$10 Challenge

With my $10 I decided to buy foods that were both as nutrient dense as possible
but that could also make a full meal. With my money I was able to buy:

0.5lb Quinoa
1lb Tri-blend beans
0.5lb Sweet Potato
0.6lb Broccoli
0.5lb Kale
0.6lb Salmon

For a total of 3.7lbs

Salmon was a large part of the $10, but also one of the most nutritious foods.
The meal was salmon with quinoa, roasted sweet potato, and sauteed kale. (I used
various spices and a lemon that are not included in the challenge). I still have almost
half of the quinoa leftover, and the broccoli and beans that weren’t used. I plan to use
them for chili in a couple days.

5 ways to maximize your food dollars

1. Don’t eat out. Eating out is an acceptable treat on occasion, but there’s no
hiding how expensive it can be. It's much cheaper to eat at home.
2. Don’t buy packaged meals. Prepackaged food is convenient and quick but also
more expensive than if you were to take the time to make the meal yourself.
3. Buy less perishable foods in bulk. As an employee of Costco I may be a bit
biased, but I like to buy in bulk. Canned food, cereal, condiments, flour, sugar,
etc. If you know you’ll use it before it goes bad, it’s cheaper to buy in bulk.
4. Meal prep. I like to make meals for a full week's worth of lunches. There are a
ton of meal options that work really well for meal prepping and are far cheaper
than the Subway that you would have eaten instead. My favorite is Chili and
baked potatoes.
5. Schedule a shopping day(s). If you're out of one or two things, you probably
don’t really need to go to the store. You can get by eating what you have until
your shopping day comes. This will limit the amount of trips you take to the
store. This will cut down waste so that you eat everything that you buy and get
your full money's worth.
5 ways to minimize fresh food waste

1. Don’t over-serve food. If you dish up too much and don’t eat everything than that
food is wasted. Only dish up what you know you will eat for sure. Any leftovers
and be saved.
2. Keep leftovers and actually eat them. A lot of people will save leftovers only to
forget about them and throw them out a week later. Instead, plan ahead and
expect leftovers and eat them the next day. What seems like one meal may
actually be two.
3. Store food in the proper places. Some foods will keep longer in different
environments. Not everything stays better in the fridge. Bananas and tomatoes
keep longer at room temperature, lettuce keeps longer in the fridge. Know what
does best where.
4. Freeze food before it goes bad. If those bananas are going brown cut them up
and freeze them to be used in a smoothie later. Spinach, strawberries, any
frozen fruit goes great in a smoothie. That leftover soup that you forgot to eat?
Freeze it in a ziplock bag. It can be thawed and eaten when you’re ready for it.
5. Treat expiration and sell-by dates as a guideline, not an ultimatum. The FDA
requires that these dates be put on food and the like, but they aren’t accurate
100% of the time. Know when your food is actually bad rather than just throwing
it out when it tells you to.

$10 Challenge Video Critique

The video is a great visualization of the different costs in nutritious vs unhealthy

food. It makes a great point about the value of fresh produce vs junk food. However, I
Don’t think the items that the junk food guy bought were very practical in making a
realistic comparison. Most people aren’t actually eating Red Vines for breakfast, and if
they are, I doubt they think they’re very cheap. He should have bought more realistic
things such as cereal.
The weighing of the food is a bit inaccurate. In that there are parts of the food
that aren’t eaten and shouldn’t be counted toward the total weight. The skins or peels
of various fruits and vegetables for example. I doubt that he plans to eat those three
banana peels.

Other ways to compare food

You can compare the quality of food in many ways to find which food is best for
which outcome. Rather than simply the weight of the food, one may compare the
calorie content. How many calories from fat are there? Saturated or unsaturated? How
much sugar does each food have? Is it natural sugar or added sugar? Depending on
your nutrition needs, one food may be a better option depending on how they’re
compared.