Now that I’ve successfully completed my Live Below the Line challenge, during which I lived on £1 a day for 5 days in order to raise money for Action Against Hunger, and am back onto a normal eating pattern, I thought I’d reflect on what I learned from my week of simulated poverty.
Cheap food is incredibly boring
My meals over the week were repetitive and bland, with basic flavouring staples such as salt being non-existent in my diet. When your meal doesn’t taste of anything, you don’t feel full or satisfied afterwards, and even if you’ve eaten more food than you normally would for a meal you still feel hungry. In this way, it points towards the psychology of our relationship with food: much of the time we aren’t really hungry but feel hungry unless we’ve had the food we want.
Most social activities revolve around food and drink
As it was the last week of term, there were plenty of end-of-term socials going on. I decided not to attend any of them because they were meals out or pub trips. I really didn’t relish the thought of sitting in a restaurant watching everyone around me eat greasy yummy food while I waited to get home for my dinner of plain spaghetti. It has made me realise that if you were really living on £5 a week at university, your ability to enjoy social occasions would be hindered.
I rely on food for comfort, happiness, and to fill time to a dangerous extent
In terms of my general happiness, I found the week really difficult. I realised that I tend to use food as a comfort blanket when I’ve had a rough day or am feeling tired, and equally when I don’t want to do something (like write an essay – eating while staring at a word document with just an essay title on it is less depressing than just staring at the word document and chastising yourself over your lack of focus). I feel that I therefore learned a lot about my relationship to food and that I’d be overall happier if I managed to ensure my happiness didn’t rely on food at all. To an extent I think it’s lazy – there are plenty of things that can make you happy, but choosing chocolate chip cookies is way easier than going for a run or talking to an old friend.
It’s been a long time since I’ve actually felt hungry between meals
For this reason, I think the challenge was really useful. It highlighted how privileged the society that we live in is when the feeling of hunger is so rarely experienced. I think a lot of the feelings of hunger emanated from how horrible the meals were, but I also think that I ate less than I normally would and, without regular snacking, I definitely experienced the sort of deep hunger pangs I wouldn’t normally have unless I’d forgotten to take food or a credit card to uni with me.
People like to try and feed you
The people around me are inherent feeders. People were desperate to buy meals for me, give me their food, etc, on the basis that it wasn’t technically me paying for it. Of course that kind of defeats the object, so I refused, but it’s really sweet that people don’t like seeing your discomfort.
I think there are significant criticisms of the challenge, some being that it doesn’t simulate actual poverty because you’re still living in a centrally-heated house with nice surroundings and taking the bus to uni every day. These criticisms are fair, but I would counter them with the fact that although you aren’t really experiencing ‘living below the line’ you are giving yourself what is actually a very difficult challenge, and raising money for an important charity in the process (I made £159 in 5 days, which I’m so please with). Can that really be bad? Even if I hadn’t raised any money, I still think it was important thing to do, and I’d encourage others to do it, because it highlighted a lot about the privilege that I have and my unhealthy relationship with food.
If you want to know more about the challenge and see how much I raised, or even if you’d still like to donate to the cause, here is the link to my page: https://www.livebelowtheline.com/me/samhopps
Viaggio Veggie 