To think having £1 a day per person for mood is bloody misserable- it's purely survival

[Wineandcheases]

Anyone done it ? There are face book groups and challenges . I'm quite thrifty - but £1 a day per person is so miserable . Can hardly have any treats at all . On a fb they are saying how it's quite possible and how you can have lovely meals -I aren't convinced - easily £2 per person per day but £1 must be toast and rice

[LineyReborn]

You mean food? Could you get MNHQ to amend.

[NotNowPike]

It's FB .....
I'd read it and move on

[MinecraftyMum]

£1 per person per meal is doable for main meals IMO...and a decent enough standard if you're careful. There are a few meals I've made which probably average at about £4 cost for us.

But I agree that £1 per person per day does sound miserable.

[Wineandcheases]

Yes it's just on food - there was a well publicised challenge living on a dollar a day - fb group going which has some great recipes on - but I just can't see how it can be done really . Well sure some People do out of lack of choice but it sounds hard - wondered if anyone on here had done it

[ThisIsStartingToBoreMe]

Of course you can live on £1 a day.

You wouldn't be eating a healthy nutritious well balance diet though.

[Lovepancakes]

I wouldn't mind trying if just me as like most food but feeding a family with different likes is harder!

I did try Jack Munro's recipes for our whole family and found it satisfying as it cut down on our meat eating and the DC didn't particularly realise the bean burgers were beans so ate them cheerfully

[Wineandcheases]

Mine crafty - what I thought - for example beef stew etc but all your meals sounds like it must be just carbs

[Sophia1984]

When I've seen it done it's been an awareness-raising/fundraising challenge. I don't think you could maintain a healthy diet long-term on that much, though it would be brilliant if you could!

[Wineandcheases]

Love pancakes might google the burger recipe

[AndNowItsSeven]

It's possible if it's average it with a family of children. My grocery bill has gone up recently to around £75 but that's from a family of nine at includes nappies, wipes , cleaning products etc. So £1 a day per person averaged out sounds about right.

[CremeEggThief]

I think there's a big difference between doing it as a challenge or for a limited time and doing it because you have no choice. YANBU.

[UmbongoUnchained]

Tom Hiddleston did this for UNICEF last year and I think he mainly lived on baked potatoes.

[SaucyJack]

A pound a day PP doesn't sound like much, but that's actually £35 a week for all of us. I'm quite sure it would be very doable in actuality if it's just human food, and no nappies or smellies.

I'm imagining eating all three meals together at home tho. Pre-portioned lunchbox snacks and work lunches out obviously bump the cost up.

[Wineandcheases]

My actual meals are often cheap and healthy as do a lot of Vegi based ( lentil lasania etc ) but we also like chocolate biscuits etc so that's where our bill goes up - I would hate to have to do it . How would you do a Sunday dinner on that ?

[UmbongoUnchained]

You can't do a Sunday dinner on that, that's the whole point of bloody challenge. It's about experiencing what a lot of families around the world have to live on.

[EmbroideryQueen]

I have done about £1.50pp / day by using ALDI, but the food got so boring (lots of stews, soups, pasta and sloppy dishes with bread) that after a couple of weeks I found myself very bored of the food and skipping the proper meals and snacking on toast instead. DC was pretty happy with the meals and they were fairly healthy, just very dull for adults!

[EmbroideryQueen]

Yes, you can't do a Sunday lunch! Well, maybe you could use 1 economy sausage per person, potatoes, carrots, gravy? But that wouldn't really count as Sunday lunch in my book!

[MrsH1989]

It is possible not to have too miserable an existence but wouldn't be great.
Examples-
Breakfast - porridge and milk/ beans on toast at the weekend.
Lunch - ham or Tuna crunch sandwiches
Evening meals - Pasta bake (sauce, cheese, pasta)
Chicken curry (sauce, chicken, rice, frozen veg)
Chicken in white wine sauce (plus rice and frozen veg)
Turkey burger chips and beans
Cottage pie (frozen mash, cheap mince and frozen veg)
stir fry (stir fry veg, sauce, noodles)
Pizza and Garlic bread and chips

Cost £27.84 based on feeding 2 adults and 2 children.

[BeaufortBelle]

Um, I'm not trying to live on a £1 a day per person but last week I ordered a piece of rolled pork shoulder which came in at £3.70, was big enough for six dinners and delish. With basics spuds, carrots and cabbage would have made a lovely roast dinner for less than £1 a head. Porridge for breakfast and a home-made soup and bread for lunch and I reckon it could just have been done for a £1 including a roast dinner.

But, day in day out, it would get a bit numbing. The Pork was special offer from Sainsburys.

[Birdsgottafly]

It works if they're a few of you and some are children.

I've known some single men on JSA to live off value bread, cheap noodles etc, but they went to family for the odd meal and they didn't look well on it.

I'm Vegan and can spend very little on food, I prefer black tea and no spread on bread etc, but I need a good supply of spices and stew/soup bases etc.

[Lockheart]

I did that pound-a-day challenge a couple of years back. I spent £4.80, all Asda smart price stuff, and that included biscuits and some chocolate!

I can't remember off the top of my head, but I had:

Toast for breakfast every morning
Lunch was instant noodles
Dinner was either spaghetti or rice with a sauce made from passata / onions / kidney beans / frozen veg (you can get a kilo of chopped frozen veg from Asda for ~75p) and a little seasoning.
Snacks were biscuits (I had digestives and ginger nuts) and a little chocolate at night.

I didn't count things like butter for the toast, or cooking oil for frying the onion. That said, it was doable. It was boring, but doable. You wouldn't starve on it.

[BlackeyedSusan]

I can do £1.65 for food per person per day and include a lot of fruit and veg. (dd has a condition that is managed by lots of fibre. ie about 15 child size portions per day) things are creeping up in price again though.

we would have to loose a lot of the fruit and go with the cheapest by weight. we would also have to increase the proportion of carrots and onions to other veg. (ie one portion of sultanas instead of three sorts of dried fruit at breakfast, less fruit and veg in their lunch,

swapping back from whole meal pasta and brown rice would not work as then we would have to increase more expensive animal derived protein instead of beans and lentils

I would have to stop eating cheese. (not a bad thing) and cut out/back the things that improve taste such as balsamic vinegar and soy sauce.

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

There's something quite unpleasant about poverty tourism. Making lovely nourishing vegan stews for a week is nothing like living it week in week out. I don't see the point at all.

[Trills]

I did live below the line last year.

It was fucking horrible.

I did £5 for 5 days worth of food (total) and raised a lot of money for charity because anyone who saw me could see how hard it was.

[EmbroideryQueen]

Yeah, a lot of things are manageable for a week - a friend does the 4:3 diet (3 days a week fasting!!). You could probably do the other 4 days a week of eating for well under £1 a day on utterly shit food. But the point is that it's not sustainable long term (unless you have no choice in which case you're probably thin and malnourished).