Today I started to take part in Live Below the Line.
I do charity stuff quite often, last year I walked 50km for Save The Children, more recently I fund-raised for the Sumatran Orangutan Society's Ape-ril campaign. This week I will be taking part in Live Below The Line, which means I will not spend more than £1 a day on food.
Live Below the Line is challenging individuals and communities to eat and drink on just £1 per day for 5 days, to bring to life the experiences of the 1.2 billion people currently living in extreme poverty. Think about that figure - 1.2 BILLION - that's nearly 20 times the population of the UK - living every day in extreme poverty.
This morning my girlfriend (who is also taking part) and I drove to Tesco and using a list provided by the LBTL organisers set about shopping for the bare minimum.
One thing that did strike me as odd was the suggestion of a banana for breakfast, apparently they think bananas only cost 11p each... erm, no, try double that. So opting instead for dirt cheap porridge and value strawberry jam as a breakfast (which works out at 3.7p for porridge and 0.6p for jam) we found ourselves taking things seriously and exercising our maths skills.
The way Live Below The Line works is you go by the value of what you are eating, so the limit isn't £5 of shopping for 5 days it's £1 worth of food per day (because looking at the shopping list provided you're not going to get 20p worth of flour from many places). That means bulk buying, so £3 for 2kg of lentils works out at around 15p per serving. When looking at those numbers it doesn't seem impossible, lentils are great!
Shopping done, the total for both of us hitting £18.35, but things like butter, cooking oil, cheese, lentils, porridge, jam and crushed chillis would not all be eaten in 5 days, so we should be well below budget day-to-day.
After food shopping, my girlfriend spent £4 on tobacco and I spent £25 on unleaded petrol and wondered if I could starve for a day and a half and get a doughnut.
Want to send me a donation for Save the Children? Click here and donate away!
Peace out!
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