For @jmis101 who said this was impossible and that my assumption of a 250 Naira absolute minimum food requirement was foolish (see the post here if interested)

Source All other images are mine.

For @monica-ene who said it was impossible to feed yourself on 30,000 Naira per month.

For @beautiefair I don't think I could any more frugal than this. Scraping most nutrition for lowest price on food. Maybe as a food lover (from your bio) you can suggest other low cost good taste foods 😁

PREFACE.

I said that I would write a post on how to spend the least amount of money on a day's food. Here's the post.

IT IS POSSIBLE to make three meals from bulk and staple ingredients from the cupboard though. That's what I did yesterday.

What's the difference?

I used bulk buying, I used sale pricing and I used the most basic possible ingredients to make the food.

That bag of flour will last me for a very long time and the amount I used yesterday was only 16.4 cents worth.

Defining a meal

In my last post I was taken to task because I only mentioned staple foods like beans, corn, rice, sugar and so on. It was pointed out by many readers that those items are staples that people don't eat. They must be turned into other dishes to be edible. Spices added, food cook and so forth.

They are right.

Plain rice is not a meal. It is not even edible.
Cooked rice is not a meal. It is edible and food but it is not a meal as it only contains carbohydrates. There is no protein and no flavour.

For this piece I'll define a meal as : Food which has carbohydrates, fats, and protein cooked in such a way that it is edible and with enough spice or flavoring to make it pleasant.

By that definition:

• Beans and rice isn't a meal as it has no spice.

• Beans, rice, and spice to make it tasty. I would classify that as a basic meal.

Eating for nutrition

It was also pointed out to me that people don't eat according to a 2000 calorie regimen. People eat so they aren't hungry. They try to keep it varied so they get more nutrition. However, people don't think about all the numbers while they are eating.

That is also true. However, when looking at the cheapest price that means limiting the amounts to the minimum that will keep a person healthy and full. It doesn't mean gourmet and awesome taste but it should at least be palatable.

At the very least a days food should have 2000 calories to keep a person going. It should have 0.6g of protein per kg of body weight. For a 100kg person that means no less than 60g of protein. It also must have unsaturated fats so a person can make hormones and steroids in their body.

Ideally it should be varied enough to provide all the vitamins and minerals a person would need. However, this is just a three meal prep so I can't cover all the vitamins and minerals. Vitamin B12 is absolutely missing. Vitamin D is also missing. Vitamin C is in short supply.

Answering a few questions in advance

• Are they great meals?

Of course not. I'm dealing with a $1 budget here

• Are they nutritious meals?

They are heavy on carbohydrates but do include protein and oils as well. Plus they have varied ingredients so a mix of vitamins and minerals.

• Would it make a great diet?

No. There would need to be a lot more variety.

• Have I factored in the cost of cooking and transit to buy ingredients?

No. This is STRICTLY the cost of ingredients.

The Meals

Dinner: Mexican rice and beans on a homemade corn tortilla

It would have been so much better with some salsa, peppers and maybe a little meat. However, the soy beans gave it a fair amount of protein. The rice gave it energy. The corn tortilla complemented the protein in the soya bean. There are also a variety of spices, onion and garlic to give it some taste.

Lunch: Baking Powder biscuits with a split pea soup with veggies

Peanut butter on the biscuits and a little ham in the soup would have made this meal so much better. However, meat is expensive and I didn't have any peanut butter so this is what I got. The split peas give a lot of protein and the flour in the biscuit complements it. The veggies in the soup also add a lot to the vitamin content of the days good.

Side note Bannock (like the biscuit) and Split Pea soup are very traditional Canadian food.

Breakfast: Pancakes with cinnamon syrup and soya milk.

Soy milk as a protein source complemented again by the protein in the flour give this meal its start. I made some syrup from cinnamon, brown sugar and white sugar. I didn't add it to the ingredient list because while it would decrease the overall food budget for the day, I used so little it didn't really add to the cost of the meal

Again, this meal would have been so much better if there had been an egg or two beside it. However, the budget didn't allow so no sausage, bacon or egg.

Ingredients List

I didn't write a complete recipe for each of these items because it would make it way longer than it should be. If anyone is curious I'll write down the actual how to on any of these recipe's but for now I just added the ingredients list and nutritional value.

Soy Milk

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of dried soy bean
• 1/3 cup of sugar
  Total Calories : 470

Vanilla would have made this much nicer..but too expensive

Macronutrients:

Protein: Approximately 34 grams (from dried soybeans)
Carbohydrates: Approximately 96 grams (28 grams from dried soybeans + 68 grams from sugar)
Fat: Approximately 17 grams (from dried soybeans)

Pancakes

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup soya milk
1 tablespoon canola oil
Calories : Roughly 500

Macronutrients:

Protein: Approximately 12 grams (from the all-purpose flour and soya milk)
Carbohydrates: Approximately 85 grams (from the all-purpose flour and sugar)
Fat: Approximately 10 grams (from the vegetable oil)

Baking Powder Biscuits

Ingredients:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon canola oil
3 tablespoons water (adjust as needed)
Calories 250

If I had more time making sourdough biscuits would have decrease the overall cost and increased the nutrition. However, making sourdough starter takes a week

Macronutrients:
Protein: Approximately 3 grams
Carbohydrates: Approximately 18 grams
Fat: Approximately 8 grams

Split Pea Soup

1/2 cup dried split peas:
5g dried red peppers:
5g dried mushroom:
5g dried carrot:
5g dried spinach:
5g beef bouillon powder:
30g of onion
Calories: 400 calories

Most people would just use fresh vegetables. However to get the best price I buy during harvest season then get to work drying the vegetables so I can have cheap vegetables for the entire year.

Macronutrients:
Protein: Approximately 31 grams
Carbohydrates: Approximately 74 grams
Fat: Approximately 2 grams

Corn Tortilla

1/4 cup popcorn kernels
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
Calories : 125

I don't know anyone who actually starts with popcorn when making tortilla's but this was about saving every penny. Pop the popcorn, blend to flour in a blender and continue from there. The hard way to save a few pennies.

Macronutrients:
Protein: Approximately 2 grams
Carbohydrates: Approximately 20 grams
Fat: Approximately 4 grams

Mexican Rice and Beans

1/2 cup long-grain rice
1/4 cup dried soybeans, soaked overnight and drained
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/4 cup diced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon beef bouillon powder
Calories : 475

this was edible but with a few changes it could have been so much better. Oh well, that's what a $1 budget gets me

Macronutrients :
Protein: Approximately 18 grams
Carbohydrates: Approximately 37 grams
Fat: Approximately 6 grams

Totals

If you are curious where I got these prices from check out my last post here on how I buy bulk for the best deal. I've also posted in #Market Friday and other posts about purchase costs. If you need backup data on the prices let me know. Otherwise here are the prices I paid for all the ingredients---FOR THE QUANTITY I USED

Total : $1.555 Canadian /day for roughly 2220 Calories
Or about $1.40 Canadian / day for 2000 Calories.
Which is about $1.03 USD / day or 475 Naira / day.

Grand Total

Protein : 91g / 2000 calories (100g in recipes) = 21%
Carbs : 300g / 2000 calories (330g in recipes) = 69%
Fat : 42g / 2000 calories (47g in recipes) = 10%

Did I hit the 250 Naira/day mark?

NO and I didn't try to. I came up with the 250 Naira number using staple foods that I found in bulk on Nigerian sales sites. 250 Naira would give enough calories to continue for a day and is pretty much the absolute cheapest possible daily number. If you can go lower than that you are using tricks out of my league.

In today's food list I actually wanted to cover all the different vitamins and cover portion sizes to make sure that nothing was missed. That's why I added the dried vegetables to add nutrition even if it increased the daily budget (by 20 cents).

I also increased the protein amount. For my weight I could have gone lower (60g of protein) simply by removing some of the split peas. By removing 30% of the peas from the soup I would have still had a tasty soup and saved (10 cents). However, I left the protein level higher because higher protein levels make people feel full for longer.

Another note: Soya beans and Corn are considerably cheaper in Nigeria in bulk at roughly half the price I paid in Canada. Another possible savings (18 cents).

Remove those veggies and rejuggle the protein balance I think the number was just under $1 Cad. I think I calculated at 318 Naira.

While I didn't hit the 250 Naira mark. I did get close (318 or 475 ) depending on how you want to look at the numbers. However at the 475 price I got a fair amount of vitamins in there too.

BUT there was no Vitamin B12 in this set of daily meals. That would have to be supplemented or found in additional foods at additional cost of course.

If this was my actual ongoing diet?

I'd follow @jmis101 or @monica-ene when they mentioned growing vegetables at home is a great idea to save money!

Final Thoughts

This post is not supposed to be advice on making food. My cooking skills are terrible.

This post is not supposed to shame people into thinking they are spending too much on food. It takes way too much time to make everything from bare scratch to be worthwhile for most.

I only did this post to defend my honor when I stated that three meals ARE possible on an incredibly small budget. This would only be a START to show that with determination and imagination even an impossible budget can yield something beneficial.

I DO NOT mean to make light of the problems that the poorest 10% of the worlds population face.

What did I want? Well, it only takes a single spark to start a fire that can warm and brighten someone's home. I wanted this to be a spark to show that with imagination even the impossible can become a little more possible. Maybe even spark a flame of Hope.

Thanks for reading.

and as always a shout out to those people who have showed interest so far. Hope you like this post.

@monica-ene, @emreal, @etorobong, @jmis101, @beautiefair @deborah-yelemu, @jjmusa2004, @nkemakonam89, @drceeyou