intd370foodchallengejh-blog

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Reflection

I’m not going to lie, this past week has been very hard and just sucked overall. I did alway get enough to eat but there was no variety at all and I got very sick of all the things that I was eating. Also there was a lack of flavour as well, I did try and improve this with the noodle seasoning but it was so salty and not what I typically enjoy. I noticed that I also become very moody, especially when I was going through that caffeine withdrawal. My attention span was cut very short, I’m not sure if it was because of my mood or directly from the food but I found myself spacing out a lot. I can see how this would affect low income households as it is hard to be productive and earn a sufficient amount of money to afford proper foods counter this. In the end it ultimately becomes a cycle.

I feel my health has suffered as well. I typically am very strict when it come to portioning the types of food I have throughout the day. For example if I am having a full meal, half my plate will be some form of fruits or vegetables, while one quarter is grains like rice or whole wheat pasta, and then remaining quarter is for light meats like chicken or fish. I completely threw this out the window for this week. I ate no meat, my fruit and vegetable intake was very low, while my carb intake was very high due to the amount of pasta and rice that I was eating. I felt like I wasn’t getting enough nutrition with my meals. For people who don’t get enough nutrition everyday it becomes very clear as to why they may be more sick compared to those who do.

I also struggled with the social aspect. I was invited to go out for dinner with friends and hang out on multiple occasions but I couldn’t join them because the average dinner out $20.00, even though I did cheat that way once. I still felt cut off. My heart goes out to those who cannot go out consistently for a meal. I can see how feeling cut off could make people sad and eventually lead to mental illness like depression.

I can only imagine the struggle of those who are on welfare and struggling to put food on the table and I am thankful that I have never had to go through that. Not being able to afford various types of food can lead to several discrepancies in many aspects of life, like social, and mental and physical health. I did enjoy this experience, it is very eye opening and I’d encourage others to try it.

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Day Seven

Today I had a treat yourself meal for breakfast. It did involve eggs but I also had some peppers and applesauce.

For lunch I just had more macaroni and cheese, this time I decided to have the whole box instead of half because yolo. It’s the last day and I’m hungry.

and for my final meal I had rice with peppers but cheated again and added onions.

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Day Six

I didn’t have breakfast today since it’s finally the weekend and I sleep until noon so I had brunch of three eggs and some peppers.

I found myself snacking more today with applesauce and those funny tasting carrots. For supper I made the other package of sidekicks noodles without the butter and milk.

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Day Five

I legit spent ten minutes on the internet looking a good pun about eggs that related to how much I’m starting to hate them but that search was taking an egg-ternity. Get it? Egg-ternity/eternity? That’s not funny but I tried to find a more interesting way to say I had eggs for breakfast, I also treated myself to some peppers since I still have quite a bit left.

Lunch was rice with peppers and I kind of cheated and added some fried onions. I’m so tired of everything tasting the same and eating the same thing over and over so I thought I’d mix things up a bit.

For dinner I made the half of the macaroni and cheese from day two and like before it didn’t taste quite right without the milk about butter but at this point in the challenge I don’t expect high quality.

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Day Four

I feel like this is getting really repetitive, but I guess that's because it is. I wish I had bought more than just eggs for breakfast like oatmeal or something but it’s a bit late for that. Just like yesterday and all the days before, nothing but hard boiled eggs for breakfast.

I’m so thankful that the caffeine withdrawal headaches have not come back but I am craving something other than water like tea. For lunch I wanted something a little different so I tried some of the sick kicks noodles. I typically love them but since I had no milk or butter it didn’t turn out like they usually do. When cooked properly it is creamy however this time it was kind of soupy and the sauce didn’t thicken, however considering the budget I was on, it didn’t taste that bad.

I had late night classes tonight so I cut up a pepper and put some carrots in a bag to take with me to class. For some reason the carrots tasted extremely off even though I washed them but considering I got a bunch of them for $1.27 it’s alright. Then finally I had some more rice with peppers and noodles seasoning.

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Day Three

Oh, what a surprise, eggs for breakfast again! I usually like hard boiled eggs but now I with I left some normally so I could have some variety, however having the hardboiled is nice for conveniences sake since I can take the to go because of early morning classes.

The headache did not return today! But I still really miss having coffee in the morning. At lunch I had some rice and chopped grilled peppers, seasoned with the the leftover half of the noodle seasoning. This is probably my favourite meal that I’ve had so far but none have exactly been “top tier.”

Since I have late classes tonight I packed some of the applesauce to take with me to class. And afterward for dinner I had more mr noodles. I’ve eaten this literally every single day and I was tempted to eat it uncooked just to change things up a bit. I’m really enjoying the reality of this challenge but if I had to do this for longer then one week I’d probably struggle more than I already am.

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Day Two

It’s only the second day and I can already tell I’m going to get very tired of eating some of this food very quickly, seeing as how I’m pretty sure I’m going to be eating hard boiled eggs for breakfast for this entire week. I wouldn’t complain as much if they were deviled but I’ve clearly had to give up flavour for quantity.

For lunch today I made the great value macaroni and cheese. I only used half the box in order to make it last. I typically love macaroni and cheese, however without the butter and milk it tasted very weird and the texture seemed a little off. Also the headaches from not drinking coffee have come back, I hope I don’t have to go there this the whole week.

It is day two and I’ve already broken the rules of the challenge. Tonight it is Halloween but that wasn’t the reason. I went out for supper and a movie tonight with a friend because I was feeling very upset from a break up that happened yesterday. I was feeling very emotional and lonely and so to cheer me up my friend took me out for dinner and then we went to go see “It” in theatres, and of course to get snacks like popcorn, m&m’s, and pop. This is clearly way over budget. My meal it’s self was almost $20 and the snacks at the theatre was about $15.

I felt horrible about cheating but this made me think about similar situations that happen to other people and not being able to afford things like a night out to help cheer them up. Everyone goes through break ups but I’m am very foutunate that I can afford luxuries like dinner and a movie to help comfort me. It may seem like a very simple thing, but every little bit helps when someone is upset.

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Day One

I typically don’t eat early in the morning since it tends to make me nauseous but because I have class so early this morning I grabbed two hard boiled eggs before I left.

Around noon I got a killer headache from not drinking coffee which I would usually drink every morning but avoided for this week due to the higher cost and it not fitting into my budget. Instead I’ve been drinking a lot of water in attempt to stop the headaches.

For lunch I had one of the mr noodle packages, normally I would cook it with an egg but didn’t seeing as how I hardboiled them all. Also I saved half of the seasoning that came with the noodles for later, which was recommended to me by a friend.

I started to get hungry around four and had some applesauce for a snack, which carried me over until that night when I had supper. For supper I made rice and added chopped up and grilled peppers and mixed that in. I also added the seasoning from lunch. This added a lot more flavour and I was overall very satisfied with all my meals for the day.

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Welfare Food Challenge Introduction

Hello, my name is Jayden, and welcome to my attempt at the welfare food challenge. This challenge requires the participants to use only a $21 allowance for a week to pay for their food based on the welfare in Alberta.

I planned on going to the with only a few ideas of what to get but I mainly focused on what was very cheap and sales going on at the time. I decided that Walmart would be the best place for m seeing as how it is close and the prices are fairly low. Normally I wouldn’t stray away from more expensive produce due to my current process of being healthier and losing weight. One of my main concerns was being able to continue this while doing the challenge.

I wandered around the store for a long time. It was hard to try and find things that would be healthy and low in the price. In the end I decided that one week of straying from my usual eating habits and that changing it for the week shouldn’t set me back as long as I continue my workout routine.

Despite this I was still nervous about being over the price range but I ended up spending just under the limit with $20.78 in total.

In the end I left the store with:

18 eggs

2 boxes of great value macaroni and cheese

4 servings of sidekicks noodles

1 bag of brown rice

7 servings of mr noodles

A small bag of baby carrots

3 peppers

6 cups of applesauce

When I got home I hardboiled all the eggs, I was very surprised that I didn’t mess up and ruin them since I hard never done it before.

I realized after the fact that I had bought everything that I was going to need things like milk and butter to prepare the macaroni and cheese, as well as sidekicks noodles. I’ll just have to do without for the week.