Eating plans for a £1 a day

I'm not sure it would work out at 30p per portion growstuff. Possibly not.
We have started going to a market in our local town at the weekend. Everything is £1 usually. A large bag of potatoes (potatoes with earth still on them). They are great. We get two large punnets of fruit for £1 - strawberries, blueberries, raspberries etc. Lots of veg and 3 cucumbers for £1. People could split them up with family or friends and share the cost. We were dubious at first as to how long it would keep for but it lasts well over a week. I realise not everyone has such a place and if course ideally you need transport, although I have been in on the bus.

I would say porridge for breakfast (no sugar or milk, if you can eat it like that)

Lunch- toast and spread. (Jam is cheapest)

Dinner - jacket potato with budget beans.

Or 2 veggie sausages, a tin of value tomatoes and couscous/rice/pasta/noodles. An onion if there is one around.

Probably over budget!

I was watching that last night Daddima!

Riverwalk

I've been having a quick think and just can't do it... there's no way to meet minimum nutritional needs.

I've just googled and found this from a journalist in February. The food looks miserable - would you eat a Tesco value chicken burger, 97 for a pack of EIGHT!

The photos make me sad.

www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/survived-living-1-food-day-1211404

Making porridge with water does not make the porridge lumpy. If her porridge made with water was lumpy I cannot imagine how she made it. It's perfectly possible to make nice porridge with only water. I usually make it with water and milk but liquid is liquid.

Very odd comment in that article.

I think first you have to look at the nutritional requirements of an adult female/male. Then children and teenagers.

All of them will have different requirements at each stage of their life.

This must be done if we are to have a healthy population.

It is relatively easy (?) if you don’t take life stages into account, but much more difficult once you begin to account for growing children and babies, teenagers, pregnancy, very active adult, old age etc.

It's all very well buying boxes of fruit or veg.
The point is, that all if it needs to be incorporated with other ingredients to make a healthy, balanced diet.

This man may be able to help you with some ideas, growstuff

Email: [email protected]

Otherwise, all I can suggest is looking out for just-on-date food and budget ranges.
Lots of pulses and vegetables which would be healthier than cheap meat products.

growstuff

I started looking up the costs for one of the recipes (spag bol) on the site Shandy posted.

The first ingredient is ... 500g minced meat £1.99.

I checked on Tesco Online and the cheapest mince is £1.89 (Aldi price matched), but it's 20% fat. I always drain fat off cooked mince, so I'd be throwing 20% away before I'd even started.

Better to buy the better mince at 5% fat and eat less of the meat, bulk it out with vegetables.

Is it cheaper to run a freezer, cook in bulk, portion carefully then freeze than to keep going to the supermarket to see what bargains can be had?

I would say yes, but then there is the running costs, the difficulty of bulk buying to factor in.
I havent room for a chest freezer either.

I have always made porridge with water ,never made it with mlk in my life.My mother and granny did the same ,my GF had a bowl with the rop of the milk or some single cream seperate from the porridge to dip each spoonful into

I would probably have a chest freezer stocked with things like chicken breasts, veg.. which I would take out and use as necessary.

Nobody has said poor people refuse to eat porridge made with water.
A lot of folk simply prefer it that way, regardless of finances.

Riverwalk

I've been having a quick think and just can't do it... there's no way to meet minimum nutritional needs.

I've just googled and found this from a journalist in February. The food looks miserable - would you eat a Tesco value chicken burger, 97 for a pack of EIGHT!

The photos make me sad.

www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/survived-living-1-food-day-1211404

The diet in your link does sound depressing but I think she's made it sound worse than it could be.
If she'd stirred the porridge it shouldn't be lumpy and I always add a tiny pinch of salt too.
3 slices of bread with soup? I probably wouldn't have any bread but surely one slice is enough?
And for dinner she had two sources of protein, ie mozzzarella and the dubious chicken burger.

The worst dinner of them all. Toast with tinned sardines.
I don't know if it was the smell or the way they looked, but I didn't even attempt to eat it. It slid straight into the bin and I went hungry.

Personally, love sardines on toast but they have to be mashed with vinegar.
Not everyone might agree I suppose.

We have a community hub here which does cooking classes for groups of students every week and they use food donated by supermarkets etc which would otherwise go to waste. Each week, they post on their Facebook page when they have free food to give away. Today I popped in and got a huge bag of diced red peppers, a bag of sweet potatoes, oranges and lemons, puff pastry and dinner rolls. They also had loads of ready meals - the kind you don't need to freeze or refrigerate - and literally hundreds of sachets of the quick porridge you just add milk to.

Sorry, I know that's not what the OP was asking - I meant to add that you should check out Jack Monroe's website - Cooking on a Bootstrap - loads of really cheap recipes and all costed down to the last penny.

How to eat healthily on £1 a day

This is dated 2013 - and I noticed I could not eat any of the meals as they were, but might be able to substitute in some.

I'm always recommending the olio app.
Give away food that you aren't going to use, or is surplus, and they have a forum where people post pics of some of the meals they've made with them.
It's a fabulous idea, builds up a community spirit, and ecologically sound.
I can no longer even do that, because you have to go and pick up from people who are giving away.

I think £1 per day in 2022 is unrealistic.

It also depends on whether one also has a basic store of things like oil, flour, herbs and spices etc. And to do it very cheaply, you need to budget over a month rather than weekly so remains of large packs of pasta, rice etc can be carried forward to next week. Just supermarket shopping, I could eat very well on £20 per week if I had to buy in basics as well, probably about £15 or a little less if I had store cupboard items in.

When I was dirt poor, I collected veg that fell off market stalls on to the floor, and cooked them in the pressure cooker with free dog bones from the local butcher. If you live in the country, road-kill pheasants are a free source of protein

Examples of nutrional requirements

I’ve got this information from various sources, including the NHS.

Nutritional requirement of baby/toddler 1-2 years of age

1/2 serving of fruit
2-3 serving if veg.
1-11/2 serving of dairy
4 servings of grain
1 serving lean meat, eggs, nut paste, and legumes.

Child 2-5 years
3-5 oz grain
1-11/2 cups of vegetables - wide variety.
“. Cups fruit
2- 21/2 cups dairy
2-4 oz protein

Child 5-10 years.

Requires 1500-2000 cals a day.

The principles are the same as above.

Teenagers 10 - 15

Require (slightly lower for females) 2400- 3100 cals per day
Nutrients as above same proportion.

My best chance of getting a dish that could be part of your £1 a day is my Carrot and Potato Soup. The problem is that I think the Carrots and Potatoes would be 25p for me from Morrisons (I can walk there) but then you have all the store cupboard ingredients. Anyway, here it is:

2 tbls of Garlic Oil (I can't eat Garlic and this is specialist and expensive but you could substitute Garlic and oil)
750g of white potatoes, roughly chopped
600g of Carrots, roughly chopped
1 small bunch of coriander, leaves and stalks chopped
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground oregano
2 tsp ground sweet paprika
2 pints Low Fodmap Veg Stock (expensive so I make my own chicken stock)

This makes 4 but I think it would be a big part of your £1 even with the substitutions

The budget is £1 a day though, not per meal.

No such thing as free dog bones anymore ??

Thank heavens for that!

One thing that might help is co-operation. When I was young with children three friends and I used to buy whole animals for the freezer and divide them up, bulk buy fast used items and have a delivery of cracked eggs (they were never all cracked) and split them.

That wouldn't help now because of storage but swapping meals when you bulk cook might.