How to Eat on £1 a Day

"21-year-old Emma Heyer from Hampshire daringly set herself the challenge to live on a budget of £7 on food for one week, in order to save cash, raise money for an animal rights charity and to prove that you don’t have to be ballin' to eat a Vegan diet..."

Ask anyone where the majority of their money goes, and I guarantee the most common answer will be something along the lines of “I ate it”. How many of you have taken the time to calculate your overall expenditure on one week’s worth of food? You may spend £30 on groceries for yourself, but it’s easy to spend a great deal extra on food outside - a quick Starbucks before work, a “cheeky” Nandos for lunch, or a treat yourself snack after work. Total up all these extras and you’d be surprised how much you could save monthly if only you were to simply prep and plan your meals ahead of time. Now that we’re living in a post-Brexit era, supermarket food prices are rapidly rising. Perhaps it’s time to change the way that we go about our weekly food shop?

Learning to balance finances is a massive learning curve for young adults, and it’s something that many of us struggle with. Working a minimum wage job whilst being a first-time renter desperately trying to survive and enjoy life sure ain’t easy. 21-year-old Emma Heyer from Hampshire daringly set herself the challenge to live on a budget of £7 on food for one week, in order to save cash, raise money for an animal rights charity and to prove that you don’t have to be ballin' to eat a Vegan diet.

Let’s take a look at Emma’s week of budget eating...

April was a bit of a struggle financially for me. As well as admin fees, my rent increased and on top of that, I had a day session for my tattoo sleeve to pay for.

This sparked a conversation between me and a friend, on ways that I could save myself some money. A few years ago she did a week of living below the line to raise money for a charity but noted that it was also a good way to save money on a weekly food shop. At first, I dismissed the idea, but over the next few days it kept popping into my head and I found myself thinking about which foods I would be able to afford if I were to do it.

I voiced my thoughts on doing the challenge to my colleagues, and before I knew it, I was spending my lunch break looking at online supermarkets, whilst discussing possible meal ideas with everyone.

From that point on I had decided that I would do it and gave myself just over a week to prepare myself.

Sorting out the food was easy. I wanted to keep things as simple as possible whilst trying to fulfil my nutritional requirements to some extent. I devised the following shopping list:

Breakfast - Cornflakes (£0.39) - Coconut milk (£1.00) Lunch - Veg Stew With Rice - Rice (£0.45) - Kidney beans (£0.30) - Chopped tomatoes X2 (£0.62) - Frozen veg (£0.89) Dinner - Bread (£0.40) - Spaghetti hoops (£0.21) - Baked beans X2 (£0.48) - Veg soup (£0.25) Total = £4.99 Snacks - 7 Bananas - 6 Apples I can’t remember how much I spent on snacks and I can’t find the receipt. But I know that I had just over 20p left!

A size comparison between the apples that Emma usually buys, vs the apples she bought for her challenge.

Emma's vegetable stew meal prep for lunch.

In regard to finding a charity to support, I turned to one of my friendly vegan facebook groups for advice. The charity that stuck out the most to me was Animal Free Testing UK. This amazing charity funds medical research using alternatives to animals.Now I had bought all of my food and chosen my charity, it was time to begin...

Day 1

Breakfast was surprisingly nice! I’m glad I went for the coconut milk to keep things a little less bland. I would legitimately be happy to eat this on a regular basis. I had to keep reminding myself that I could only eat the food I had bought for my £7 challenge. My partner was eating a packet of crisps and I asked if I could have one, luckily I realised that I couldn’t before I put it in my mouth!

Day 2

The morning was fine but by the afternoon I was starving, I tried to hold off eating my banana for as long as possible, but by 4 pm I caved in. I got home from work at 5 pm and ate a handful of cornflakes as the box was quite large so I felt there would be some left over. I then proceeded to count how many slices of bread I had to see if I could up my dinner from 2 pieces to 3; my growling stomach was overjoyed when I realised I could.

Day 3

On Wednesday’s my partner and I go over to his Mum’s house, where we take it in turns to cook dinner for everyone. This was a really hard day as I was starving by the afternoon again. Whilst I watched everyone tuck into a delicious vegan paella, I sat down with 3 slices of bread and a tin of vegetable soup. The soup was kind of vinegary so not particularly appetising, to say the least!Day 4I feel like by this point I had gotten over the hunger hump. By the time the afternoon came around I wasn’t starving, I was a little hungry but it was totally bearable! In fact, I ended up staying for a further 2 hours at work as I wasn’t dying to get home to eat my dinner.

Day 4 I feel like by this point I had gotten over the hunger hump. By the time the afternoon came around I wasn’t starving, I was a little hungry but it was totally bearable! In fact, I ended up staying for a further 2 hours at work as I wasn’t dying to get Day 5

Friday nights are a time to put my feet up and chill. So I did just that and snacked on cornflakes and 2 extra slices of toast (with nothing on)… needless to say, I was fairly bored and gave myself an early night.Day 6Saturday was definitely easier, I had loads to get done which were a big distraction from my hunger. At work whenever I got a little bored I would only be able to focus on my growling stomach! On top of this, I was also able to heat my lunch up in the microwave which made it ten times more appetising.

Day 7

This was the easiest day by far, anytime I noticed my hunger or felt overwhelmingly bored I just reminded myself that I had less than 24 hours left, 1 more bland lunch and 1 more boring dinner and I would be done.

It was a great feeling to wake up on a Monday morning knowing that I could eat what I wanted when I wanted. However, I felt that in order to actually take something from the week I needed to be careful that I didn’t just splurge on anything and everything that I didn’t need just because I could. I carefully planned out some delicious meals that wouldn’t cost me the earth to make.

Although I’m glad to no longer being restricted to £1 a day I do feel that the experience has made me reflect on the unnecessary amount we spend on food and the amount that we waste. Moving forward I am making my weekly food plans in advance, considering what in my cupboards I can already use and how I can make my food cheaper.

Although this started as a way for me to save money my heart really went into fundraising for Animal-Free Research UK. If I hadn’t received donations for this wonderful charity I think I would have broken on day 2! When I created my just giving page I honestly had no idea how much I would be able to raise. I decided to set my target at £50 and I was over the moon that I surpassed this estimate when I ended up raising a total of £162.01!

Emma’s extreme £1 a day diet is definitely no way of living - proving to have little nutritional value and being extremely unsatisfying. However, it does, however, open our eyes to how we can be greedy and wasteful with our food. We often buy too much and forget about what we have in the fridge, resulting in food going to waste. Although I don’t condone living on a food budget of £7 a week regularly, here are less extreme ways of minimising the cost of your food shop:

Stop buying from bigger supermarkets such as Sainsbury's, Asda, Tesco, etc. Aldi and Lidl have some great food for ridiculously cheap prices. They may not be well-known brands but they taste just the same.
Go for the own brand/basic products. If you check the ingredients, many of the own brand products are literally the same as the branded ones.
Stock up on herbs, spices and seasonings and you’ll never have a bland meal again. You’ll find that you can make delicious recipes out of the most basic ingredients.
Eat a lot of something? Buy it in bulk! You can find certain food items in kilogramme packets at places like Costco, which will allow you to save yourself money in the long run, and you won’t run out of your staple foods as fast.
Meal Prep. Plan out all your meals for the week and stick to it. I usually start off each week by making all my meals in one go, separating them into portions and freezing them. Simply take a meal out to defrost in the fridge the night before work and hey presto - you’ve saved yourself a minimum of £3.50 on lunch for that day.
Carb up and stop eating food with no nutritional value. Eating a plate full of vegetables will fill up your stomach more than a McDonald’s meal will. Fast food is designed to make you feel less full, keeping you hungry so you can buy more.
Drink more water. A lot of the time when we are hungry we’re actually just dehydrated. Drink a glass of water before you eat and you’ll realise you weren’t as hungry as you thought you were.
Buy all your snacks ready for the week too. This will stop you from buying food outside the house. A packet of crisps from the shop will cost you 80p but a multipack will only cost you around £2. If you eat crisps every day, you’re looking to save yourself about £2.50 a week. Every penny counts!

Well done to Emma for persevering with this tough challenge and raising money for charity! You can check out Emma on Instagram @emmaheyer - she has some pretty cool photography! I challenge all of you to work on reducing the cost of your groceries - less money on food means more money for other treats! If you have any more tips on saving money on food, let me know in the comments below.

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