What the world eats

Check out these images of a weeks worth of groceries for families in various countries. Fascinating. I assume that when the image shows a family of four, the groceries are for four people. And when the image shows a family of eight, the groceries are for eight people. Not sure if that's the case or not, but interesting to see anyway. Pay attention to the food available for the African countries. Easy to guess who is living below the global poverty line.


-Selfish Blogger

Day two: Moving day

The most delicious peas in the world

Two movers arrived almost 20 minutes early. There was no time for breakfast, but I woke up without hunger and didn't want to make the same mistake I had made on day one by jump-starting my metabolism with a few bites of food.

I corralled my angry, angry cat into her harness and carrier. I pulled all my carefully measured "challenge food" together. We packed up odds and ends, directed the movers, and helped load things up. I don't think I could have done it on my own. My brain was too foggy and I was distracted by the cries of my cat. Even though I wasn't hungry, I was noticeably weak. Boxes I had packed myself and carted from room to room a few days prior were too heavy for me to lift. My boyfriend was invaluable. He jumped in and took charge. An hour later we were on the road. Saturday morning traffic in Los Angeles was very kind, and I made it to my new place in only 35 minutes, with my cat howling and crying the entire car ride. Eating so little has brought my emotions very close to the surface. Listening to my cat cry made me cry, twice. Hunger started to kick in at the end of the car ride.

Another hour and a half, and our stuff was in the new place. At 10:45am I sat on the floor of my new bedroom, with my (now quiet) cat hiding under the bed, and I ate: one portion of peas cooked with salt and oil. The portion is 1 cup and costs $0.38. I planned to eat the whole thing, but felt sated halfway through. I saved the second half and ate it a few hours later. This is clearly the hunger talking, but these are the most delicious peas I have ever eaten! I planned to heat them up with carrot, onion, and water for a soup, but I was so hungry and tired, that I ate them cold on their own. And they were DELICIOUS! Someone try this recipe and tell me if I'm crazy:

2 C dried green split peas

1 Tbs salt

1 Tbs canola oil

water for cooking

Cook until peas are tender but not mushy, about 2 hours.

Because I've only eaten one portion of peas for $0.38, I've got $1.12 available for the rest of the day. I think my stomach shrunk, because I'm handling today much better than yesterday.

No internet at my new place though, so I'll have to post when I can!

I hope the next time I log in, I find I've reach my goal of raising $1,000 to help lift women out of extreme poverty. If you haven't already, I hope you'll help my get there by forking over some cash: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/claire

-Selfish Blogger

End of day one

Here's I how I ended my first day of the Live Below the Line challenge:

I finished the second half of my lunch (brown rice and tofu vegetable soup) around 6:30pm. I felt energized, ready to take on the world. Though not full, I wasn't hungry, and It was a glorious feeling. But I knew it wouldn't last. The last of my food for the day was gone, and I had a Dodger game and night of packing ahead of me.

When we got to the stadium, my boyfriend suggested we take the escalator instead of the stairs so I could conserve my energy. I agreed. Once we met up with our friends and found our seats, I declined offers of food and used the opportunity to talk about the challenge - many of them had already read my blog. My best friend took the challenge earlier this month. The hardest thing for her was the monotony - eating the same food over and over. It made her feel nauseous, and at some meals she chose to eat more-expensive variety and experience hunger, rather than eat the same beans again. We talked about the comfort of knowing that the lack of proper nutrition will only last for five days, and how unfair that is. What if you had no end date?

Dodger tickets are $5, but this meal cost $17.50

My boyfriend bought a veggie dog, pretzel, and bottle of water for the totally reasonable price of $17.50. I would have loved to indulge with him, but I refrained.

$17.50. 35 meals.

Midway through the game I started to feel hunger creep back in. By 10:30pm my stomach was growling and I was feeling weak. Once we got home, it was time to pack. By the time we went to bed after 1:00am, I was passed hunger - in that place where I had been so hungry for so long that the physical feeling of wanting to eat wasn't there. The movers would arrive first thing in the morning. A day of hard work and hunger ahead…

I think the only thing that kept me going today was my sponsors. Friends and family have all chipped in to move me toward my fundraising goal - and almost half the money I've raised so far came in today - on day one of the challenge. I couldn't have imagined how much inner strength I'd need to get through this, and the support of friends and family has made the difference.

Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for helping end extreme poverty in our generation. And thank you to everyone who will join us: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/claire


-Selfish Blogger

Lunch Fail!

Lunch and dinner from my fav Thai place

Well, my plans were foiled when my lovely staff decided to buy me lunch for our last day in the office all together. I would have used it as an outreach opportunity, by refusing the lunch and explaining why I'm "living below the line", then asking for financial contributions instead of a lunch out. But one of my staff had an extreme, violent tragedy in her family 36 hours ago, and this just didn't feel like the best time to discuss "the less fortunate."

So I graciously accepted lunch, but said I felt like a light meal. I ordered a cup of tofu vegetable soup and side of brown rice to stay as true to the challenge as possible. I decided to eat half and save the second half for dinner. This would absorb the remaining $1.15 budget for the day. The actual meal cost almost $7.

By 12:30pm when we ate, I was so so hungry. Breakfast didn't fill me up, and I drank lots of water in the hours leading up to lunch to stave off hunger as much as I could. I probably could have finished my entire lunch, but I ate until my hunger was sated and set the second half aside.

By 4:00pm when I left work, I was experiencing all the terrible-ness that comes with hunger: stomach pains, light-headedness, lack of focus, weakness, and a less-than-chipper attitude toward the world. I told myself I could eat when I got home. I left work two hours early.  Driving home I kept thinking "I'm doing this wrong. I shouldn't be hungry. I'm doing this wrong." But then another voice in my head said "No, you're doing this right. This is what it feels like to go without."

It is easy to forget how painful hunger can be when you never experience it yourself, and my closest experience to real hunger is through fiction. Katniss Everdeen talks about "hollow days" in The Hunger Games - days when, no matter how much you eat, you can never get full. Harry, Hermione, and Ron quickly learn that a good meal means good spirits, and hunger means bickering and worse in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have fasted before, but during time off when I would rest and read and take long baths and enjoy the garden - not in the middle of moving and changing jobs! I need all the energy I can muster.

Even in this challenge, I'll never know true hunger. I'm nibbling on the second half of my lunch/dinner as I type (it's how I'm managing to spit our mostly-coherent sentences). Tomorrow, I will have more to eat. One day of being sort of hungry and I'm falling apart. Pathetic. To people who live on less every single day of their lives, I am a spoiled, pampered girl who has never faced hardship.

Help those who do face hardship, every day of their lives: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/claire


-Selfish Blogger

Second breakfast

Bonus tofu, you were surprisingly tasty

That 1/8 cup of oatmeal didn't come close to filling me up. I was actively hungry after finishing my meager breakfast. So rather than head to work hungry, I fried up some tofu - about 2 oz - with a tablespoon of oil and a pinch of salt. The tofu, oil and salt cost $0.18. Add to that my $0.17 oatmeal, and breakfast cost $0.35. I wouldn't call myself full, but I'm not as hungry. $1.15 left for snacks and meals the rest of the day.

I understand now why so many people in extreme poverty go without breakfast. I wasn't terribly hungry before I ate my oatmeal. I probably could have made it through a few hours without needing to eat. But once I ate that little bit of grain, my stomach started working and it wanted much more than I had to feed it. I suck at being poor. Being poor sucks.

Help end extreme poverty. Donate: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/claire


-Selfish Blogger

Meal one below the line

Breakfast for 17 cents: 1/8 C dry steal cut oats, cooked.

Breakfast is 1/8 cup dry steel cut oats and a sprinkling of sugar. Well, the plan was to add sugar. I left out the sugar because I'm worried I'll need those few pennies to buy extra food. The steel cut oats cook up to about 1/4 cup of grain. My goodness that looks like a small amount of food! What if I didn't set aside enough food for the challenge? For ten meals, I only planned on four cups dried lentils/peas, a pound of tofu, and a few veggies. Is that enough? I have no idea!

My colleague asked "Is there a way to do this challenge without going hungry?" I thought there was - I still think there is - but my first breakfast is making me worry that I wasn't smart enough to make sure I have adequate food.

In the months leading up to Live Below the Line I was careful to track my food spending, but I never paid attention to how much I actually eat! I guess we'll see how the first day goes. I left a little wiggle room in my daily budget: $0.11. I was hoping to spend it on half a piece of fruit. I might need to spend it on something a little heartier...

Remember: Live Below the Line is a fundraiser to end extreme poverty. Do your part and contribute today. https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/claire


-Selfish Blogger

How to live on $1.50 a day

Most of my food for the next 5 days

The Live Below the Line Challenge takes lots of planning. The challenge is designed to raise funds and awareness toward ending global poverty, by asking folks to feed themselves below the extreme global poverty line of $1.50 a day.

One rule of the challenge is you cannot accept donated food. This is the reason I'm starting the challenge a few days earlier than everyone else - I'm in process of changing jobs, and my coworkers have planned goodbye lunches and parties for me. So I've scheduled my 5 days of modest eating between celebrations full of food.

The most common response I heard when asking friends to join me in living below the line was "let me check my schedule". Cooking everything from scratch and carefully checking prices to stay within budget takes a lot of time. What luxury we live in, that we can choose whether or not to live frugally. Adjusting my schedule to fully participate in my goodbye celebrations means I'll be eating on $1.50 while I move from my house to an apartment on the other side of Los Angeles. I'm going to be hungry and tired. Who wants to cook on moving day?! I can already feel my empathy growing for those people working hard labor jobs while eating very little.

So, what will I be eating for the next 5 days? Here's my grocery list:

1 Onion - $.50
15 oz tofu - $0.98
1/2 head of cabbage from the soon-to-expire shelf - $0.45
2 carrots - $0.20
2 cups dried split peas - $1.46
2 cups lentils - $1.33

That comes to $4.92, or almost $1 a day. That leaves me with $0.50 per day for seasonings, a little oatmeal or rice for breakfast, and maybe half a piece of fruit as a snack. I've set aside the following for a little added flavor:

10 Tbs Canola oil (2 Tbs per day) - $.50
5 Tbs salt (1 Tbs per day) - $0.15
5 Tbs sugar (1 Tbs per day) - $0.50

That will put me at $1.22 per day. I can squeeze in 1/8 cup steel cut oats for breakfast ($0.17) with $0.11 to spare. Maybe I can indulge in 1/2 a banana.

I'm going to start cooking so I have pea soup ready to eat tomorrow. Stay tuned!


-Selfish Blogger

Live Below the Line

Chances are, most people reading this blog have no idea what it means to be poor. I know I don't. That's one of the reasons I'm going to Live Below the Line in May.

Live Below the Line is a challenge that gives people in the first world a 5 day taste of what it truly means to go without. For 5 days, people taking the Live Below the Line challenge must feed themselves on no more than $1.50 per day - the equivalent of what 1.4 billion people the world over have to live on. That $1.50 figure is the purchasing power parity rate. That $1.50 does not buy more in the third world than it does in the US. 

I've been looking forward to the challenge, and I've been paying close attention to food prices to try and figure out what I'll eat - I'll have exactly $7.50 to cover 15 meals plus snacks. Rice and beans look like my staple. Nothing canned. Nothing from a box. A $0.50 apple is out of the question. I'm hoping to afford a $0.19 banana. If I can make it to the farmer's market, there is a vendor that sells huge bunches of kale for only $2 - enough kale to last me the full 5 days, and leave me with $1.10 per day for rice and beans. It's going to be tough.

Live Below the Line is also a fundraiser, and I'm asking for sponsors to help me raiser $1,000 for CARE (don't be put off by the dramatic music in the video, it's a great cause).

I hope you will consider supporting me and CARE by giving through my Live Below the Line page or by joining my team and taking the challenge.


--Selfish Blogger

SNAP Challenge

Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, N.J., has taken on the SNAP Challenge. SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), commonly known as food stamps, now reaches over 40 million Americans - about 15% of the country.

Dan Goldberg of the Star-Ledger reports: The average monthly food stamp benefit was $133.26 per person in New Jersey in fiscal year 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's a little over $33 per week, or $4 per day.

Mayor Booker will be feeding himself for the next week on only $4 per day, and he'll be tweeting about his experience the whole time. Follow his story at #SNAPChallenge or #CoryBooker. 

I believe these types of headline-grabbing-challenges are hugely important. Not only do they raise awareness around issues of hunger and poverty, but for the individuals participating, they instill a deep sense of compassion and empathy.

We are fortunate to live in a country with a safety-net that, at the very least, prevents starvation. Thanks to programs like SNAP, poor Americans deal with a very different kind of hunger than the poor in the developing world, where death from starvation or malnutrition are very real threats.

Mayor Booker will be living below a comparatively comfortable poverty line. Even more difficult is to live below the global poverty line of $1.25 per day (and yes, that $1.25 per day = the purchasing power of $1.25 in the US). 

If you'd like to take on the SNAP Challenge yourself, there's a handy-dandy toolkit to get you up and running. You can also find a  lengthy history of food stamps in the USA here.

If you'd like to take on a tougher challenge - 5 days on $1.25 per day - head over to Live Below the Line to pre-register for the 2013 challenge.


-Selfish Blogger

Doing a Little is Not Enough, but Doing Nothing is Worse

When I was in high school I was a counselor for a couple of YMCA overnight camps. On the whole, this was a delightful experience. But there was one part of camp that really bothered me: wasting food. The camp directors scheduled activity after activity where making a mess with desserts, condiments, and sometimes full meals was the whole point. The most egregious example was an activity called Bat-O-Rama, where an athletic slugger, armed with a baseball bat, would smash food as it was pitched to him. Gallon jugs of milk, heads of cabbage, melons, and apples would turn into a shower of particles that covered the trash-bag-protected audience of squealing campers. One night of Bat-O-Rama easily consumed enough good food to feed a family of 4 for the day. On the final day of camp each year, the directors would stand up at camp fire and talk about how lucky we are: we have enough food to eat and we have parents that pay for us to go to camp. There are lots of kids in the world who don't get to eat every day, and they can't afford to go to camp. Then they'd encourage all the campers to give money to a charity that provides a camp experience and meals for poor kids in another country.

The hypocrisy of the ask - after a week of wasting food - was lost on the directors. At next year's interview for a counselor position, when asked "how would you improve camp", I brought it up. I said it seemed like we were sending mixed messages to the kids. One day we were saying that we need to do something to help poor children who don't have enough to eat. Yet in the same week, we'd waste all kinds of food - just for fun! It's as if we spent the whole week saying "We're so rich we can waste as much food as we want." I think that's insensitive and we should send a consistent message, I said. Let's play these games with something other than food.

I didn't get selected to go to camp that year. When I got my decline letter in the mail, I called up and asked why. "In your interview, you offended everyone in the room," I was told. When I asked for specifics, my comments about wasting food were the only complaints they could site.

Now, I'm sure as a 17 year old, I probably didn't use the most politically correct language to share my concerns about wasting food. But regardless, no one like to be told they've done something wrong. No one likes to hear that they are doing harm. Saving food from the Bat-O-Rama doesn't do a lot of good, but it does some good. It is better to try and stop the Bat-O-Rama than to do nothing. It is better to speak out against a culture of waste (even at the summer camp level) than to let it continue unchallenged. If we want change, we must act.

Food insecurity, the threat of starvation, is a growing problem. For the people living on our planet earning less than $1.25 a day, a small shift in grain prices determines whether or not they can afford to eat. The poorest amongst us get the bulk of their daily calories from grains. But the growing demand for meat and animal products from rich nations is driving grain prices higher and higher. Some 60% of the world's grain now goes to feed farmed animals. Drought and changing weather patterns are destroying crops. Nations that once had large grain reserves for food security have used them up. The crisis in Somalia, which has gotten little media attention, will not be the last major famine we'll see this decade.

The threat of starvation across the globe is a big problem. It feels like a problem far removed, something that you can't do anything to fix. But that's not true. You can help. You can help three times a day (or five if you're like me). Every time you sit down to eat, you choose your meal and, without intending to, you enter the global market for grain. So how much grain will you buy? How much will you take for yourself? If you choose to eat meat and animal products, you are taking a lot more for yourself than you need. You are taking food from others who need it - you are driving world grain prices higher. 48 lbs. of grain can be fed to a cow and produce enough calories to feed one person for one day. Or 48 lbs. of grain can be fed directly to people and provide enough calories to feed 30 persons for one day. By eating less meat and animal products, you can help keep the cost of grain down so that the poorest people have a better chance of feeding their families. You can take a small step to make things better by changing your diet, or you can do nothing and actively make things worse. Next time you're getting ready to order a burger or a steak, remember that you're taking more than you need: enough for 30 people. That's really selfish.

Eating a plant based diet doesn't solve food insecurity, but it helps. If you are waiting to find a big action that you can take to solve a wide spread global problem, you will always be waiting. Big problems are solved when lots of individuals take small actions. Doing a little to help is not enough to end the problem, but doing nothing is worse.

Check out this handy infographic to learn more about how your food choices can change the world.


-Selfish Blogger