In September of 2008, two Social Justice high school teachers took on a month-long experiment to start eating on one dollar a day. Their project taught them about food, economics and nutrition. Because the economics of food is relevant to people’s daily lives, the experiment focused on food choices, consumerism, waste, poverty, social psychology, etc.
According to their blog, the initial motivation behind the experiment was not concrete. For Christopher Greenslate, M.Ed. graduate of the Institute for Humane Education, and his partner Kerri, the teachers were just interested in the challenge and wanted to see things differently after completing their experience.
The rules for their experiment, as listed on their blog, were:
1. All food consumed each day must total $1 for each of us.
2. We cannot accept free food or “donated” food unless it is available for everyone in our area. (i.e. foraging, samples in stores, dumpster diving)
3. Any food we plant, we pay for.
4. We will do our best to cook a variety of meals; ramen noodles can only be prepared if there is no other way to stay under one dollar. (We have six packages and will buy no more)
5. Should we decide to have guests over for dinner they must eat from our share; meaning they don’t get to eat their own dollar’s worth of food.
-- Jaimie Hwang
Read their blog here.
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