1. You really can live on beans and rice for a week and not feel utterly deprived.
I was surprised how tasty most of the meals were, and how filling they were. Also one can of beans lasts a long time. The breakfast casserole I made on day 1 lasted for the entire week. Many of the other meals made 3-4 servings.
2. You can drastically reduce your food bill, whenever you want just by changing what you buy/eat.
This sounds so obvious but it took the beans and rice experiment for me to fully understand it. By eliminating the non essentials I saved $100 this week. I wouldn’t eat like this on a regular basis because I do value meat, fruits, vegetables, salad, and some “treats” too. However, I don’t feel I “sacrificed” this week and I am glad I could do something good for the folks in need to whom I donated the money I saved.
- 842 million people – or one in eight people around the world – do not have enough to eat. [1]
- 98% of the world’s undernourished people live in developing countries. [1]
- 22,000 children die each day due to the conditions of living in poverty. [2]
- 60 percent of the world’s hungry are women. [3]
- 50 percent of pregnant women in developing countries lack proper maternal care, resulting in over 300,000 maternal deaths annually from childbirth. [3]
- 1 out of 6 infants are born with a low birth weight in developing countries. [4]
- 1.7 billion people lack access to clean water. [5]
- 2.3 billion people suffer from water-borne diseases each year. [5]
- 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and none of the 12 percent lives in developing countries. [6]
- In Michigan, 1 in 4 children, or about 570,000 kids, live in poverty, which means that a quarter of our state’s kids live in a household that makes less than $23,000 (for a family of four). The report goes on to indicate that 341,000 kids in Michigan are living in areas of extreme poverty, meaning a family of four is earning less than $11,000 a year. [7]
- In Macomb, Oakland and Wayne Counties, one in five children live in poverty. In the tri-county area 500,000 people including nearly 200,000 children, live in poverty. [8]
3. Most people don’t read articles on Facebook.
It doesn’t matter how short the articles are, or if they have recipes. They like pictures though. I was told Facebook wasn’t the place for articles, and this experiment proved it. My pictures of recipes from the beans and rice experiment caused the conversations I was hoping for, even though the blogs I posted on Facebook which contained the pictures didn’t have the same effect.
4. Doing the beans and rice experiment as a community with my church was very valuable.
I probably would have abandoned the idea after a day or two if this experiment was something I was doing on my own. I also enjoyed sharing the process with my greater community through blogging.
5. I am blessed beyond measure.
If you missed my other posts this week and want to learn more about the Beans and Rice Experiment, here’s the week in review. Click on the blog links for details:
Day 1: https://www.bestlegalresource.com/the-beans-and-rice-experiment-day-1
Day 2: https://www.bestlegalresource.com/the-beans-and-rice-experiment-day-2
Day 3: https://www.bestlegalresource.com/beans-and-rice-experiment-day-3
Day 4: https://www.bestlegalresource.com/beans-and-rice-experiment-day-4
Day 5: https://www.bestlegalresource.com/beans-and-rice-experiment-day-5-2
Thanks for sharing this week with me and for your comments and encouragement on Twitter, Facebook, and in our “live” conversations. I hope it inspired you in some way. #eatlessgivelife
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[1] State of Food Security in the World 2013
[2] UNICEF State of the World’s Children, 2010 (pdf)
[3] MDG Report – Goal 5, 2010 (pdf)
[4] World Hunger and Poverty Statistics, 2010
[5] WHO Unsafe Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (pdf)
[7] kidscount.org
I didn’t do this exact same experiment but did the $2 per day 14-day challenge in spring of 2014. I never thought I bought food extravagantly but I was probably budgeting closer to $10 per day, including the rare eating out, than $2 per day. My lessons that first year were numerous and still lasting. Never to waste food. I was so vigilant, I threw out maybe $5 of food the rest of that first year. I also like treats and variety so I shifted the budget up to $4 per day and still spend less than $5 today, five years later. Rice has become a much larger part of my diet, replacing mostly the wheat from breads. Beans, cheese and fish now provide more of my protein intake than chicken, pork and beef. I just revisited this after coronavirus layoffs and some burritos of refried beans, tomatoes, rice and cheese. They are pretty tasty, thanks cheese, very filling (but not bloating) and quite inexpensive. Together with a few eggs for breakfast, it’s about $5 for 3-4 days of food. Add another $1 if you want milk or juice to drink instead of just water.
Thank you for reading and sharing your experience, Joel.