Monday, November 10, 2008

From the Journal of Pointless Experiments

The challenges of eating right on a limited budget - International Herald Tribune:
The World Bank says nearly a billion people around the world live on a dollar a day, or even less; in the United States, the daily food-stamp allowance is typically just a few dollars per person, while the average American eats $7 worth of food per day...

This fall a couple in Encinitas, California, conducted their own experiment to find out what it was like to live for a month on just a dollar a day for food. Overnight, their diets changed significantly.

You don't say. What type of person would think such an experiment makes sense?:
...the couple - Christopher Greenslate, 28, and Kerri Leonard, 29, both high school social studies teachers - bought raw beans, rice, cornmeal and oatmeal in bulk, and made their own bread and tortillas. Fresh fruits and vegetables weren't an option.
Um, no doubt a dollar a day is not a lot of money for anyone in the world. But do a couple of social studies teachers really need to be told that $1 might buy you more in, say, Africa than it will in California? (Or, for that matter, that many of the poor do grow at least some of their own food.)

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