Nik’s Hunger Games

So if you don’t have the 10 minutes to spare to watch this video of me explaining why I am living on $1.50 of food per day for five days here is the shortened version.

The organization where I work (yes, I do have a day job) is looking to create an experience where folks can experience the day-to-day realities of people living in extreme poverty. I am helping to develop this experience and have been researching it. Many websites do this by calling you to live as a person who is living in extreme poverty lives and one way to do that is to eat on the budget equivalent to the poverty line.

So…that’s what I am doing. The U.S. equivalent of what a person in a developing nation would experience as the poverty line is $1.50. That’s how much a day for the next five days I get on food. I tried to stay true to the experience of a person living in poverty so, I:

• Tried to factor in all costs of food, including the transportation cost of procuring it
• Factored in any additional things we may not think of as having costs, but do (spices, garlic, etc.)
• Already made some tough (for ME) choices related to what I could have for $7.50/day

If you want to see what I ended up with in my grocery bag, watch the video!!! (For those who’ve endured my videos before, you know this one is an exercise in downright brevity for me.)

I’ll report in each day of this experiment, either by video or just as a blog post. Also look out for status updates to the Bariatric Foodie Facebook page and Twitter feed (for updates specifically related to THIS challenge, use hashtag #HungryNik).