Anecdotally, I can easily eat for $12/day even in Seattle. There are days when I probably spend half of that. We aren't talking beans and rice here, these are diverse satisfying meals. It does require you to cook though.

I don't doubt you can eat three meals with 6 dollars, but it's crazy how solipsistic people are when it comes to food. Not everybody can buy food in bulk and cook at home.

A 10 oz ham sandwich will probably cost you more than 2 dollars even if you buy everything at the supermarket. I don't know why people are so reluctant to admit that 12 dollars a day is not much for groceries.

I don't buy anything in bulk, that isn't a prerequisite.

There is no getting around the fact that $12/day buys a lot of good groceries even in expensive cities. Cooking is trivially learned, especially these days with the Internet. The people claiming that eating on $12/day is challenging are really saying that they can't support their affluent lifestyle on $12/day. Which is true! But it reeks of learned helplessness.

As someone who lived decades of their life in real poverty, I find most of the discourse around a "living wage" to be deeply unserious. Things that are completely normal and healthy in low-income communities across the US are presented as unachievable despite millions of examples to the contrary. Living well as a low-income person is a skill. It is obvious that many people with strong opinions on the matter don't have any expertise at it.

The only reason I still regularly eat the same kind of food as when I was poor is that it is objectively delicious and healthy, cost doesn't factor into it. I can afford to eat whatever I desire.

I used to live 80 minutes from my workplace and I had to get there by public transport because I didn't have a car, cooking at home and taking my food to work was not always possible, especially during the summer. And I used to live with three other flatmates and we shared a small fridge. I'm not making this up, it was my life a few years ago. I ended up spending more than what I wanted eating out because preparing my food was not practical or sometimes not possible.

>The people claiming that eating on $12/day is challenging are really saying that they can't support their affluent lifestyle on $12/day. Which is true! But it reeks of learned helplessness.

I guess I was affluent and didn't know it.

I don't know what to say. I've lived that life and worse. There were many issues with it but cost of food was never one of them. I ate out sometimes but not because I needed to.

Honestly, the worst part by far was transportation. Everything else kind of worked.

What prevented you from cooking and taking lunch (and dinner) in a thermos? I don’t see how an 80 mile commute stopped you.

Are you aware that many people do this every day? This is a solved problem.

A ham sandwich is probably one of the poorest examples for this point. Ham has a fairly long shelf life, comes pre-cooked, and is exceedingly cheap as far as meat goes if you buy it on the bone when it’s available. Especially if you are willing to bake your own bread (I often see bread machines in many thrift stores), a ham and cheese sandwich is closer to $1 than $2.

1/5 lb of ham @$2.5lb is $0.50. A slice of cheese @ $2.50/lb is about $0.20. Two slices of homemade bread is about $0.20. I don’t know how much you’d add for vegetables or condiments but it ain’t much.

I can easily cook all my meals for $12/day.

I don’t consider daily or even weekly restaurants part of a necessity for life.

People have commutes and work shifts that don't always allow them to buy food in bulk and cook their own food.

Not everybody is like you.

Restaurants have never been a necessity for life, but I guess that for a lot of people you should be upper class to eat out once a week.

What about commutes stops you from bringing lunch?

You don’t need to buy food in bulk. Just buy regular food, cook it, and take it to work.

Either take stuff that doesn’t need refridge (pb&j, hummus, etc), or insulated lunchbox, or thermos.

This is not a complicated problem to solve. Ride the bus sometime and look at the lunches people bring long distances.

Eating out isn’t a necessity. But at $12/day food budget you definitely have money left over to eat out every once in a while. And that if you cook only for yourself. If you’re part of a household who can share food, it’s even easier.

It has changed a lot over time though, especially when you also count fast food and delivery. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad, but the norm has changed and many people’s expectations.

That’s pretty surprising, honestly, because there are other areas considered much lower COL that are within spitting distance of that value.