Healthy Eating on $4/Day – Update

Today is day 19 of my Eating Healthy on $4/Day project and I have not posted an update since day 6 on July 13th. I want to apologize for the total lack of updates. I have been working really, really hard over here and learning an incredible amount. I just have not been writing it publicly. The main goal of this was to create a tool guide from the month long experience and I have been making great progress with it. All is well here, I have only positive things to say about the experience and I am SUPER excited to share what I have been learning this month. We are eating super healthy and every day I am seeing that it is possible to eat healthy on just $4/day even in areas where accessibility is an issue. My daily journaling online has disappeared but I will catch that back up in the next few days and continue forward with daily journals this week.

Here are a few things I’d like to get you updated on right now:

We created an awesome garden out of almost completely wasted materials that is open for anyone in the community to eat from. The raised beds are made out of pallets, tires, scrap wood, buckets, and an old dresser. The compost bin is made out of pallets and the rainwater harvesting unit is made of an old 55 gallon drum and used materials from Habitat for Humanity. This garden is a demonstration site to show others how they can make a garden at their home for almost no money using wasted materials.

Cheryl and I challenged ourselves to prepare a meal for a family of 4 and ourselves for under $8 and we did it! That’s 6 people eating dinner for just $1.33 each. We had stove popped popcorn as a snack, potato lentil vegetable stew served over rice, and baked apples for desert. It was the first time the family had ever eaten a meal that didn’t have any meat or animal products in it and they really liked it.

Channel 2 from France was with me for a couple days so you’ll be able to watch a lot of this in a documentary about my work they are putting out this fall.

We have been exploring more of the stores and so far have found that to eat really healthy here you have to get outside of the neighborhood.

We learned that it is not less expensive to eat fast food than healthy meals at home. Even I had a slight belief that this myth may be true but it’s just not true at all. It is substantially more expensive to eat fast food than cook healthy food at home.

We are working on our 30 day meal plan that will give recipes to make eating healthy on $4/day delicious and nutritious.

We have partnered with a videographer to help us make our video series for this project. There will be 3 series, fermenting foods, $1 meals, and DIY foods that you thought you had to buy from the store.

We have now spent $170.69 and have $69.31 left. We have discovered that we can definitely eat ample fresh fruits and vegetables on just $4/day. I am really amazed at just how healthy we can eat.

I have been working on a lot of other writings and videos as well over the last few weeks which has taken precedence of some of my computer time. I am backlogged on some of my personal work and it was so great to catch up on it.

You can check out some of the other blogs I recently posted.

Here are two videos I produced that relate to this project:

David Young is an incredible man hard at work in the lower 9th ward in New Orleans. He lives in a food desert and he is working to turn it into a food paradise. I visited him before arriving here in Atlanta. This video has gotten over 10 million views on Facebook since last week!

Fleet Farming is an urban farming program leading a local food revolution by turning lawns into food gardens on bicycles! This is another solution to food insecurity in neighborhoods without fresh produce. I visited them in Orlando this summer as well.

I also released my 5 episode sustainable living series which teaches the basics of how anyone across the USA can live more sustainably at home.

CBS also came down and did a little story with me on food waste in the USA. Nearly half of all food in the USA is wasted while 50 million US Americans are food insecure. You can see that story here.

That’s it for now. Expect me to be sharing more blogs this week on eating healthy on $4/ day and be excited for the videos that are coming out this month. Health and happiness to you all!