I’d like to start day one of the challenge by acknowledging that it is quite possible and often very necessary for someone to budget their food much lower than the amount this challenge was set at. We as a people have found ourselves backwards on how we price our products. Foods that have been through expensive processing treatments, including poisons and mechanical preperation are priced lower than foods that are just picked and delivered to the store as is. This is remarkable considering the fact that whole foods are proven to carry more flavor and deliver more nutrients than processed foods.

Yes, you can survive on fifty dollars and less. You can feed a family of five on less than most Americans spend on a single person. The real task is to insure that nutrition is maintained to avoid risking your health in the process.

We as a community have become over indulgent and malnourished at the same time. We have become so obsessed with the quick fix to hunger that McDonald’s and Wendy’s provides that we have turned our back on the simple acts of cooking and considering our needs as a being. We have become the most unhealthy, obese, and dangerously gluttonous people to have walked the Earth in its entire history.

As a result, we throw ourselves into debt while feeding an expensive habit that has no benefit for us whatsoever. If anything, our expensive eating habits lead us further into the stages of critical endangerment and further from any sense of well being.