29 aug 06
"What is the best long term diet for the least amount of money?"
i wrote up a diet plan with this in mind when i was in new york city once, heavily pufffing the magic dragon; it's one of the strangest things i've ever written. i remember waking my companions up at 3am and asking that they not steal my idea for a diet book (that same night i sent emails, in code, to google and the IT department at my college, asking for jobs). anyway, i'll re-publish it here, so i won't have to do as much writing for this question:
The Diet
a) measured by volume
.2 cups olive oil (measured by volume)
.5 cups kidney beans (measured by volume)
.4 cups tofu (measured by volume)b) measured by weight
.5 oz olive oil (measured by weight)
1 oz kidney beans (measured by weight)
1 oz tofu (measured by weight)
Every meal consists of (a) or (b). Eat (a) at each meal OR eat (b) at each meal. DO NOT eat (a) AND (b) at each meal.
Eat three meals a day.
Therefore, eating the described regimen 3 times a day is that which I am prescribing.
This experiment is in its initial stages. I beg of you not to infringe upon my wishes and plagiarize my work. If you plagiarize my work, then I will take no legal action; but it is my full desire that my work not be plagiarized.
Precis: Eat a decent meal three times a day.
Prognosis: The patient will lose weight. Since the patient's goal was to lose weight, it is good that s/he did. To cite a counterexample, if the patient's goal were to gain weight, and the patient [went on "the http diet" (c) 2003] = [x]...
regarding [x], please be ethical (remember, spaces = %20)...and the patient lost weight, then that would be bad.
the part about being ethical regarding [x] referred to decoding an "encryption" of a password. mind you, i don't know, and didn't know, what might have been accessed with said password, but it was there for when i needed it. furthermore, i wanted a way for allies to get the password from the document (i suppose if i ever died).
if [x] is equal to [went on "the http diet" (c) 2003], and spaces are equal to %20, then the password would have been `went%20on%20"the%20http%20diet"%20(c)%202003`. brilliant -- let's see a cracker (a computer security breecher, not a white person) try to guess that one.
you probably wouldn't die if you followed this diet, provided you supplemented your kidney beans, olive oil, and tofu with a multivitamin and lots of water, but i'm not sure it would be healthy.
i've often thought about something like this submitter's question -- what might an ultra-low-maintenance, ultra-low-cost diet consist of? the ideal would be something like the gruel the freedom-fighters ate on "the matrix", that provided "everything the body needs". it's fun to think about the efficiency of this, but of course anyone would become miserable if forced on this diet for any length of time.
the "maryland correctional adjustment center" serves something like this for some pre-determined length of time as a sort of punishment (which is apparently very effective). it's coloquially referred to as "the loaf". here is a recipe for "the loaf" (source):
Special Management Meal
Yield - Three Loaves
6 slices whole wheat bread, finely chopped
4 ounces imitation cheddar cheese, finely grated
4 ounces raw carrots, finely grated
12 ounces spinach, canned, drained
2 cups dried Great Northern Beans, soaked, cooked and drained
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 ounces potato flakes, dehydrated
6 ounces tomato paste
8 ounces powdered skim milk
4 ounces raisinsMix all ingredients in a 12-quart mixing bowl. Make sure all wet items are drained. Mix until stiff, just moist enough to spread. Form three loaves in glazed bread pans. Place loaf pans in the oven on a sheet pan filled with water, to keep the bottom of the loaves from burning. Bake at 325 degrees in a convection oven for approximately 45 minutes. The loaf will start to pull away from the sides of the bread pan when done.
"the loaf" is apparently quite sufficiently healthy; perhaps you should go this route.
if you are seeking a more serious, less penalizing approach, i'd suggest buying one of those 50-pound bags of rice that you find in asian food marts, and pouring various cheap stir-fries and such over it (liver 'n' egg stir-fry, for instance). they say if you're eating an incomplete diet, you should also take a daily multivitamin.
i've never heard of anyone who carefully chooses and measures out their food to contain the FDA's "suggested" proper nutrients, and i don't see the general population's arms and legs falling off or anything like that. furthermore, most people don't take multivitamins, because they are disgusting.
every once and a while i'm inspired to buy a bottle, imagining i'll take one every day ("how hard can it be?"), but i never finish them. even "flintstone vitamins", which constituted my most recent vitamin purchase, quickly became intolerable. a plastic baggie filled with enormous beige vitamin pills is sitting on a shelf in the bathroom, left over from one of these summit attempts. i can't bring myself to throw them away, even though i will never use them again. i'm going to throw them away now.
people need water, protein, fiber, fat, and various vitamins and minerals, i think, an analysis upon which i based my own bizarre diet. i might be missing something, though -- i ain't no nutritionist.
buy a costco membership -- you can save a lot of money by buying huge vats of food there, apparently. i almost bought a membership today, in fact, so i could perpetrate a scheme involving electronics (pay the $50 yearly fee, take advantage of the lifetime defective merchandise replacement policy, then pay the $50 once again for whatever year the thing breaks), but decided not to because it was quite a bit more expensive than buying a three-year similar warranty at best buy. but i liked the idea of sneaking around costco's membership policies.
go to costco, buy huge bags of rice, and then little inexpensive doo-dads to dump over it. buy some vitamins in bulk, and drink massive amounts of tap water. that's my official suggestion.