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As I was reading 
A few months ago when I was in Poland I realized that you can actually survive on less than dollar a day. It goes without saying that I am talking only about food and the rent, transport, electricity is not covered in this post. The idea is to not just survive but rather actually have meals that are fulfilling to a decent extent.
Obviously it requires careful planning and you have to be smart about it. One of my friend did it for some time (it was one Euro a day) and she did it in a country where the cost of living is much higher than average. I too have had some experience in successfully living for less than Euro a day.
My personal choice is to forgo the internet and electricity before giving up decent food, but hey! You just never know the kind of situation you might be in during the future.
What I am trying to say is that with a little planning and some smart thinking you can actually live by spending less than a dollar a day on your food. I have done some lengthy research on it and even successfully tried it for several weeks.
We need some basics to start our less than dollar a day journey. Let me start by listing the absolutely essential nutritional requirements for a healthy body:
- Carbohydrates
- Fats
- Proteins
- Vitamins and Minerals
I have not mentioned water and sugar (substitute for carbs) as they are really cheap and readily available. Please keep in mind that this looks simple but requires a detailed list of sub categories - like more than a dozen vitamins, almost 20 different inorganic ions (minerals), essential fatty acids and even a greater number of essential amino acids. Thankfully most of these things can be found in the simplest of foods. In my experience I can divide my essential food in these categories:
- Fruits and Vegetables
- Meat (Fish, chicken, beef and mutton)
- Grains (wheat, rice, lentils…)
- Animal products like eggs and dairy
- Salt and Sugar (for immediate needs)
- Spices
The above choices are to my own personal taste… yours could be a bit different but see to it that you get in all the essential nutritional content. Now that we have the kind of food that we might need in our diet, we can plan the cheapest possible meal around it. Things that you absolutely need to plan a realistic meal:
- A market with a decent variety in prices and type of food products.
- Place to store your food. A refrigerator and also a dry place.
- Local farmers market
- A place like a river/lake/water body where you can catch fish (yes I am serious!)
Things that can also really help but are not essential:
- If you have a lake or a river nearby to catch fish then you are lucky! But in addition to this if you have a place or know a guy that could exchange your catch for other food …. Then you can not only survive with less than a dollar, but you can get to eat fulfilling and awesome meals several times a month.
- A farm. There are several farms that sell their last stocks of food and meat for dirt cheap prices.
Other Creative tricks:
- Government subsidized multivitamins (not available everywhere)
- Try to make good connections with an owner/staff of a restaurant - you know what I am talking about ;-)
- Spices and garnishing can make the blandest of food come alive
The idea is to spend less than 7 or eight dollars a week so your average is around a dollar per day.
An example of my weekly ‘less than dollar a day meal plan’:
- I would eat three meals a day for three days that are spread over one week.
- Then two meal a day for three days
- Then one a meal a day for one day
3+3+1 = 7 days of the week and this way there are in total 16 meals in a week.
- Then Out of these sixteen meals 2 meals could be of either beef or mutton
- 2 meals of fish
- 1 meals of just bread and lentil soup
- 1 meals of just rice and lentil soup
- 2 meals of just Salads
- 1 meal of veggies and rice/bread
- 1 meal of eggs with bread/rice
- 1 meal of milk and bread
- 2 meals of just fruits
- Be creative and go hunting/scavenging. If you scavenge in style then you can call it hunting!
This is just one example of a meal plan and there are literally hundreds of combos that you can decide on even out of these limited options.
PS: Most of this calculation was done back when I was living in Poland.
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