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I saw a link to this article on Yahoo news, and thought it looked pretty interesting. A well-off corporate worker was inspired to limit his food budget to $2 a day following a trip overseas to Bangladesh. He is doing that now in Australia, along with several other idealistic individuals, as a step to relieve poverty - makes for an interesting read!

The link to the article is: au.todaytonight.yahoo.com/article/7491947/diet/2-diet. Enjoy!

Hey Joe I saw that on Channel 7's Today Tonight last night. I found it interesting as I have done similar things in the past though not for the length of time he has done etc. More like a 6 weeks at a time living on 5 bucks a day etc.
A packet of Vitawheats Biscuits with Honey, Peanut butter and Vegemite are great Breakfast, lunches and dinners and all in that order etc. I also lost 13Kg as well the first time I did it. I also craved the Hamburgers and Fry-up foods that I saw otherpeople were eating as well. A couple of weeks in I did lose interest in those other foods etc

It is overwhelming to think that a large number of the worlds population lives on $2 a day. Now US$2 can buy a person a fair bit more in a developing country. But even then it does not leave anything much left over apart from food.
In India for example one could buy and all you can eat rice plate meal with sauces for about 50cents.
One large meal can last all day.

I have a problem with the oft-repeated claim that a dollar goes so much further in developing countries than it does in the West. It gives the impression that living on $2 a day means that a person is more or less able to get what we could get for $5 in the West. Even the "all-you-can-eat" meal Ross is talking about is not really all you can eat. They will give you seconds on the rice and sometimes even the sauce. But the whole meal is pretty much that: rice and sauce. In a Madrassi thali there will be tiny little stainless steel bowls with various soups, etc. in them too. But in the end, what mostly makes it seem cheap to us is that the labour involved in serving it up to you in a restaurant is much less. The rice itself is probably about half the price of western rice. However, if you were to try to buy ice cream or chocolate, for example, you might pay eight or ten times as much there as here. So let's say that $2 will buy you about $4 worth of rice, or two big scoops of vanilla ice cream. I think that gives a more accurate picture of the dramatic difference between our diet (and the variety that we take for granted with it) and the diet of people who live on rice and samba seven days a week.

I agree Dave, Good point as one has to contextualize it within the framework of the third world economy at hand. To understand the relevance of the economic polarities that exist within. Then relate it back to the understanding of the 1st world thinking yeah!

In fact, I may have exaggerated how cheap rice is in the third world. It probably was cheaper in India because so much is grown there, but we just got a bill for 50 kilograms of rice in Kenya, and it was $85. I don't know what it costs for 50kg of rice here in Australia, but I would imagine that it is pretty much the same.

I know in rural Kenya, you can get a cup of tea and a 'mandazi' (doughnut) for 10ksh, the rough equivalent of Oz 20 cents. This is breakfast for a lot of working Kenyans.

Also, you can get two chapatis (like pita bread) and a bowl of beans for 30ksh, roughly Oz 60 cents. That too could be a sample lunch for a lot of Kenyans - quite filling, and also cheap from an Australian perspective (though chapatis are considered a luxury by a lot of Kenyans).

On the other hand, though, there also are options for people to spend big money for food over in Kenya. And this is even more so with regard to western luxury food items, like chocolate, and ice cream. So if one wants to spend big, you can do that there, too.

Anyway, getting back to the article, I think it's inspiring that the guy would limit his food bill to Oz $2 out of consideration for the poor. I think that's an admirable thing to do, and quite commendable. It would be nice to write to this guy, and see what he thinks about selling all his possessions/giving the money to the poor as a further step toward combating world poverty. :0)

Thanks for starting this thread Joe.

It was inspiring to see someone from the West is trying to live like how the poor live in the third world, i.e $2 a day.

I think if more people from the west try to do it at least for a week then it will give them a better idea how rich we are here in the west. And hopefully it will make them want to do something a bit more permanent to help the poor.

I think the key to helping the poor is, for the rich to be a little poorer, rather than trying to make the poor, rich. I hope that makes sense.


Having born in Bangladesh, we were surrounded by poverty on a daily basis, even though we were quite rich.

It is something the rich in third world countries have to deal with everyday, and somehow they learn to block it out of their conscience.

Unfortunately, I came from that background in Bangladesh where I was taught from a very early age to just not to think too much about the helping poor.

One time I remember I asked my father (Victor) why didn't we help the poor in Bangladesh, and he said " son, you can only help the poor when you are rich first". I didn't challenge him on that, but it never made any sense to me.

Later on in my life I found the missing link, which was the teachings of Jesus. The thing that stood out to me about helping poor (through the teachings of Jesus) was, that you don't have to be rich to do it. In fact people would be surprised to see how much we can do help the poor by simply giving our time to the them.

The belief that one needs to be rich before they can help the poor is a worldly one. It's popular as well, because the concept of rich and poor is subjective. People always want to get richer, they always want more money, they always want more stuff. But more stuff doesn't bring happiness. Happiness comes from giving away one's stuff to people in need.

I love Jesus' command about forsaking one's possessions, and giving the money to the poor. Note how there is no conditional 'once you get rich' in that command. Jesus' teachings crush the worldly belief that you must be rich to lend a hand (or a buck). We can all get started immediately in terms of helping other people, using what we have now. In fact, you don't even need money to help the poor; but if you do have money, then it's a good idea to use it to help advance their cause.

I am simply amazed by the amount of wealth I see everyday here in Oz... wealth that is highlighted in my own eyes due to my recent stay in Kenya. I mean, here you can go to a bookstore - like Border's, for example - and read the latest books, sample the hottest new music, and browse through your favorite magazines, all for free - you could even do it all day if you wanted, and it wouldn't cost you a penny! In a country like Kenya, something like that would be unheard of. But in Oz (or the US, or the UK), it's not a problem; enough people DO buy stuff there that in the end, the corporation still wins (financially).

Anyway, I could ramble on and on about money, the poor, and what we can do to heal the world. Money, the poor, and healing were key subjects in Jesus' teachings. They should feature heavily in our faith and practice as Christians today.

I'll leave my rant there for now. :)

I think the key to helping the poor is, for the rich to be a little poorer, rather than trying to make the poor, rich. I hope that makes sense.

Hi Barry,

I think what you've said here makes a lot of sense. The world's resources are finite; that is a fact. The more we use, the less will remain.

So it's not even about just helping the poor, as such, because when the resources finish EVERYONE will be poor, including the former rich people.

But rather than see the sense in that, people just carry on with this game that whoever is able to get the most money through the exploitation of those resources wins.

Unfortuantely, I think even a lot of the poor probably have a similar attitude, even with the little that they have. What is really needed is for people everywhere to just start making sacrifices, but those who have the most now should definitely be the ones making the most sacrifice.