Is it even possible to eat on one buck a day?

And healthy to boot?

My first instinct is to say ‘absolutely not.’ But it’s a growing trend and one woman from Durham, NC was pretty successful.

Rebecca Currie says on her blog that she came upon the idea after reading an article in the New York Times, about how highly processed foods will actually cost you less than eating healthy.

On Monday February 9, 2009 she writes ”In November 2008 I read a New York Times article about how “bad” food (i.e., highly processed junk food like chips and candy and soft drinks) is cheaper than “good” food (i.e., fruits and vegetables) and how the economic downturn is likely to exacerbate Americans’ health problems by forcing them into diets that are even worse than their current diets (if that’s even possible, I’m not sure).

The New York Times article referred to a study published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association [Volume 107, Issue 12, Pages 2071-2076 (December 2007)] that tracked 300+ food items in Seattle-area supermarkets. The authors of the study determined that high-calorie, low-nutrient foods are cheaper on a per calorie basis than nutrient-dense, low-calorie foods. Which totally makes sense, a 16-ounch bag of potato chips has 2400+ calories and costs less than $5.”

In her first entry, Rebecca mentions a couple that spent only a dollar a day on food for a month who showcased by the New York Times.

Essentially, that’s the article that drove her to commit to her own ‘project’…or so she calls it. Rebecca says “I didn’t know if I could manage to eat fresh food for a dollar a day (and I think that might depend on how you define “fresh food,” he didn’t give details), but I was pretty sure I could do a better job than they did.”

That’s when she set out on her 30 day, $1 a day project.

She admits in her first entry that she usually only spends about $90 a month on food (which only includes grocery bills.) I think that’s a little less than the average person; I spend about $30 a week on food for myself.

Everyday, she posts what she ate for each meal, how much she made, and how she made it.

One of my favorite things about her “Less Is Enough” blog is how she gave her readers recipes how she actually  cooked her food.

For instance, on day 26, she made a recipe that she learned from a friend. “I poached the chicken in salted water and then put the broth in the refrigerator to let the fat solidify, then skimmed that off the top and used it for the stir fry.”

She resorted to eating only 2 meals a day.

That leads into the issue of starvation and how many meals you should eat to keep up your metabolism…but that’s a whole other entry. She does say a few times throughout her project that she was hungry; she actually ended up losing 8 pounds in the end.

What she found was healthy foods really go a long way and you can in fact stretch a dollar.

Here is a good article posted recently by the New York Times. It’s essentially what Rebecca was trying to get across…that you can, in fact, eat healthy on tight budget.

Watch Rebecca on GMA! eatcheap  

Posted under Food