I’m writing this in a haze of chocolate, chips, cheese and Marmite. It’s the day after my completed extreme poverty challenge and I’m on a mission to eat everything I’ve had a drool-inducing daydream about over the past five days. My stomach is contentedly full, stretching back to size after days of shrivelling into a tiny pea, and I finally feel like I have some energy.
To raise awareness of worldwide extreme poverty, I’ve spent the last five days taking on the Below The Line poverty challenge.
I’ve lived on £1 a day for food and drink - which basically amounted to a few tins of value soup, a couple of plain baked potatoes and some bread. And rich tea biscuits. Many, many rich tea biscuits - the packet was never-ending, despite chain-eating more biscuits than I ever thought possible, it’s still half-full.
Biscuits aside, the first two days were a shock to the system; I felt dizzy, faint, exhausted and sick. Average calories consumed each day were around 1000 - 1200, but when most of these calories come from bread and biscuits, you don’t feel fantastic - I may as well have been filling myself up with cardboard.
Nutrition was certainly lacking; one lone banana was all the fruit and veg I had all week.
By day three it was the boredom that was really getting to me; there’s no joy in a mealtime when you’re wolfing down some tasteless stodge purely to stop yourself from passing out.
Food was no longer part of my social life - it’s lonely and miserable when you’re eating half a tin of baked beans at home while your friends catch up over dinner in a restaurant.
Sat in a coffee shop with my boyfriend, I bitterly nibbled on a couple of rich tea biscuits I’d brought with me while he shamelessly scoffed a panini and coffee that cost more than my entire week’s budget.
Many people don’t bat an eyelid at spending over £5 on their morning coffee break, but when you’re living below the line that kind of frivolity becomes both unreachable and unappealing.
Physically, I felt constantly cold, tired, and detached. Mentally, I felt miserable, moody, lonely and isolated from society.
Hunger changes a person; survival instinct kicks in and I now believe that if I were living like that permanently, I wouldn’t think twice about stealing in order to feed myself or my family if I had no other option. You wouldn’t feel great about it, but real hunger is so unbearable, I think any of us would do things we would never before have contemplated in order to survive. When you’re starving it’s almost like you’re possessed, you just need food and will do anything to get it.
My challenge was only for five days though, and I managed by counting down the days and looking forward to the feast I’d have at the end of it.
Without a light at the end of the tunnel, I honestly don’t know how anyone copes.
The Below The Line challenge was eye-opening and I think everyone should do it, especially those in positions of power: David Cameron, George Osborne, every MP, should all give it a go.
It’s all very well reading about someone else’s experience, or hearing about people starving on the news, but until you go through it yourself it’s impossible to imagine what an effect hunger can have on a person.
Although I am lucky enough to return to life above the line, my attitude to food, money, and poverty has changed. I feel even more grateful that at the moment I don’t live below the line, I don’t think I’ll be throwing my money away on expensive cakes and sandwiches quite so much, and I’ll never underestimate the value of a plate of vegetables ever again.
I’m relieved to be back to normal but while I’m munching on my Easter eggs I can’t shake the feeling of guilt that I have enough to eat when so many others don’t.
Shockingly, 1.4 billion people in our world live in extreme poverty. What I’ve just described isn’t an interesting challenge for them, it’s their inescapable daily life.
The world produces enough food for everyone, but not everyone has enough food. Doesn’t that make you angry? It certainly fills me with rage and for once I know it’s not the familiar food-mood taking over.
Think about all the wastefulness - the overflowing bins behind supermarkets, the families who buy far more than they could ever eat and chuck out tonnes of untouched produce, the morbidly obese gorging themselves on fatty foods, unable to remember the last time they felt hungry - while two million children die from malnutrition every year.
Even in the UK, in 2013, we have charity foodbanks to feed people because they can’t afford to feed themselves.
There’s something really wrong with this situation.
Food is vital for survival. If you’re one of the lucky ones, born in the right country to the right parents with the resources to feed yourselves easily, you probably hardly think about it. Why would you? Starving children in Africa is hardly going to impact on your life. But that’s why I urge you to try the challenge, just to see for yourself what life below the line is like.
We may not be able to end world poverty by ourselves, but having a better understanding of what it’s like to live in extreme poverty will certainly help.
See if you can do it, experience what it’s like, and then let’s see what we can all do to help those less fortunate than ourselves.
Visit https://www.livebelowtheline.com/uk-enoughfoodif to find out more and take on the challenge.