What the World Eats

[psi29a]

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0 ... 19,00.html

Damn, and I thought my weekly expenditure was high!

I spend about 80$ USD a week on food for Sammantha, myself, and my 2 pets.

Staple foods: rice, spaghetti, salad, Peanut Butter & Jelly, bread, and fish (all kinds, typically grilled) : we eat all the time
Favorite foods: Enchiladas, Beef Stroganouf, Kabobs, and BBQ pork/beef ribs : perhaps once a month we have these.

So, about $320 a month on food alone.

How much do you spend on food?

[MsNomer]

I have to say, if I count in all the pizzas and take out my expenses for feeding the fam goes up a bit. Generally I spend around $95 a week at the grocery to feed me and 2 kids... then add an average of $35 a week for sushi and pizza. The monthly comes to $540 and I have one kid going through a growth spurt about every other week.

[Starnum]

For me and the fam, we spend $300 on food for the month, easily.

[MrFelony]

that was pretty interesting, i liked how only the german family had lots of beer on the table . there were a lot of other great photojournals on there, i suggest taking a look at them.

[ZoddsNo1Fan]

My diet consists, of about 1500-2000 calories a day, about 300% protien supplements, viatamin suppliments, workout 4 hours a day everyday, very low fat/sugar diet to include, triscuits, tuna, beer jerky, veggies, lots of water/propel fitness water and 3/4 cup nuts/chex mix for a snack. Needless to say when i eat something high in fat it tastes extremly good.

[Albator]

I don't understand how you can workout 4 hours a day and only take 1500-2000 calories. If you work out that much you burn probably around 2000 cal if not more.

[psi29a]

I just wonder about the time constraints. My typical day involves getting up at 7:30 to be at work by around 8:30, then going home at 5. So spending 4 hours at the gym or wherever leaves me with 9pm to 7:30am to eat dinner and do anything else. Unfortunately, I'm ready for bed by 10:30~11 not counting the time I want to spend reading.

4 hours every day just isn't realistic for some of us who work for a living. Now, an hour a night walking/running/Frisbee with the dog burns fair amount of calories and also not eating a fuck ton of protein helps too. My dinners typically consist of either Thai noodles & pb&j, salad with smoked samon or grilled chicken, chili and hot dogs, all with an orange or grapefruit. Simple, small, easy on the wallet and easy to get rid of considering you burn 1000 calories in a day as a freebie for just being alive and more for spending just an hour out of your day playing Frisbee or other activity.

If you want some quick man-meals that are easy on your budget:
http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.d ... ___&page=0

The above is a pretty cool guide and you just have to run to the store about once a week.

And yes, my lunch of choice is PB&J or brats (smoked sausages) with cheap kroger bread, that is about 12 bucks a week, cheaper than that high school lunch we used to have.

[MrFelony]

part of it could be waking up at 5am or so to get in a couple of hours before the day starts

[Albator]

Most college/highschool kids can do it, requires a lot of will if you ask me. It gets more complicated later on. I know for a fact that if I eat that few calories and exercise that much, I'll be dead (probably anybody would be too) or injured in no time.

To stay on topic, I probably spend about $500 if not more on food each month, 400 in a good month. Comes with the french blood I guess, but that is the kind of money you have to fork over if you want decent/tasty/healthy food in the US. Whole Food or Trader's Joe, for those who have the chance to have one of those nearby, should be your friends.

[psi29a]

Comes with the french blood I guess, but that is the kind of money you have to fork over if you want decent/tasty/healthy food in the US. Whole Food or Trader's Joe, for those who have the chance to have one of those nearby, should be your friends.

Interesting that you should state that because recently there where congressmen that tried living off foodstamps for a week and found out several things.

1) they couldn't afford healthy food.
2) the food they could afford was basically saturated in high fructose corn syrup, sodium, and starch.
3) they gained weight that others attributed to over-eating/unhealthy lifestyle.

Hanity (radio personality) claimed this to be just another publicity stunt and 'suggested' that those "lazy fat" poor people on foodstamps should be given less money in foodstamps because they are 'obviously' gorging themselves and not exercising.

It is kind of hard to exercise when you try to hold down a job for your family, and even then the only food you can afford are going to be as the congressmen enumerated above.

Eating healthy is expensive. Being healthy costs more time and money up front, but beats long term costs considering your medical bills in the future.

[Albator]

There is many reason on why people are fat, some are unfortunate and hard to solve, but some others could be easily overcome with the proper education. That's another problem.

When it comes to food/weight gain/diet, the current consensus mostly focus on one thing: calories needs/intake. Depending on activity, you need a certain amount of calories intake. If you are below, you lose weight, simple as that. Problem of cheap foods is that they are also refered as "empty calories": high energetic value, no nutrient value. So can gain weight with those and develop carences. You can eat less, don't gain weight but have even worse carences. So you need to get the proper foods that have low calories values and rich of nutrients (veggies, fruit, nuts, fish, etc): those are easy to come by too, but with a price. Not cheap.

This type of food is much more available here than it is in western Europe, but more important is the people's misconception, who are used to this and think it's good as long as they fill up their stomach.

[MsNomer]

It is entirely possible to purchase healthy foods while living on food stamps. You just have to be diligent in your trip to the store, read labels and make hard choices for yourself and your children. If you like ice cream and know you eat too much of it, buy smaller containers or buy it less often. No child ever came out of the womb crying for an RC Cola and a Moon Pie. Those are learned habits. Convenience foods are not good for you even they do say "Lite" or "Low Fat" on the labels. If it goes in the microwave, it probably is over processed and made of elmer's glue and high fructose corn syrup. Buy a cook book.

[Brainpiercing]

My allotted daily budget is about 10€, or around 12$, on just food, not counting anything to drink above tap water or cheap soda. Beer, going out, snacks, etc. are not counted. AND I probably eat less than healthily right now, because it's not worth-while cooking for myself, so I eat out far too often. As a single household, my monthly total expenditure exceeds 600-700€ most months. Today was a cheap day, though. No breakfast, lunch of bread/bacon/cheese, supper of noodles with tomatoe sauce, total cost around 4€/5$.

Well, Germany won the contest, with 500$ food expenditure, and what that family had on the table was not especially healthy food. When my mother goes shopping for the family (on the rare occasion that we are all there) she can spend 100€ a day, sometimes.