The Pierini DIET - click here to learn moreThe other day I stumbled across the topic of “survival dieting” on an internet fitness forum. The person who started the topic was thinking about a popular belief he had read that the United States is headed for continued economic and possibly political meltdown. In his pondering, the thought of how much food would be necessary to survive for one week, keeping nutrition as high as possible, cost as low as possible, and not being in a starvation mode.
He went on to pose the question that if you had a $20 bill, or even a $10 bill, what would you bring home from the grocery store? Good discussion followed in response to his question and aroused my curiosity. On Sunday, I posed this question to my wife who, interestingly, has been trying to get my attention for some time to have a similar mindset. Maybe I’m a bit too optimistic for my own good, but I don’t buy this “doom or gloom” picture. Nonetheless, it made for a good Sunday afternoon discussion.
The opposite of my “if more is good then most must be better” mindset kicked in during this discussion when I asked my wife if she thought we could survive on $5 per person for a week – or $10 for the both of us. My question was in the context of food consumption and not food purchase because eating for less would require purchasing some food in larger quantities and this would require a greater initial cash investment.
Not being the primary shopper for family groceries, my knowledge of food prices is rusty, but I started thinking about the cost of the food I would select and doing some mental math. My wife’s thoughts were that $5 per person a week would be difficult but $10 per person was achievable.
Then she dropped a bomb on me with “Why don’t we try it?”
“Gasp!” uttered the man who prides himself with his intermittent fasting lifestyle of eating less, while thinking about what to snack on next during this lazy Sunday afternoon.
Maybe one day soon I’ll be up to the challenge of giving survival dieting a test, but until then it’s made me think about the way I eat day in and day out and the way I would eat with survival dieting.
Should there be any difference?
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
4 comments:
I have been thinking about this also. If it was just me, and I didn't have to feed a growing husband and 2 kids, I think I could live on rice and beans. Or maybe beans and tortillas.
I asked hubby what he thought of as survival food and he said rice and beans and a box of Little Debbie cakes-lol.
I like to think of food as survival/fuel, even though food and eating is one of life's great pleasures. At least we're thinking about it, right? Alot of people don't really think about what they're ingesting.
What would be your survival foods??
Rice, beans, eggs, cheese, cucumbers, olive oil, ingredients to make homemade flour tortillas, tomatoes, onions and oranges. Some spices would be nice too.
I think there should be a difference for the most part. There are so many good things to eat that it would be a shame to deny yourself some good and tasty food if you don't have to. Adam and Eve were only denied the fruit to one tree. They ate it anyway and we know what happened but that's a different topic.
If we're able to, we should enjoy food. There's nothing wrong with being prepared and ready just in case, but until then, try to enjoy life, and that includes food.
I went with my sister to do some grocery shopping this afternoon. Since my wife and I have been heavy into salads with nuts, olives and such, most of which comes from Costco (large boxes and bags), I was a little shocked to see prices on little bags of greens in a store here in Hampstead, NC. Suffice to say that our diet would not be as healthy if we had to pay those higher prices all of the time. Under $10 a week? Even if we're shopping only at Costco, that would be impossible, but given some are predicting a triple-double economy (double digit inflation, double digit unemployment and double digit interest rates), it's not a bad idea to give this some thought.
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