For 5 days in April, Peace Direct staff lived “below the line”. Budgeting just £1 a day for food and drink to raise money and awareness of people living in extreme poverty. Here is how we got on…
[hidden title=”Monday, Laura” more=”Monday. Day 1 of Live Below the Line. Filling my shopping basket with treats such as porridge oats, jam, yoghurts, a loaf of bread and even a jar of peanut butter (for protein, all Sainsbury’s basics of course) I had thought I could easily live off £1 a day for 5 days. As I awoke, groggy after the weekend, and habitually went for the coffee pot, I remembered that the luxury of caffeine didn’t fit into my £5 budget, and I quickly changed my mind about how easy this challenge would be. A cup of black tea (33p per basics box) just didn’t cut it.”]
Monday. Day 1 of Live Below the Line. Filling my shopping basket with treats such as porridge oats, jam, yoghurts, a loaf of bread and even a jar of peanut butter (for protein, all Sainsbury’s basics of course) I had thought I could easily live off £1 a day for 5 days. As I awoke, groggy after the weekend, and habitually went for the coffee pot, I remembered that the luxury of caffeine didn’t fit into my £5 budget, and I quickly changed my mind about how easy this challenge would be. A cup of black tea (33p per basics box) just didn’t cut it.
Like almost every other Peace Direct Live Below the Liner, breakfast was a bowl of watery porridge. It’s hard to be inventive on such a tight budget. It was plain but filling enough. My real challenge on this first day was overcoming the coffee withdrawals. Throughout the day I suffered from headaches and chronic fatigue, and to make things worse I had to watch my colleagues pouring themselves cup after cup of the beautiful brown nectar at our away day meeting. As the scent of roasted coffee beans filled my nostrils I wondered what I was doing to myself. I could just have one cup, and still eat my 33p meals and then I’d basically still be starving and therefore not cheating. But of course, for someone who really does live below the poverty line, an extra cup here and a mouthful there just isn’t an option.
The real test came that evening. Not wanting to be alone with endless hours stretching ahead where my resolve might weaken and the temptation to reach into my cupboards would overcome me, I decided to take my peanut butter sandwich to my sister’s house. She had cooked up a feast. I sat there trying to make my meagre supper last as long as possible watching everyone around me tuck into heavenly platefuls of food. I realised what it must feel like, to be poor and starving while people around you can unthinkingly satisfy their hunger. To watch the chatter at the table as people went for second helpings, feeling right on the periphery of this jolly social gathering, the agony I felt at people complaining they had eaten too much, watching the leftovers get dumped in the bin.
It really is unfathomable how we in the west can waste so much food when over a billion people in the world go hungry. It made me remember the reason I was living below the line, and that I didn’t really have any cause for complaint when I could go back to filling my belly whenever I wanted in 5 days’ time.[/hidden]
[hidden title=”Tuesday, Clara” more=”This was only the second day and already I was feeling deprived and cranky, with visions of fruit and coffee dancing through my head. Two mornings in a row of bland Sainsbury’s muesli was already enough to encourage waves of gratitude for the variety of my everyday diet. And I was also realising by this point how much I take for granted that I can eat something as soon as my energy dips or even if I just feel like an apple.” ]
This was only the second day and already I was feeling deprived and cranky, with visions of fruit and coffee dancing through my head. Two mornings in a row of bland Sainsbury’s muesli was already enough to encourage waves of gratitude for the variety of my everyday diet. And I was also realising by this point how much I take for granted that I can eat something as soon as my energy dips or even if I just feel like an apple.
By joining forces with my husband and sister, who was – unluckily for her – staying with us for the week, we were able to buy a bag of six apples and a packet of ginger nuts. I managed to hold out until exactly 3pm (and I was watching the time carefully) when I finally ate one of my two apples for the week. After a lunch of potatoes and baked beans, I was intensely grateful for something fresh. I thought this would help me to last until dinner but all resolve crumbled in the face of the ginger nuts and I inhaled two of my share of five biscuits for the week. And immediately regretted my haste.
After only two days of the challenge I had already learned so much more than I expected. We may think we empathise with people who are starving or eating very little but it’s not until you go hungry yourself that you realise how many things food makes an impact on. My concentration levels dropped drastically, partly because I was low on energy and partly because my focus was constantly pulled towards the thought of my next meal. My mood was low and I felt irritable and tired.
This experience made it even more clear to me that a whole society is crippled by starvation. If I found it difficult after only two days to concentrate at work, I can only imagine how hard it must be for hungry children to learn at school or for a person to work from early until late to support their family. The impact on productivity means that it is even harder for people to pull out of the vicious circle of poverty. And if your safety is threatened by war and conflict as well, hope must sometimes feel as scarce as food.[/hidden]
[hidden title=”Wednesday, Claire” more=”I started Wednesday feeling quite smug that I had fooled my food obsessed body into eating watery porridge with raisins and honey for two meals the last two days and still felt ok. Our CEO Carolyn made us a great lunch of egg fried rice with peas and beans and a piece of pineapple for pudding which was the first fruit I’d had all week (raisins aside).” ]
I started Wednesday feeling quite smug that I had fooled my food obsessed body into eating watery porridge with raisins and honey for two meals the last two days and still felt ok. Our CEO Carolyn made us a great lunch of egg fried rice with peas and beans and a piece of pineapple for pudding which was the first fruit I’d had all week (raisins aside). But then disaster struck when my empty stomach feeling didn’t go away like it had done before. I think my body had started to realise that this wasn’t a summer diet fad and that I really wasn’t going to have a big piece of cheese when I got home. Porridge that night felt more like filling up with something synthetic rather than actually eating. I went to sleep feeling actually hungry for the first time…but then that is the point.[/hidden]
[hidden title=”Thursday, Steve” more=”Thursday started like every other day this week. A bowl of porridge with water (15p). Then I had a brain wave. I crumbled in a bourbon biscuit (2p per biscuit) and suddenly the tasteless mass of porridge turned into a chocolaty treat! This also provided some much needed sugar as on the previous two days I had felt a little dizzy on the train home. Bourbons to the rescue!” ]
Thursday started like every other day this week. A bowl of porridge with water (15p). Then I had a brain wave. I crumbled in a bourbon biscuit (2p per biscuit) and suddenly the tasteless mass of porridge turned into a chocolaty treat! This also provided some much needed sugar as on the previous two days I had felt a little dizzy on the train home. Bourbons to the rescue!
Thursday was my day to make lunch for the rest of the Peace Direct Live Below the Liners. The night before I cooked up a batch of spaghetti with tomato sauce and kidney beans (36p per portion). To make sure I was spending the least amount possible I made enough for my own dinners for Wednesday and Thursday nights. This means three spaghetti meals in a row, but when your budget is tight your choices are limited and cooking in bulk really helps bring down the average price per portion. I’m already looking forward to my banana sandwich lunch (29p) on Friday!
After my spaghetti dinner (36p) I had 11p left over. Four bourbons later and I will have spent 99p for the day and £3.59 for the week so far.
Living below the line has taught me how much we take food for granted. Particularly how easy it is to buy food on the go allowing for a more flexible work and social life. With only £1 a day you have to plan every meal and stick to it. I will definitely be making my own lunches from now on and will have a few weeks without spaghetti! For anyone Living Below the Line I would recommend banana sandwiches for lunch and a pack of cheap bourbon biscuits to keep your sugar levels up.[/hidden]
[hidden title=”Friday, Paul” more=”I woke up with the knowledge that this would be the last day of my Live Below the Line week which made me instantly dream about flavourful, and – most of all – A LOT of food. When I got out of bed, the realisation that it was going to be porridge with water and no more sugar (that’s the punishment for using too much yesterday!) for breakfast quickly got me back down to earth.” ]
I woke up with the knowledge that this would be the last day of my Live Below the Line week which made me instantly dream about flavourful, and – most of all – A LOT of food. When I got out of bed, the realisation that it was going to be porridge with water and no more sugar (that’s the punishment for using too much yesterday!) for breakfast quickly got me back down to earth.
When working from home like today, I notice what a massive difference the support of colleagues and my LBTL mates at the office makes. Just the welcome distraction of having a chat with people once in a while and subconsciously noticing what’s going on at the desks around me takes my mind off the threatening hole in my stomach and the suppressed desire to walk straight out of the door over to Sainsbury’s, and buy the biggest bag of crisps and the biggest chocolate bar I can find. All that is missing now and it’s just me against myself (or my stomach). So I throw myself at the work in front of me and try not to think about food. But we all know what happens when you try not to think about a pink elephant…there it is.
So this goes on until around 1.30pm when my resistance crumbles and I have – again – rice with veg (cooked on Monday). As I’ve noticed during the week, any food tastes soo much better when you’re really hungry – amazing! Still I’m surprised that I actually enjoy a meal that I had pretty much every day for the past 5 days.
The afternoon is dominated by the craving for freshly brewed coffee, which I keep in check by drinking hot water (sometimes mixed with the last few stock cubes I bought on Monday).
When I finish my working day, I catch myself counting the hours until midnight. To get my mind off the ever present topic of food (what else?) I watch a few episodes of “Friends” and then have my last bowl of porridge. It was a good week to make me aware of the hardship that so many people go through every day and at the same time show me the outrageous abundance of and unhealthy attitude towards food we generally have in the global north. [/hidden]
Feeling inspired to take the challenge. There is still time to sign up to live below the line and raise money for people in extreme poverty. Find out more.
