Spending Only One Dollar a Day for Food

Could you survive if you only have $1 a day for food? That's what Christopher Greenslate, 28, and Kerri Leonard, 29, wanted to find out. So the couple, both high school social studies teachers, did a month-long dollar-a-day diet experiment:

When we first started talking about doing this, we didn’t really have an agenda, or any developed sense of why we wanted to do it. It just seemed like an interesting challenge; one that would force us to see things differently.

We are interested in many of the strands related to this experiment; food choices, consumerism, waste, poverty, social psychology, etc., and this experience may provide insights that could help us better understand and teach about a variety of concerns (we both teach Social Justice in a public high school).

Here are the rules:

1. All food consumed each day must total $1 for each of us.

2. We cannot accept free food or “donated” food unless it is available for everyone in our area. (i.e. foraging, samples in stores, dumpster diving)

3. Any food we plant, we pay for.

4. We will do our best to cook a variety of meals; ramen noodles can only be prepared if there is no other way to stay under one dollar. (We have six packages and will buy no more)

5. Should we decide to have guests over for dinner they must eat from our share; meaning they don’t get to eat their own dollar’s worth of food.

The couple recorded their experience in their blog: Link | Their first day - Thanks Geekazoid!