than most, and has some decent science behind it. But, it's not the ultimate reference, and it's not on my list of books to recommend to people who just want some ideas about how to eat better (I recommend In Defense of Food for that; it's anti-fad, free of hyperbole and outlandish claims and is based on tradition and science).
His premise is simply that for the vast majority of people who are obese, the culprit is located within the high-carbohydrate aspect of their diet.
Good Calories, Bad Calories is about why the "garbage" people eat has caused them to get fat, and why it's not the saturated fat like experts have been telling the public for a generation.
It's not a book about the best way for everyone to eat like Michael Pollan's books are. If you believe it's about telling people "eat food, but not too many carbs" I understand why you think little of it.
It's hard to know enough to say definitively what the culprit is. That's why Taubes is mostly content to argue merely the cause of increased obesity is located within the high-carbohydrate aspect of the modern diet. But even that has been a controversial enough position.
The problem could be primarily that the Kool-Aid, fruit juice, Tang, soda and Sunny Delight (and other sweet food like sugared-up yogurt and maybe even infant formula) that we've been feeding our kids for the last sixty years has halfway burned out many of their metabolisms while they were still young. It may have nothing to do with wheat. But we can be quite sure that the suspect(s) is a carbohydrate.
If that's so, those folks with a permanently injured insulin response will have a need for an appropriate diet, which may not be like what metabolically-healthy individuals can enjoy. Taubes takes the position that the most effective diets for them are ones which restrict some or all carbohydrates, which is not going to give you clogged arteries like the medical establishment has been saying.
That's about it. There are definitely other places you can go (i.e. the Heart Scan Blog) if you want to see arguments for wheat as a demon of the modern diet. Yet again, that also interacts with the modern insulin resistance that wasn't as much of an issue in the 1920's.
But we can be quite sure that the suspect(s) is a carbohydrate.
How can we be so sure? The most obvious culprit is total calories. From 1980 to the present, total caloric consumption increased by 500 calories/day (see table 1 of my report). Coincidentally, obesity increased over the same period. But lets ignore that.
Carb consumption decreased, both as a fraction of diet and in absolute numbers. Obesity increased. Taking these two facts together, you need to make a very convincing argument that carbs are really the problem, in spite of the fact that obesity and carb consumption are negatively correlated.
First off, I think this is good data and commend you for going back to the numbers to make your point. It's not perfect data - as the report says, by nature it's overstating actual consumption - but for short-term trends it is valuable.
But I don't see where gross carbohydrates are decreasing in Table 1. It seems like they went from 420g in the 80's (from under 400g in the 70's) to 480 or so a decade ago.
Taubes argues from the perspective of percentage of total intake. I suppose someone arguing with him could do the same. I tend to prefer the idea of discussing absolute consumption, as you've done, and when we look at it that way, Americans are eating more of everything, across the board: More fat, more sugar, more carbs, more white flour, more pasta, more sodas, more fruit, more meat, etc.
The simplest explanation is that we eat too much. Taubes often argues that's not true, and comes up with elaborate theories about insulin response and such to indicate that we eat too much not because we're gluttonous and too rich for our own good, but because we are victims of some hyper-fattening food (carbs). Taubes theory is a hunch, based on incomplete science. This was the point of my comment way up there at the start of all this. His theory might have some validity. But, you can't simply wave away the fact that we have vast data indicating that a high carb, low fat diet, can be extremely healthy and not lead to weight gain. In fact, the best evidence we have today from large populations indicates that a low-fat, low-sugar, high fiber diet, like that eaten by the Japanese until very recently or in some Mediterranean regions, is probably the best we can do for health and longevity.
It will take a lot of science to convince me that flipping that on its end and making saturated fats and animal proteins a core part of your diet is healthier (or even healthy, at all, though it does appear to be dramatically less dangerous than the American scientific establishment would have us believe).
Anyway, I don't know if Taubes is right or wrong about his insulin and carbs conspiracy theory. I do know, however, that our food production industry has figured out how to cram a lot of calories into foods with little to no nutrition. So, skip the processed/packaged foods. Eat more whole foods. More fresh/frozen produce. Stop buying things that are unrecognizably separated from their original form. i.e. if it started out as a pile of corn and some other ingredients and is now a can of Coke, a snack cake, a donut, a breakfast bar, a "chicken" nugget, or a "whole grain" breakfast cereal; skip it; it's probably not really food and is probably a net negative for your health.
Hmm. Maybe Gary Taubes has changed his approach, because in a typically-logorrhetic blog post last year, he went on about why low-fat calorie-restricted diets work exactly because the "absolute amount of carbohydrates consumed goes down."
Sorry, I meant a decrease from 1909-1919 to the present. I was definitely unclear, sorry about that. You are right, total carb consumption did increase since 1980.
But if carbs were the issue, shouldn't we have been fat in 1909-1919, thin in the 80's, and fat again?
I think it's troublesome to compare general disappearance data from so long ago. There can be long-term trends of things like waste and changing methodologies that mess things up.
I think your point -- that overall carbs are not the issue -- is right on, though. Looking at wheat data from Statistics Canada going back about as far, people seem to have been eating a ton more wheat a hundred years ago than they do today, like 30% more. And yet in those days obesity had a <1% incidence, by some accounts.
I think that's not inconsistent with fingering particular carbohydrates (and even the way they're consumed) as the cause of modern weight problems. That is, I don't think that falsifies the Sunny Delight hypothesis I proposed earlier. There's a reason the Kool-Aid Man is that large -- as mentioned by others, it seems like fructose is the trans fat of carbohydrates.
And, I would say, food disappearance data doesn't help at all in answering the question of the best way for the obese to lose fat. After all, in the 1910s, there almost weren't any obese people! Now that over a third of Americans are statistically obese, this is its own highly relevant issue.
For the record, I realized something interesting about wheat consumption in the USA, which is that sugar follows wheat very often in the modern diet. It's very challenging to find packaged sandwich bread in a USA supermarket which doesn't contain a significant amount of sugar or HFCS. So today, wheat consumption tells you a lot about sugar consumption, but that may not have been the case a hundred years ago.
I'm not a nutritionist. My understanding, however, is that sugars are the culprit. When you look at what has changed over the years, that's the big one.
There are lots of other articles concerning this, but I felt this was the best one for pure information. He's not alone in discussing this, so I don't have to just take his word for it. But like I said, I'm not a professional in this area.
Actually, if you look, you'll discover fats and oils have increased more than sugar. Consumption of fats and oils increased 90% (from 12.6% of diet to 23.9%), while sugar consumption only increased 34% (from 12.9 to 17.3%).
(By "increase", I mean from 1909-2004. See table 4 of my link.)
If between fats and sugars, one is "bad" and the other is not, then any increase in the one that is bad will have negative effects regardless of how much the non-bad one is increased. Nutrition and human biology is obviously more complicated than just this, but I'm just pointing out that data like this provides as much evidence for Jason's argument as it does for your argument.
Also, FWIW, I have seen the video, and to me the main message was that fructose is bad when fiber consumption is too low.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. It's the increase in the fructose in our diet via juices and sugars. Be wary as well, as those charts lump different things together.
Gary Taubes is a journalist, not an expert in nutrition. He also has a track record of questionable academic honesty. He's an excellent writer who has cashed in fabulously on fad diets, particularly the Atkins craze 10 years ago. Follow his advice at your own risk.
I've started reading this hit piece, and saw, e.g.
> "One can lose weight on a low-calorie diet if it is primarily composed of fat calories or carbohydrate calories or protein calories. It makes no difference!"
Quoted from one of the "experts" refuting taubes. And yet, research by Robert Israel and Michel Cabanac (full list of references in Roberts' "What Makes Food Fattening" bibliography) shows that this is completely untrue - even flavor makes a huge difference, let alone "caloric intake". (BTW, if anyone can point me to any peer reviewed paper that validates "calories in-calories out" theory, I would be thankful. It appears to be an argument of faith, not of science, as far as I can tell).
Good Calories Bad Calories is meticulously referenced. You may disagree with the content, but as far as science writing goes, it doesn't get any better or more rigorous.
(And that's less of a compliment to Taubes, and more an indication of the sad, sad state of science writing).
Taubes is a scientist and a journalist. The fact that nutrition is not his original field doesn't change much.
The problem wasn't just Taube's penchant for taking extremely selective evidence and his own hunches over the vast majority of the available research evidence.
The problem is many of the very scientists that Taubes referenced were furious about him misrepresenting their work, and taking extremely selective quotations to make it sound like they were supporting theories that they did not actually believe were true.
>"Taubes is a scientist"
The claim that Taubes is a scientist is unsupported by anything I've ever read about him, or his current wikipedia file. What science has he actually done, as opposed to reported on?
RE calories in / calories out:
Here's article might interest you. It details a nutritionist's "twinkie diet". He dropped 27 lbs in two months, shed body fat and improved various blood markers while eating 1800 calories a day, mostly from junkies. It's not a peer reviewed study, but it was conducted by a professor of nutrition at the university of Kansas. http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...
> I imagine you have a more nuanced point, but the statement you quoted is clearly true taken for what it actually is saying.
You are right, of course. Without quantifying (how low is "low calorie"?) these statements are useless.
There was an experiment in Mass General some 15 years ago, in which they were able to get people with similar lifestyle/activity on 1500 cal/day diet. About one third lost weight, one third stayed the same weight, and one third gained weight, depending on how exactly the diet was composed.
Yes, you will lose weight, regardless of diet composition, on less than 800 kcal/day. Is that "low calorie"? "too low calorie"? "moderate"?.
No, you will not necessarily lose weight on more than 800 kcal/day. You probably will if your diet was not specially crafted to make you keep your weight on 800 kcal. When you get up to the 1200-1500 range, there is a non-negligible probability of "accidentally" gaining weight (or at least not lose it) by randomly stumbling on a bad diet composition.
One of Cabanac's (If I'm not mistaken) experiment was able to make rats gain weight for 3 weeks on a diet of water+chalk (caloric value 0) for a while, by feeding them water+sugar+chalk for a while, and then dropping the sugar. Sure, it was water gain - but the calories in - calories out theory fails so miserably in this case (and countless others) that it cannot be taken seriously. (For only 3 weeks for a rat; it might not hold for a human for a few months in similar conditions).
The calorie accounting is an approximation at best, which possibly takes several months to a year to average out reasonably, whereas a lot of the research focuses on results over 3 months or less.
I'd bet a fair amount that your Mass General study used self reported calorie intake.
800kcals a day is typically enough for a 100 lb person to lose nearly a half a pound of fat a week. That's low calorie by most people's measure. Certainly mine at 200lbs
When most people are talking about 'losing weight' they mean losing fat. At least losing actual body tissue. Anyone can gain or lose 10% of their body weight in a few days by controlling for carbs. But its just water.
Try to ignore rat studies if you possibly can. Their metabolism, particularly their capacity for denovo lipogenisis is very very different than that of human beings.
> I'd bet a fair amount that your Mass General study used self reported calorie intake.
99% of nutrition studies are, but this one wasn't. I can't find the reference now, though.
Personally, I've been on a ~1200kcal/day diet for years (for some of that time, I did very detailed tracking), and stayed at my 220lbs. Which, of course, makes no sense, and it didn't to my girlfriend at the time who was an MD - so she decided she'd show me how wrong I am by eating the same as me. She lost weight quickly and started blacking out (apparently some form of malnutrition) within a few days, and stopped after a week with a SEP field resolution ("Contradicts everything I know, so I'm just going to ignore it").
Then, 12 month ago, on essentially the same diet, I started gaining weight - slowly but surely. And then I decided to cut away wheat, and lost 30 pounds within a month. (In retrospect, I also noticed that my gain weight coincided with going from pure-egg protein powder to egg-and-wheat protein powder).
There are about a thousand more variables than calories, and the body can change its efficiency.
Ignore the rat studies if you like, but cabanac has similar experiments with humans -- basically, people fed through a nose tube lose weight almost independently of the amount of calories you put in their stomach. Body just doesn't use the food unless proper signaling (apparently, scent related) happens.
So, for the uninformed peanut gallery, beagle3 is just plain wrong. Probably not intentionally, he's likely also fooling himself. But you locked him in a room and measured his food for him and really only fed him 1200kcals per day, even at a fairly sedentary level of exercise, a 220lb man would lose a lot of fat mass over several weeks. And no beagle3, human bodies tend to be very greedy with calories and do a good job absorbing them regardless of what you smell.
What likely happened is that reducing carbs reduced beagle3's appetite and he ate less. Unless...
...unless beagle3 has a magic body that has never once been seen in any controlled experiment. But he probably does, since every dieter who has problems believes they have a special body that science can't explain. So they buy a book and a program from someone who tells them what they want to hear. And if their guru is on their game they sell very very expensive supplements.
Because its a well known scientific fact that the first law of thermodynamics applies to everything in the universe except a disgruntled dieter.
Taubes is a quack, pure and simple. Most of the studies he cites that I'm familiar with use self reported food intake. Any study that uses self reported food intake should be entirely disregarded for physiological purposes (perhaps useful for studying psychology).
You can get razor sharp lean on a diet with lots of carbs in it and you can get nice and fat on a ketogenic diet.
No controlled calorie study supports the idea that carbs, fats or proteins have any particular metabolic advantage over the minor differences in their thermic effects of feeding (TEF) (essentially energy required to digest).
I'm a paleo guy and I agree with what you wrote, but I'm uncomfortable with stating it with such certainty. Personally, when I'm evaluating a fringe idea one thing I look for is modesty in the people proposing it. When a proponent speaks with too much certainty it smells of quackery.
The sad thing is that while Taubes is a quack and his book title is quackery, he probably is 40 years more up to date than many nutrition or medical professionals.
USDA sucks pretty bad.
It may well be wrong, but it is based on more research and science than the list 60 years of mainstream nutrition advice (I dare not use the word "science", and neither would any scientist who actually read publication in the field)
As for modesty - that would not help his cause, whether that cause is educating others or making more money. What are you more likely to read, something titled "Most of what you know about nutrition is wrong", or "A humble suggestion to ignore nutritionists"?
Bingo. We all must point out this saturated fat fallacy when it shows up in society since it is so dominant and the belief in it leads to so many bad choices and outcomes.
It's not true, but I don't think it's disastrous or anything like that. Saturated fat is practically impossible to cut out completely, and our body can produce it anyway. The more dangerous belief IMO is that fat in general is bad.
> Maintains the standard caloric ratios: 20-30% of calories from fat, about 10% from protein, and the rest from carbohydrates
This is the weirdest breakdown I've ever seen.
If you are at all concerned about lean muscle mass, and you should be if you want to be even the slighest bit athletic, then the minimum amount of protien you'd want is a half gram per pound of body weight.
Most people who work out or play sports try for closer to a 1 to 1 ratio.
Yes, but the blogger is right: that's the accepted medical and dietarian wisdom, and it is backed by government programs like the one from Michelle Obama.
I've mentioned it before, but anyone serious about this type of thing should get familiar with quinoa. It might be more expensive than rice, but it also contains a balanced set of essential amino acids - which is pretty rare for a plant. Most meals that call for rice can generally use quinoa instead, and you'll be much better off.
I tried quinoa for the exact reasons you mentioned, but didn't find it nearly as palatable as more "traditional" staples. Compared to rice I found it didn't gel together when cooked, had a stronger (slightly unpleasant) flavour and a gritty texture.
In the end I couldn't justify the cost to eat something I just didn't enjoy. More power to those who enjoy it.
Another tip for quinoa is to be careful not to overcook it. It will turn really mushy if overcooked.
Keep an eye on your quinoa while cooking and turn off the heat as soon as the curly germ separates from the seed. At that point, ideally, there should be very little excess water left. Keep the cover on your cooking container on for a few more minutes while the quinoa soaks up the remaining water.
The result should be rather firm quinoa kernels that "pop" as you chew them, rather than the mushy goop you'd get if you overcooked. Quinoa is much tastier this way.
I also second the recommendation to rinse the quinoa. This is especially important for quinoa that hasn't been pre-rinsed, as quinoa naturally contains an outer coating of that acts much like soap (witness the foam coming out in your rinsing water) which can give you digestive problems if not thoroughly rinsed.
I agree with those issues. Then someone gave me some quinoa which I had to use. I found this recipe for quinoa and black beans which turned out to be great and easy to make.
If you still want to give it a shot, it's great in soups. An easy Chicken Quinoa soup with carrots and celery, and a healthy dose of lime and pepper, is healthy, flavorful and fairly easy to make.
If you don't like the mostly dry quinoa that's so popular in the US, try it in a soup. That's how the Peruvians make it, and it's a world of difference!
But that's because the limit is too low. Meat is relatively expensive, but it's not necessarily unhealthy. If the limit was, say, $5/day then he would probably have included meat.
Back in Bulgaria we used to have a farm (almost anyone had) at the "village" - e.g. the house that most city people would had at certain near rural place.
Mushrooms, chickens, tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. Now can't be certain how much it cost supporting, and also water, transport, etc. - but salaries were (and still are) very little compared to US. Granted some things are ten times cheaper, but then others reach the price of US (absolute prices, not average salary relative).
Homebrew alcohol (wine, liquior), preserved tomatoes, salads, fruits, etc. Homemade ketchup kind of like stuff was (and I guess still is) very popular.
Some people even made cheese from milk (for feta you need bulgaricus bacilicus, for cheese I think not). And off course milk from the cow.
If you live in Mountain View (or the bay area for that matter) go to 99 Ranch. It's an asian supermarket that smells like fish due to their huge live seafood section. If you can get past the smell you will be able to buy fruits and vegetables for extremely low prices. I can't believe how low their prices are some times. It is by far cheaper than Costco, Farmers markets, Safeway, and Nob Hill (from my experience).
A lot of asian markets have great deals and are worth going out of your way for deals if there is one near you. Everyone else is talking about fruit being expensive, but I go to Korean markets in LA that currently sell 5-10lbs of oranges for 99 cents and pineapples for $2 on weekends, just to start things off. $2/lb sliced ribeye, 20 cents for a small bunch of scallions, $4.99 box of mango...you get the idea. It's entirely feasible to eat tons of fresh fruit and even meats and pricier veggies on a tight budget if you know where to shop.
as somebody who exercises a great deal (and consumes over 3000cal a day), I can't recommend egg whites enough. for $4 (canadian) you can get almost a liter at costco. construct your menu right, and you can easily consume a great deal of healthy food for very little.
another tip: while YMMV, stay away from most beans other than black or chickpeas. those are the ones that tend to cause the least disturbance in the force.
I've heard this too, actually. I haven't tried it yet though. I've actually been terrible at the dry bean angle, opting for canned way too often out of sheer laziness.
Canned beans seems cheap until you buy a pound of dry for about a dollar. Canned food is essentially salt and water with a bit of overcooked vegetable.
Interesting, I've had exactly the opposite re: black beans and chickpeas. White beans have caused me far less gas. Perhaps we have different intestinal flora?
There are two types of fiber, soluble and insoluble. Insoluble fiber is good for the digestive tract and soluble fiber is good for lowering cholesterol [1]. From what I understand, the liver will recycle cholesterol back into your bloodstream. Soluble fiber will bind with the excess cholesterol and carry it off as waste.
For most people it's probably okay to eat foods containing cholesterol as long as you keep everything in balance. Several years ago my blood tests showed all the bad signs - high cholesterol, low HDL, and high triglycerides. I knew I would never stick to a really low fat diet, so I just shopped the perimeter of the store, avoiding processed foods. I flipped by blood test results in two months.
honestly, I'm not sure. I've seen studies both saying egg yolks are high in cholestrol, and I've seen studies refuting that claim. considering the levels I ingest, I figured better safe than sorry (and cheaper 12 dozen eggs = 750ml of egg whites. crazy!) and just went with the egg whites.
egg yolks ARE high in cholesterol. But AFAIK the data is leaning towards the fact that our bodies recognize extra dietary cholesterol, and doesn't synthesize as much to compensate.
I once lived in a happy big house with fellow students. We took turns cooking. One of us, an excellent vegetarian cook, whipped up a terrific lentil stew that was so fantastic I had two large bowls. What a tasty meal!
What a night! My roommate had to abandon the room, and two individuals in adjoining rooms were driven downstairs to the living room. I slept only fitfully between blasts. No one spoke to me for 3 days.
It's really a matter of how long/how often you're willing to stick with it. If you eat lentils (or any other bean) long enough, consistently enough, the uh... disturbances in the force will subside.
Anyhow, this is an interesting setup. Rice and beans is a fairly standard South/Central American diet (for the same reason chosen here... high energy, full protein complex, and cheeaappp). This is totally a workable diet, but the moment you start wanting to eat fish/meat, your food expenses will skyrocket. Even if it's just Tilipia (yuck!). Which sucks =/
One thing that the Central/South American and Indian diets add to this baseline set of ingredients is Spices!
These add little difference nutritionally, but make the world of difference in whether this diet seems bland or repetitive; with care they don't need to add a huge cost either, stored well they can be bought in bulk and the cost amortized.
Not only for taste, but a lot of the spices (such as ginger, garlic, and especially asafeotida - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida) used in india cooking are meant to aid in digestion.
If you want to buy cheap spices you can't go wrong buying whole dried spices (they keep their flavor much longer) from an indian grocery store. I've always found one near where I've lived (mostly east coast, but I did spend a summer in Albuquerque and I found a few there).
>but the moment you start wanting to eat fish/meat, your food expenses will skyrocket.
Not necessarily, though it depends on what you consider skyrocketing. I find that it only adds $2-$3 a day, depending on what your eating and how you buy it. I buy pork chops in bulk for around $2.49/lb. So that means I can add a half pound chop to my dinner for only $1.25. I also tend to stock up frozen chicken breasts, which I don't remember the cost of since a big back of those lasts me a long time. But I usually end up eating one pork item and one chicken item a day, alternating between lunch and dinner. I'd say in total my daily meals are $4-$6. Obviously if you're eating filet mignon as your meat, your costs are gonna shoot up. :)
I'm an Indian, and lentils are one of the main ingredients in vegetarian Indian cooking. Mostly because they are the main source of proteins. I've never had any...problems with the force. But it might be because of conditioning.
in my experience, lentils were by far the worst. green especially. soy beans as well.
pinto aren't bad though. kidney are mediocre, as long as you dont eat too many at a time. I've been eating the same diet for 6 months now. I could probably graph what the effects of different beans are on me, at this point (it'd be a gross graph, so don't ask)
edit: again, ymmv. I'm sure different people process things differently, and chickpeas could be YOUR kryptonite. plan experiments accordingly.
I am from Sydney, and I have been told by friends from other states that the food prices here are much higher than anywhere else: even Melbourne (for non-aussies: a similarly sized city - 4 mil inhabitants vs 4.5 mil in Sydney).
I think there is also some concern that the Coles/Woolworths duopoly is driving prices up. I usually avoid big supermarkets, but I haven't noticed any significant difference in price when I have visited them.
Veg like carrots are a good way to get full for not much.
We found it was also helpful to have a weekend budget where you could treat yourself. Keeps you sane.
A few doors down from Golden Produce is El Castillito, the source of my staple food: the super carne asada burrito. At just over $8 it sounds more expensive, but OP doesn't mention how long his staple meal takes to prepare.
Preparation time is definitely a cost if you'd rather be doing something else. Like taking a walk to buy a burrito. So I don't think the $3 figure is entirely accurate.
This does make me curious about how my meal stacks up in terms of carbs/fat/protien/calories.
Funny - I (the OP) go to El Castillito a lot, actually, because my co-founder and I work a couple minutes walk away from there.
You are right about preparation time, though you can cut down on prep time a lot if you cook a bunch of food at once and then reheat it when hungry over the next few days. That can actually be even faster than walking to get a burrito on the days you reheat.
It can be quicker, but does it taste better & is the total time invested lower in the long run? You do have to spend a good portion of time planning out what meal you're going to make, go shopping for the ingredients then prepare & package the meal properly so it's ready to reheat later. Also things like diced fresh veggies do not hold up well in the fridge, freezer or microwave.
True. I think it's all about how important saving money is to you. Everyone has a price-effort curve that depends on their financial situation and how frugal they are.
The real problem with this diet is it doesn't contain any fruits (Avocados, Cucumbers, Olives, Bananas, Grapes, Berries, etc). Our ancestors lived primarily on raw fruits so they are definitely the healthiest natural/uncooked foods for humans.
I think the real problem, though, is that the whole "sugar is poison" has gone to everyone's head, and it's now socially unacceptable to recommend anything containing sugar.
The problem is that fruits have a lot of fiber wrapped around that sugar, while soda does not. Have a cup of blueberries with breakfast, an avacado and some tomatoes at lunch, and strawberries for desert. A few servings a day of healthy sugars is not going to make you fat.
It is not only the fiber, but many fruits either have anthocyanins or citrus bioflavanoids that reduce the rate at which the sugars hit the blood stream by inhibiting digestive enzymes or other mechanisms.
If you add in supplements, such as the liquid berry stuff at brownwoodacres or something like green tea, it can add to the health of the diet at a very cheap cost.
It only works if thin, if slightly overweight or overweight one has to reduce all sugar intake and carbohydrates to re-adjust the body's insulin trigger levels.
Simple test ..consume some carbohydrates..if one-half to one hour later you get sleepy to the point of napping you should have your health checked..
Try living primitively, without technology, no stove, no refrigerator, no guns, no tractors, none of this stuff. What are you going to eat?
Are you going to eat meat? Just try to capture a wild animal with your bare hands and eat it raw, you will look ridiculous. This isn't a practical option without technology.
And even if you manage to capture it somehow or scavenge one that is already dead, there are tons of bacteria and diseases that you can get from raw meat since humans don't have the hydrochloric acid that carnivores do. Are you going to eat diary? Of course not, it is totally unnatural to eat another animals milk.
Legumes, beans, and grains although healthy, generally need to be cooked or otherwise prepared. They aren't edible raw. Similarly, many vegetables need to be cooked and they contain parts that are indigestible. Nuts often need to be cracked open.
On the other hand, fruits are just there on the tree ready for picking they don't need any special preparation - it should be completely obvious that this is the food of primitive people - our ancestors.
Are you going to eat meat? Just try to capture a wild animal with your bare hands and eat it raw, you will look ridiculous. This isn't a practical option without technology.
There is evidence that humans started eating meat about 2-2.5 million years ago. There is a theory that the addition of nutrient and calorie dense animal foods provided the opportunity to develop large brains which require significant energy to run.
There is also a theory that cooking was highly significant for human development, because otherwise about 5 kg of raw food would be required daily to survive, which pretty much does not leave any free time for anything but gathering and chewing. Fire was discovered at least 300,000 years ago.
probably by picking up small crawling animals and scavenging
Emphasis on the word scavenging. There is no question that ancient hominids scavenged when they were starving. However, this obviously couldn't be a significant part of their diet because there are so many diseases that can transfer from one animal to another.
And if meat was a significant part of our diets, cholesterol and atherosclerosis wouldn't be problems like they are now.
Fire was discovered at least 300,000 years ago.
There is no question that humans developed the technology of cooking, farming, and hunting to overcome their natural weaknesses, however, that did not significantly effect our evolution.
Evolution occurs because of small, infrequent, random mutations in the genetic material. In order for our digestive system to evolve there must be some "selective mechanism" that operates to select beneficial changes, however, there was no such selective mechanism operating at that point because the users faulty diet would not kill its user before reproductive age.
For example, people that eat the unhealthiest of diets - that have underage diabetes and obesity can still live to reproductive age. Their diet isn't healthy it is just "healthy enough."
"And if meat was a significant part of our diets, cholesterol and atherosclerosis wouldn't be problems like they are now."
You're basing your argument on the assumption that cholesterol problems are caused by intake ofsaturated fat and jumping to a conclusion based on that assumption.
The assumption you're making is being pitted against a growing amount of evidence that cholesterol problems are caused by modern over-consumption of carbohydrates. The most basic form of evidence for this argument is that 75% of our cholesterol is manufactured by our own body as opposed to being caused by dietary intake.
And if meat was a significant part of our diets, cholesterol and atherosclerosis wouldn't be problems like they are now.
And they were not ... until very recent times. If you look at the data available about the hunter-gatherer tribes, they did not have heart disease, diabetes, obesity, even cancer - despite sometimes having the higher saturated fat intake compared even to today's US.
Look up the Kitavians, Masai, the Inuit ...
Humans have been trapping animals for food for a very long time. For example, the "promontory peg" deadfall is a simple trigger based trap that can easily be made with stone tools. No guns, arrows, spears or bare hands required.
I feel like this example only reinforces the point parent is trying to make. Having watched the clip below, it seems like running for eight hours in the heat of the day with no guarantee of a meal at the end is a dangerously foolish way to live.
The wasted time, energy and risk of injury or death pale in comparison to the sheer logistical problems if you do manage to make a kill. How does one exhausted hunter transport 300-400kg of meat without refrigeration back to his family 8 hours' run away?
Looks like more of an extreme sport than a reliable method of finding food.
There are still bushmen in Africa who live by this. It's entirely possible to make this work. There was a BBC documentary on this (it's on youtube somewhere). They hunt in teams of 3-4, with one designated runner. Once they find their prey, the runner is the only one who actually does the long persistent run. The others follow at a slower pace.
"it should be completely obvious that this is the food of primitive people - our ancestors"
Citations please. There are people that claim the opposite of you saying that fruit was rarely a staple and merely a seasonal food. There's also some who assert that fruit today is grown solely to yield sweetness and not nutritional content.
Are you going to eat meat? Just try to capture a wild animal with your bare hands and eat it raw, you will look ridiculous. This isn't a practical option without technology.
I don't know about you but I think I would rather pick fruit then spend eight hours in the hot sun hunting...
I also would rather eat fruits then the dead animal. Fruits are absolutely delicious to anyone whose taste buds aren't maladapted, and dead animals stink, are hard to eat uncooked, and carry diseases/bacteria.
Carnivores have 10 times the hydrochloric acid of humans so they can eat meat without worrying about pathogens such as E. Coli, Shigella, Samonella, Campylobacter, Toxoplasmosis, and Trichina Worms.
Actually, most archeologists and paleoanthropologists are beginning to accept that most meat was SCAVENGED, not hunted, as I mentioned earlier.
It is through scavenging that humans became "omnivores" capable of eating meat in the first place, but we certainly didn't become carnivores that should eat meat as any significant part of their diet.
Trichinellosis, Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, Listeria, E. Coli, and Trichina worms will effect anyone, so my "preference in food" is based upon characteristics present in all humans.
As for the taste, fruits taste the best raw/uncooked for everyone with natural taste-buds. My taste-buds aren't abnormal.
I'd prefer to hunt I think, especially knowing the benefits of meat. And as for the current debate/link, modern fruits are unfortunately different then the lower fructose versions our ancestors ate. As such, I think people should tread lightly in the land of delicious fruit (excepting berries and the like). Rotten fruit stinks by the way ;) and hosts bacteria, flies, and disease! :)
I actually live in Hawaii where we have delicious, organic, locally-grown fruit all year round, and I often get to pick fruits myself. I understand some people don't have it as good =/
And at least fruits get rotten! I think there is something wrong with all these preservative-enhanced foods that you can forget about for like a decade only to find that they are still edible ;)
BTW, I am not honestly recommending that people eat all fruits or anything like that, just that they consist of at least 10% of a person's diet. A fruitless diet like the one recommended here is generally a bad idea, even if it saves you some money.
If by "technology" you are willing to overlook sharpened sticks and fire, then I'm thinking I'd be eating anything I could kill. That, and anything I could gather: nuts, roots, seeds, leaves and stems, anything that wouldn't in turn kill me.
I feel like this might be a good time to plug my project: http://swole.me/
It's a diet generator I made over the past few weeks that promotes adhering to certain proportions of macronutrients. I'll probably make a full post about it when I add some more features/food choices, but so far it's been a great way to learn to program. If you use it, let me know if you have any feedback!
I bookmarked it. This seems like a great resource, when it will get more foods (even though the list now looked good, and gave me a good overview of what I should expect of my upcoming workout / diet phase.).
One thing I noticed is that the checkboxes overflow the text in "Customize food choices" (Tofu is on the text below it, mangling everything). I'm using firefox 3.6.
I'm glad that you think it's useful! I'm going to try to rework the foods box in the next few days to have a bunch more foods. I thought I fixed the spillover, but hopefully changing the whole thing will take care of it.
That's a fantastic app, but it seems to report that we need to eat about 1000 calories/day (both for me and my family members) more than other calculators... Any idea why?
I found it a little high too, so I may switch the equation for another one but I'm not sure yet.
I originally made the site specific to gaining weight for lifters (hence the name), and the high weight gain calorie values seem to make sense for the most part, but I do think the weight loss and maintenance values are still a little high for most people.
I agree, and I don't think you should focus only on the "gaining weight" part, since most people want to lose weight.
That said, I assume that the diet produced is balanced and thus good for people who train for strength/lifters, not just people who want to fill out a bit? If so, it will be indispensable to me, as I am doing SS and need something like it. Right now I just sort of eat all the meat, eggs and almonds I can find.
It should be balanced as far as macronutrient ratios go (you can change the ratios in one of the dropdowns), but the proportions of macros you want may change based on your goals. The default 50/25/25 split should be good if you're trying to build muscle, and with weight loss, you'll probably want fewer carbs and a higher fat/protein proportion. I'll add some presets at some point to make it more straightforward.
Aside from macronutrients though, I would either take a good multivitamin or make sure you're getting the rest of your vitamins/minerals from lean vegetables.
I posted it to /r/Fitness a while ago for some feedback, and their number one complaint was the food choices. I'll probably add a bunch more foods this weekend and repost it there.
I haven't actually noticed it go down ever. Are you sure it's not on your end? If not, I'll definitely look into AppEngine. I've never actually used anything other than cheap shared hosting so it should be a good learning experience.
It should only take a three-line change or so to let you host it on GAE. Feel free to email me if you need any help with it or anything, and use wwwizer.com to get the www record.
Haha yeah, you can customize the food options in the dropdown box. I'll try to add a bunch more foods sometime in the next few days. Why are you trying to eat 1200 calories a day if I may ask? It seems awfully low for anyone.
"I’d rather buy the cheapest grains and vegetables than buy the cheapest meat. Bargain basement meat is likely produced in atrocious factory farming conditions and pumped up with hormones."
What gave him the idea that bargain basement vegetables are produced in any better conditions… or that they produce any better product (nutritionally speaking)?
Greens like spinach, salads, kale, cabbage. Leafy greens. Have low carbs but lots of nutrients and fiber. You think they can be absent in a healthy diet?
Fruit - who said overloading? Maybe a few every few days. Our ancestors did eat then when they could find them.
This reminds me slightly of Tim Ferris' "The 4 Hour Body". Has anyone had any real experience with his suggested diets? I find eating consistent and similar meals is cheaper and healthier.
I followed the 4HB diet for a month and it definitely does work to lose weight. The problem is that it has no variety, and you will get extremely sick of eating the same meal continuously over and over again.
There are many ways to eat slow carb without strictly following the 4HB diet. For example, Tim Ferris says to stay away from anything that is "white, or can be made to be white." He's talking mostly about wheat, flour, and pasta, but also includes brown rice. Brown rice is an excellent slow carb so it shouldn't be excluded. There are a lot of great grains that are slow carbs like buckwheat, quinoa, wild rice, steel cut oats, etc, that won't make you gain weight and are good balanced carbs.
My experience is that you can do the 4HB diet for a month or two and lose some weight, but think about it - do you want to eat beans every meal for the rest of your life? It's not a sustainable diet that you can stick with for a long time, and that's what matters. In the end, you need a healthy diet that you can stick with for an extended period of time, or you're just going to gain the weight back.
Stick with slow carbs (all the ones I mentioned above), nuts, fruits, vegetables, eggs, and lean meats, and you'll be fine. Stay away from fast carbs, sugars, and foods with a high glycemic index and get some variety in your diet. Eat breakfast every day with protein in it.
Another thing that doesn't work with Tim Ferris' diet is the "no fruit" rule. Fruit is not that bad. Most fruit has a low glycemic index, although some like watermelon is not that good for you (high GI). Completely excluding any fruit from your diet is probably not healthy long term.
I agree with fruit, he seemed to contradict himself since he praises foods with low GI, but ostracizes fruit.
His counter argument for the lack of sustainability for this diet is the "cheat day" but I haven't found that to be effective at all with sustaining the diet.
Except there's evidence that the soluble fiber in fruit helps moderate the fructose absorption in your gut (this is completely separate from the GI index, which is about how it affects your blood sugar levels). Unfortunately a lot of studies only look at macronutrients in isolation and ignore the (for example, vitamin C help calcium absorption).
Congratulations, I know how hard of a feat this because I did it a few years ago. I went from 230 to 180 over a summer. I didn't have a special diet other than eating "healthy" (which is always subjective) and running 2 miles a night. I'm sure it's the running in combination with a lack of deserts and frappacinos that worked for me.
I have been on the 4HB diet and the PAGG stack from the book for about 2 months. Lost 25 lb then plateaued somewhat and I am working towards finding a solution. This (OP) original diet doesn't sound too far off from the 4HB/slow carb diet with the exception of lean grass fed meats ($$) and the rice.
more people should write posts like this so the myth of "eating healthy is more expensive". And it doesn't need to be boring food like in this post. Italian peasants have been spending much less than $3 a meal for centuries and have one of the healthiest diets around.
No, because it's not a myth. Eating healthy actually does requires a lot of energy & in many cases does cost more. If it doesn't cost more it's because you're going to be taking a lot out of the flavor department & you're going to be investing a lot of time shopping, preparing, storing & tracking costs. There is savings to be had in volume, but volume is hard to achieve when you're cooking for just 1 or 2 people.
Stating that "Italian peasants have been spending much less than $3 a meal for centuries" is silly on many counts. First this article is about $3 a day, not per meal($3/meal x 3 x 30 = $270 per person per month which seems more realistic). Second, you ignore currency inflation & the negatives of being a peasant. It's similar to saying it must be great to be a Chinese peasant because they can get rice for really cheap. Third, Italy is a small country that has a long history of quality food production, there is less focus on quality in the US & more on quantity. The US is a big country and the environment varies greatly from place to place. You might have a great farming community & your city might support farmers markets, but that doesn't mean that everyone has those facilities or even if they do that the products produced are actually cheap.
Part of the problem is that quality food has been relegated into a "gourmet" category which demands a higher price & profit margins than industrialized foods & even those industrialized foods aren't cheap in low volume. You will often see higher quality tomatoes on a Burger King burger than what's at your local supermarket going for $2.99/lb.
This is just a blog article, with one bland meal. I don't know how it even makes a scuff as far as destroying this "myth".
As someone who has suffered from pernicious anaemia, I heavily recommend against this diet. Vitamin B12 is extremely important and is not necessarily well absorbed through supplements (if you went to a doctor for B12 deficiency, you would be given either supplements or injections well beyond the 100% RDA amount). Eat food with it in instead, or even better, consult with a doctor or other relevant medical person before taking such risks with your health.
Doenjang and cheonggukjang (Korean fermented soybean products) are reputed to contain B12 and other B vitamins. They might be price-competitive with eggs, and they'd certainly add some welcome taste and variety. Unfortunately, I can't find any source for nutrition information. One would think they would be similar to natto, which has very impressive stats:
However, natto apparently doesn't contain much B12. Natto would be harder to find anyway (and harder to find cheap) since most large cities have Korean grocery stores that cater to budget-conscious customers. If you're looking for cheap, nutritious food, a trip to your local Korean store would be worthwhile for the chance to buy cheap rice and check out the nutrition information on the plastic tubs of doenjang. The cheonggukjang I've bought has not had nutrition information on the label, but it ought to be similar to doenjang or maybe natto.
Where would one start on something like that? Getting local updated pricing information would seem to be a big missing link. Perhaps crowd sourcing? That would need a critical mass to make it useful. Maybe trying to focus on specific cities first might make it easier.
I think general approximation could work. I'm not looking for something that can get me to $3 exactly... Really if someone could make an application that gave me a list of menus (that I could swap out) for the week and the corresponding grocery list, I'd use that all the time.
General approximation is what I was going to use. I don't care if it's exactly some set price. Reasonably close is good enough for me.
A bit of magic in the system would be nice, as well. For example: I'm picking the menu(s) the items that I would like to eat next week. While "chicken burrito" may not normally cost me too much, it just so happens that none of the ingredients for the chicken burrito are shared amongst the ingredients for the other 5 or 6 days. This may push my week's allowance too high. Finding things with like/shared-staple ingredients would be nice. Obviously, we wouldn't want a Taco Bell scenario where everything uses the same five or six ingredients, but watching your overall supply/intake could help.
I suppose, additionally, being able to specify some things that you have on hand could help with the process.
I've thought about this off and on enough that I fear I may be over complicating it at this point.
Anyway, if you get around to working on this sometime this fall then feel free to hit me up as I hope to have some free time by then.
For those who feel hesitant about this (ie - not getting enough taste), I would recommend trying this for, say, breakfast and gradually increasing the frequency.
Very interesting, almost makes me want to try it. But I'd like to see a version that isn't focused on price, but just on the 'healthiness' part. When it comes to eating right, money is no object.
I'd really like to see someone do an analysis like this, but including meat. I'm a meat lover, but would like to get an idea of just how cheaply I could eat healthily.
Having just come off 4 months doing a student life... I can't give you a fullout breakdown, but the cheapest way to get your meat is to buy all the parts that takes at least an hour to cook. No jest. Brisket, flank, legs, w/e. If you can stomach it, get to know a butcher, and then ask for animal heads.
Needless to say, I stopped at the flank/brisket stage. Head is a bit... nuts to deal with.
That's interesting. Completely agree about the cuts that take a long time being cheaper. I tried cooking brisket for the first time a couple of days ago. It only took 30 mins in the pressure cooker. BTW a pressure cooker saves time and money and energy and lets you eat cheaply and healthily. All students and entrepreneurs should have one IMHO. The entire population of India can't be too far wrong on the merits of pressure cookers. As for the brisket, well it was good, but didn't seem cheaper or better than lean(ish) minced beef, and didn't go as far as we hoped. So maybe we'll stick to making spaghetti bolognaise...
I live on ~9AUD per day, AUD being roughly equivalent to the USD.
$3 of that goes towards a coffee, $3 goes towards meat, and the other $3 goes towards vegetables and other foodstuff (rough estimates).
The only issue I have is that most of the meat I buy is cheap - frozen chicken pieces, ground beef/pork, sausages, chuck steak, etc. - and cheap meat can be pretty horrible until you know how to cook it properly. You'll find yourself doing a lot of pot roasts, goulashes, ragùs, etc.
Some types of meat have great nutritional value but are for some reason overlooked or considered "second class".
Things like chicken/beef/pork hearts, ox tongue (was a rare treat in USSR!), chicken/beef liver are very cheap (like $4 AUD per kilo or even less) and can be eaten without literally anything going to waste (no bones etc.)
I was considering organ meats at one point, but unfortunately there's a bit of an ick factor to get over when you haven't been raised on the stuff. (Saying that, I used too eat liver as a child.)
Haha. $3.00 is how much one flat white costs at the local cafés. Guess I should have mentioned that I'm not downing 10 or 20 cups of instant coffee per day.
The point is that when you realize that the food budget is equivalent to $9, the only way you can make the coffee expenditure seem unrealistic is to conveniently not mention that fact and say something like "You spend 33% of your food budget just for coffee?".
Accusing someone of having a caffeine addiction for spending a mere $3 a day on it is just silly.
Most Adventists live on this kind of diet, they are the healthiest individuals around the nation and they live the longest, just google Seventh Day Diet.
There are many areas in the world where you can eat a lot more than this for $3 a day. I lived on $2/day in India for a year (was working in microfinance and wanted to live like my borrowers). I got full vegetarian meals made for me in a major city (Ahmedabad) at that price.
It looks like the average software developer makes about 7400 USD a year in India [1]. Assuming a reasonable average is 60k in USA, that's about an 8x salary difference, meaning spending $2/day on food in India is something like $16/day in USA.
Reading the fine article reveals "This diet is quite high in protein (at 174% the daily recommended value). I don’t think there are any problems with that, but it’s something to keep in mind. (And it’s interesting to note, since many think vegetarian diets are low in protein.)"
That's quite plausible, given that he planned the diet from the beginning to make use of complementary sources of vegetable protein, and includes milk.
2 cups of pinto beans probably gives you 20grams of protein. add the milk in there and whatever else he eats, and he can probably get 40-50 grams a day. ish.
thats more than enough to survive on, since thats what a $3/day diet is really going for.
I'd agree it's low on overall grams of protein (for a male, at least) but he did manage to get the amino acids that non-meat diets usually lack... so it's not a total fail.
The grams of protein are within his dietary needs. Nobody, male or female, needs more protein than 10% of their daily calories.
Most vegetarian diets do not lack sufficient amino acids. Protein needs are greatly exaggerated by "pop science". Iron and B12 are of greater concern than protein in non-meat diets.
Meat is overrated as a source of iron, unless we're talking liver or blood sausage.
Most contemporary diets are low in iron because people don't eat their dark leafy greens, which are, far and away, the best source of bioavailable iron. The OP diet, which is heavy on broccoli, neatly avoids this.
while this diet is high in beans and is okay, most people avoid beans for some reason. which results in many vegetarian friends of mine being constantly low on iron. tomatoes are a great source of this. just dont go for tomato juice to get it. its basically salt.
Meat and organic food was too expensive.
Fruit is crazy expensive so we bought OJ from concentrate with no additives as a cheap source of Vitamin C.
Eggs were are very expensive, but we needed the protein and nutrients, so rationed ourselves to 3 each per week.
We had to remove all sugar to save on cost and sugar crashed badly.
We decided that Costco was cheating due to the $70 membership fee and so we alternated between Safeway and Walmart.
You quickly learn the difference between broccoli florets and stems. [Stems are cheaper]
Baking your own bread is incredibly cheap and if you're using a sourdough starter you just need flour, salt and water. It'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.
Lentils are the most complete non-meat protein source.
Combining beans and rice give you a complete protein.
Cheese is too expensive and you can't make cheese from regular organic off-the-shelf homogenized ultra-pasteurized milk. It just doesn't set when you add the rennet.
You can buy coffee for $1 for a months worth of ground coffee at walmart. It's called Master Chef and it tastes like a used catbox.
Before we did our experiment we found a few "living on a dollar a day" 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't care about nutritional completeness and basically starved themselves for the period.
After trying to do this on $1.70 and failing, I think Mike's budget of $3 is probably a realistic per person budget if you're going to stay healthy.