day one.

I hate grape jelly.

More on that later.

For the past week, I ate as much as I could in preparation for this month.

I donated the rest of what I'd spend on food in February to the Red Cross. I was committed.

Yesterday, I spent the afternoon coupon clipping, preparing for this. i found coupons to bring the price of a box of pasta down to 19 cents. i made a spreadsheet with calories per dollar, made a list of cheap food, and felt like this was going to be easier than expected.

At 11:55, I ate 2 big macs... a last ditch effort at loading my body with calories. I then went to bed dreaming about delicious recipes.

I woke up this morning with a full belly, feeling hopeful. I got my coupons together, and drove to Publix. as I began to fill my cart, I realized that i could decide on a particular item based on whether it passed the following test:

(calories per serving * total servings) / cost = calories per dollar

Since the limit is $1 a day, and 1000 calories a day are needed to stay out of starvation metabolism, I needed that formula to work out to 1000 or better for each food item. Additionally, I needed to balance protein, vitamins, and minerals. thankfully, I couldn't afford anything close to fatty - today I had 22 grams of fat, less than 35% of my daily allowance. meat was completely out of the question, as were most vegetables. i could afford potatoes or beans. I chose beans, to go with my rice. As I looked at the varieties of beans, I ran the math on black beans:

70 calories * 12 servings / $1.09 = 770 calories/dollar.

I couldn't afford black beans to go with my rice.

I think it was at this point that I first felt the urge to fight back tears... not for my own predicament, but realizing that hundreds of millions of people worldwide were facing this same issue, many at the very same moment. I checked all the bean varieties, and finally found that black eyed peas almost qualified, with 980 calories per dollar.

I put two bags in my cart.

As I continued roaming Publix for the next two hours, I repeated the same process several dozen times. As a friend of mine pointed out, clementines were on sale, $6 for a 5 pound crate. This sounded tasty and delicious, until I ran the numbers:

178 calories per dollar. each clementine was 35 calories, and would cost about 20 cents. For 20 cents, I could make a 400 calorie peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Goodbye, clementines. See you March 1st.

Continuing to walk around Publix, and thinking about how many calories I was burning while walking (102/hour for a 175lb male in their 20s), I started feeling angry, especially towards people medically classified as overweight. I remembered from a sermon that $60 billion is spent yearly on weight loss in the US. (http://www.worldometers.info/weight-loss/)

Sixty Billion Dollars.

That's enough to feed all of the malnourished in Africa, South America, North America, and the Carribbean, combined. (http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm)

Better still, various sources put the US spending on obesity caused disease at somewhere around double that, so 120 Billion. That's enough to cover the rest of the world's hunger.

dang.

My last item to purchase was peanut butter and jelly for my sandwich. I got the cheapest peanut butter, after calculating what it was worth to me (1461 calories/dollar). I looked at the available jellies, and licked my lips in excitement over the strawberry jelly.... until I saw it's price. $1 more than grape.

Like I said before, I hate grape jelly. A lot.

I grabbed the grape before I had the chance for a second thought, and headed to checkout.

Total: $33.15.

Something was wrong. I looked at the receipt - the buy one get one pasta was a different variety than what I had a coupon for. This pushed me up and over the $28 goal. I took my groceries out to the car, too embarassed, angry, and confused to do anything else. I got to the car, and realized I had to return the pasta.

I have never had to return food. Ever. I always just eat it, like a human garbage disposal. Soggy cereal? Done. Day old McChicken? Down the hatch. Never an issue. I had to return this, though. The dialogue went something like this:

me: "I need to return this pasta."
cashier: "Is there anything wrong with it?"
me: "no, I just can't afford it"
cashier then looks at my iphone, car keys, american eagle sweater, etc.

oh, boy.

He rang all the pasta up, and started counting back my refund. I realized he hadn't compensated the value of the coupons back to the store, so I was getting $4 more than was right. I was thrust into a moral quandary. Four dollars is close to a quarter of what I had to spend. I could afford delicious pasta and pasta sauce with that four dollars. In what was probably less than 10 seconds, I visualized a dozen different meals I could purchase with this newfound four dollars. I realize I had to do the right thing though, and asked him to take out the $4 from the coupons.

Here's what $25.48 buys you:


5lbs rice
2lbs black eyed peas
5lbs oats
5lbs flour
1 box buttermilk pancakes
1 jar grape jelly
1 jar peanut butter
6 packages of ramen noodles (chicken)
6 packages of ramen noodles (beef)
1 loaf of bread
salt
yeast

By now it was lunchtime, and I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I licked the knife clean, and poured a glass of water. (that's another thing - I can't afford anything but water) I prayed over the food, giving thanks more earnestly than I had in a long time. I began to read the miracle of the feeding of 5000 (Matthew 14). Jesus feeds 5000 men with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Afterwords, 12 basketfuls of bread were left over.

I pray that God blesses this food and the other 1 billion people who go hungry every day similarly.


Today:
1 peanut butter and jelly sandwich - 410 calories, 14g protein
1 bowl oatmeal - 280 calories, 10g protein

Weight: 174lbs, no physical changes.