Eating $1 a Day Challenge..

I'm still trying to figure out why or how this is a challenge? Are you showing the diversity of what you can eat for $1 a day? Are you trying to keep your nutritional recommendations in tact through this?

Anyone can eat Ramen for a month.

 

Ok, go eat Ramen for a month and tell everybody how easy that is.

I think the point is not that he can afford enough food for 20 days, but that he can survive off of that food and not give in and spend money going out or buying something actually good. I'd have a hard time going a week on $20...not that I couldn't find food, I just would have a hard time sticking to it mentally.

 

Your next challenge should be to eat $100 worth of food per day....

 

What's challenging about that?

 

It's rather challenging to your bank account, possibly your waistline.

 

I honestly thing HEB is the best place to buy groceries. I've bought groceries from mostly Kroger and sometimes Wal-mart or Target, but HEB is the best. I'm always way under budget when I shop at HEB.

 

I refuse to shop anywhere that cleverly disguises an obvious mock at the Jewish faith.

For shame, Mr. Butts.

 

As lots of people regularly fast for days/weeks at a time, I'm pretty sure this "challenge" (including this thread) is just an extended advertisement for an Austin bank.

Viral marketing: feel the excitement!

 

Excuse me: credit union?

Do I misinterpret your reasons for beginning/blogging this quest?

Personally, it strikes me as an affront to those suffering from actual poverty and hunger that you would willingly starve yourself for a viral marketing campaign (especially one with such seemingly limited reach). Isn't this sort of like Jared going to Subway before losing the weight, and wanting to get paid for it?

 

Oh, wait, good one: you got me to mention it again.

 

Okay, but shouldn't every post have something akin to a disclaimer? (Folks: Don't try this at home; this is just an advertising gimmick.)

Why all the complaints in the thread about your hunger, worries about not being able to make your food last, discussing the merits of taking food meant for the homeless from food banks (if you volunteer for a bare minimum of time), if you weren't really hungry?

Oh, you were never really hungry: it was just a "creative way" to sell a promotion for a credit union. I see.

 

I got that idea when someone, fearing for your safety, said that you could hit up a food bank. You replied that you already knew you could chow down on food donated to the homeless if you volunteered a bit; it made me think you were scoping out potential outs. Glad to know your valiant works for charity, and that on that point I stand corrected.

You're eliciting sympathy (and webhits) for your own ordeal with hunger in order to manufacture attention for an offer from a local credit union. You attempt to transfer the well-intentioned sympathy created by your own (self-inflicted) suffering to increased awareness of the client that pays you to suffer so.

Which strikes me as odd: though I am not a professional in the field, it would seem that college kids would already do anything they could to get $20.09 for free; adding an oddball, self-serving angle to what sounds like a pretty good deal to begin with seems one stretch too far.

Congratulations, Gandhi: in just half a century, you've taken the teachings of nonviolent protest that brought self-rule to India and an end to segregation in the US, and turned it into just another word-of-mouth Blair Witch internet viral marketing campaign. I just wish to be inoculated from such viruses.

 

I don't know what you have against viral marketing. OP is not fighting for hunger or any "noble" causes, so comparing what he's doing to what Ghandi and MLK did was out of line.

I thought OP has done something interesting, and has a definite possibility to prove that you CAN live on $1 a day while keeping a relatively balanced diet. Whether it's just advertising or not, it's neat.

 

A fair point. The "Gandhi" was indeed snark. I believe advertising your own company/product on this site is considered spamming; this just seems a slightly more sophisticated, if misguided, way of doing that. (When I think of a bank, I would think they would connotations of "security" & "prosperity." Why a credit union would willingly associate itself with notions of "hunger" & "suffering" is beyond me. But I digress.) If no one has a problem with it, or sees it in the way it struck me, no big deal.

However, this:

struck me as being particularly insidious. Either he was playing coy, feigning ignorance, or he really was just following his PR textbook and doing whatever he could to get another mention of his client in.

In the parlance of our times,

 

That, I agree