People ask George Gordon how he lives on less than $8,000 per year. He answers them, "Very well. Very well indeed." Jake Fronczak at the Furry Curry sent an exciting email. George Gordon may talk like a sphinx, but his methods aren't secret. Here is how you can eat for $1.28 per day, and live better and healthier than everyone else.
Date: Day 12, Month 9, Year 2729 of Our Exile (November 22, 2007)
From: Jacob FronczakOne Week of Food for Different Societies
Look - we could eat on $1.23 a week!
More importantly, most of the "cheapest" families eat mutton regularly. I bet there's a reason for this. And of course they also eat lots of raw, unprocessed food. If only I could get that stuff on the cheap. I can't find wheat berries for a reasonable price, anywhere in the state. $.65 a pound is the best we can do and it's hours away. You almost have to grow it yourself.
Anyway, it's always nice to dispel the myth of high overhead and living costs that supposedly force most of us to have "Jobs." Thought this was interesting.
Jake
To Jake's note, I have to add that from the photo, the family that lives on $1.28 didn't only eat mutton; they also ate lentils, peas, and barley. The prophet Ezekiel lived on those four grains for two years. They are very complete in their nutrition. Combine that with milk and cheese, as well as mutton, and you have the healthiest diet in the world. Notice that all the families that spend a lot on food, spend it on vegetables. Vegetables are bad for you. They suck the vitamins and minerals out of your body, and they deplete the soil whereever they are grown.
Ezekiel 4:9-11
9 Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, according to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.
10 And thy meat which thou shalt eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time shalt thou eat it.
11 Thou shalt drink also water by measure, the sixth part of an hin: from time to time shalt thou drink.
A shekel is a third of an ounce. So Ezekiel had to live on less than half a pound of bread by weight. And to drink, he had just over a pint of water to drink every day. A man who is lying on his side could survive on that diet, but he must have been looking pretty skinny by the end of the 390 days. However, the food itself was healthy, so Ezekiel (Zeke) would have stayed healthy during the time period. Remember, it was this same food that Daniel and his companions asked to be fed in the King of Babylon's palace.
Daniel 1:8-16
8 But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.
9 Now God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs.
10 And the prince of the eunuchs said unto Daniel, I fear my lord the king, who hath appointed your meat and your drink: for why should he see your faces worse liking than the children which are of your sort? then shall ye make me endanger my head to the king.
11 Then said Daniel to Melzar, whom the prince of the eunuchs had set over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah,
12 Prove thy servants, I beseech thee, ten days; and let them give us pulse to eat, and water to drink.
13 Then let our countenances be looked upon before thee, and the countenance of the children that eat of the portion of the king's meat: and as thou seest, deal with thy servants.
14 So he consented to them in this matter, and proved them ten days.
15 And at the end of ten days their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than all the children which did eat the portion of the king's meat.
16 Thus Melzar took away the portion of their meat, and the wine that they should drink; and gave them pulse.
God's idea of an ideal diet is butter and honey. I kid you not. Read Isaiah 7:22. It would be interesting to try it. I'd like to try it at some point so I can report how it went. Didn't God call Canaan a land "flowing with milk and honey"? Butter is a highly concentrated form of milk.
Isaiah 7:14-25
14 Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
15 Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.
16 For before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good, the land that thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her kings.
17 The LORD shall bring upon thee, and upon thy people, and upon thy father's house, days that have not come, from the day that Ephraim departed from Judah; even the king of Assyria.
18 And it shall come to pass in that day, that the LORD shall hiss for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.
19 And they shall come, and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes.
20 In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the hair of the feet: and it shall also consume the beard.
21 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a man shall nourish a young cow, and two sheep;
22 And it shall come to pass, for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter: for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land.
23 And it shall come to pass in that day, that every place shall be, where there were a thousand vines at a thousand silverlings, it shall even be for briers and thorns.
24 With arrows and with bows shall men come thither; because all the land shall become briers and thorns.
25 And on all hills that shall be digged with the mattock, there shall not come thither the fear of briers and thorns: but it shall be for the sending forth of oxen, and for the treading of lesser cattle.Exodus 3:8,17
8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
17 And I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.
Milk, cheese, butter, honey, mutton, split-pea soup, lentil soup, bread made from wheat, and beer made from barley. What more could a man ask for?