My Day 3 started out more difficult than Day 2 was. I was hit last night with low blood sugar, due to getting home for dinner later than planned, and I had to rearrange my menu for Day 2 a bit in order to give myself a quick fix. Thankfully my husband was home to make me half of a quesdadilla, which combined with the soup helped me get back to feeling normal (I updated my Day 2 menu to reflect this). But today I was back being bleary-eyed and listless; I was even having trouble adding up the cost of food in my head. Not good news: today is the launch day for our May/June edition on the Philippines' recovery after Typhoon Haiyan (you can download a digital copy for Apple or Android), and edition launch days are always busy, busy days.
When it started getting harder and harder to focus come afternoon, I started re-examining my decision to cut out coffee for the week. It was better to give up the caffeine than to lose out on those calories, I had thought; besides, if Starbucks has declared coffee prices too expensive for them to purchase beans, who am I to incorporate it into my $1.50 per day menu?
But I pulled out the calculator and found out that if I made the coffee in my own pot, from the bulk bag of (not Starbucks) coffee beans we bought a few weeks ago, that I could make a pot of coffee out of 2 ounces of grounds for 55 cents. That pot would serve six 8 ounce cups of coffee, coming out to just about 9 cents per cup. If I kept the pot in the fridge and served it over several days (coffee connoisseurs would call this barbaric, I know), I would have a cup of coffee to work into meals on days with a bit more wiggle room.
This blog post is brought to you today by an 8 ounce cup of coffee—a luxury that likely goes against the spirit, if not the rules of this challenge. I can afford to give up a few cents for a cup of coffee to keep me going, knowing that I will no longer be restricted by $1.50 budget in a few days; those who live continually in extreme poverty have no such wiggle room.
So today, in that spirit, I am going to write about coffee and clean water, and the World Wildlife Foundation has a great video to kick off that discussion:
In 2009, the World Health Organization reported that waterborne illnesses were the leading cause of disease and death around the world, resulting in the deaths of 3.4 million people per year, and 4000 children per day. Since 2009, those numbers have been reduced, but are still high—2.2 million people globally die of diarrhea each year, most of them children. These diseases can be transferred not only by drinking dirty water, but also by someone who has washed or gathered dirty water then touched food, or by improperly cooked food that came into contact with the dirty water. Nearly 90 percent of diarrheal deaths each year are due to a lack of access to a source of clean water.
The United Nations estimates that more than one in six people worldwide—894 million—do not have access to 20 to 50 liters of safe freshwater per day. In rural areas, women and children must spend up to one-third of their day fetching water, a process that is not only time consuming (further trapping them in poverty) but also dangerous. The risk of being attacked, by human or animal, is high, and primary water gatherers contract waterborne diseases at the highest rates. Access to water is a growing problem in urban areas as well, particularly in urban slums, where the issue is quickly becoming a global health crisis. Slum overcrowding means drinking wells and latrines rarely do not have enough space in between them to prevent cross contamination, and contamination from surface runoff from these urban areas can affect an entire city's drinking water.
By 2025, water shortages are expected to increase by 50 percent in the developing world, and 18 percent in the developed world (although the United States can already see evidence in California's record-breaking drought and the inability of the Colorado River to reach the ocean anymore). These shortages will have a terrible impact on the world's food supply. Irrigation for agriculture accounts for 70 percent of agriculture; for example, it requires 16000 liters (over 4200 gallons) of water to produce 1 kilogram (about 2.2 pounts) of beef. A single glass of wine requires about 120 liters (nearly 32 gallons). As demand rises for these high quality foods (beef, wine, coffee, etc), the stress on our global water supply rises also. As climate change raises global temperatures, precipitation patters will also change: dry regions, such the Mediterranean and southern Africa, will see even less rainfall, but others will see heavier rains that wash away nutrient-rich topsoil forever.
Without safe drinking water, and sustainable access to it, the poverty cycle cannot be broken: disease kills children or prevents a parent from being able to work; instead of working to earn extra income for her family, women must spend a huge amount of time fetching and preparing water; and increasing demand on water resources from the developed world puts further pressure on the poor's ability to access limited freshwater supplies.
While that cup of afternoon coffee may only have cost me 9 cents, it had much larger costs for someone down the line. And, living in a state where until 2010 you could not legally own the limited rainwater that runs off your roof, I am more and more conscious about the effects of drought and access to water. These reasons are why I ultimately ended up choosing The Water Collective as the charity I would raise money for in my Live Below the Line Challenge.
***
My Day 3 menu was not excellently planned: I felt the effects of a blood sugar crash come on quickly after my low-protein breakfast. Looks like it is back to eggs for breakfast tomorrow.
Day 3 Menu
- Breakfast: 1 cup Special K cereal (14 cents each), 8 ounces of milk (15 cents), 1 Banana (17 cents) = 46 cents
- Lunch: ramen (18 cents) with 1 egg (10 cents), 2 ounces chopped carrot (14 cents), just under 2 ounces cucumber (8 cents), garlic (no cost) = 50 cents
- Afternoon Coffee: 8 ounce glass = 9 cents
- Dinner: Spicy White Bean Soup, adapted from this Poor Girl Eats Well recipe (31 cents per serving, see Day 1), with 2 white corn tortillas (4 cents) = 35 cents
- Daily Total: $1.40
From Monday, May 5th to Friday, May 9th, Diplomatic Courier managing editor Chrisella Herzog will be taking the challenge to live below the line, and blogging about her experiences each day. Follow the Diplomatic Courier's Twitter and Instagram or follow Chrisella at @Chrisella #BelowtheLine for updates. She is raising money for The Water Collective here.
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Living Below the Line Day 3: Coffee and Water
May 7, 2014
My Day 3 started out more difficult than Day 2 was. I was hit last night with low blood sugar, due to getting home for dinner later than planned, and I had to rearrange my menu for Day 2 a bit in order to give myself a quick fix. Thankfully my husband was home to make me half of a quesdadilla, which combined with the soup helped me get back to feeling normal (I updated my Day 2 menu to reflect this). But today I was back being bleary-eyed and listless; I was even having trouble adding up the cost of food in my head. Not good news: today is the launch day for our May/June edition on the Philippines' recovery after Typhoon Haiyan (you can download a digital copy for Apple or Android), and edition launch days are always busy, busy days.
When it started getting harder and harder to focus come afternoon, I started re-examining my decision to cut out coffee for the week. It was better to give up the caffeine than to lose out on those calories, I had thought; besides, if Starbucks has declared coffee prices too expensive for them to purchase beans, who am I to incorporate it into my $1.50 per day menu?
But I pulled out the calculator and found out that if I made the coffee in my own pot, from the bulk bag of (not Starbucks) coffee beans we bought a few weeks ago, that I could make a pot of coffee out of 2 ounces of grounds for 55 cents. That pot would serve six 8 ounce cups of coffee, coming out to just about 9 cents per cup. If I kept the pot in the fridge and served it over several days (coffee connoisseurs would call this barbaric, I know), I would have a cup of coffee to work into meals on days with a bit more wiggle room.
This blog post is brought to you today by an 8 ounce cup of coffee—a luxury that likely goes against the spirit, if not the rules of this challenge. I can afford to give up a few cents for a cup of coffee to keep me going, knowing that I will no longer be restricted by $1.50 budget in a few days; those who live continually in extreme poverty have no such wiggle room.
So today, in that spirit, I am going to write about coffee and clean water, and the World Wildlife Foundation has a great video to kick off that discussion:
In 2009, the World Health Organization reported that waterborne illnesses were the leading cause of disease and death around the world, resulting in the deaths of 3.4 million people per year, and 4000 children per day. Since 2009, those numbers have been reduced, but are still high—2.2 million people globally die of diarrhea each year, most of them children. These diseases can be transferred not only by drinking dirty water, but also by someone who has washed or gathered dirty water then touched food, or by improperly cooked food that came into contact with the dirty water. Nearly 90 percent of diarrheal deaths each year are due to a lack of access to a source of clean water.
The United Nations estimates that more than one in six people worldwide—894 million—do not have access to 20 to 50 liters of safe freshwater per day. In rural areas, women and children must spend up to one-third of their day fetching water, a process that is not only time consuming (further trapping them in poverty) but also dangerous. The risk of being attacked, by human or animal, is high, and primary water gatherers contract waterborne diseases at the highest rates. Access to water is a growing problem in urban areas as well, particularly in urban slums, where the issue is quickly becoming a global health crisis. Slum overcrowding means drinking wells and latrines rarely do not have enough space in between them to prevent cross contamination, and contamination from surface runoff from these urban areas can affect an entire city's drinking water.
By 2025, water shortages are expected to increase by 50 percent in the developing world, and 18 percent in the developed world (although the United States can already see evidence in California's record-breaking drought and the inability of the Colorado River to reach the ocean anymore). These shortages will have a terrible impact on the world's food supply. Irrigation for agriculture accounts for 70 percent of agriculture; for example, it requires 16000 liters (over 4200 gallons) of water to produce 1 kilogram (about 2.2 pounts) of beef. A single glass of wine requires about 120 liters (nearly 32 gallons). As demand rises for these high quality foods (beef, wine, coffee, etc), the stress on our global water supply rises also. As climate change raises global temperatures, precipitation patters will also change: dry regions, such the Mediterranean and southern Africa, will see even less rainfall, but others will see heavier rains that wash away nutrient-rich topsoil forever.
Without safe drinking water, and sustainable access to it, the poverty cycle cannot be broken: disease kills children or prevents a parent from being able to work; instead of working to earn extra income for her family, women must spend a huge amount of time fetching and preparing water; and increasing demand on water resources from the developed world puts further pressure on the poor's ability to access limited freshwater supplies.
While that cup of afternoon coffee may only have cost me 9 cents, it had much larger costs for someone down the line. And, living in a state where until 2010 you could not legally own the limited rainwater that runs off your roof, I am more and more conscious about the effects of drought and access to water. These reasons are why I ultimately ended up choosing The Water Collective as the charity I would raise money for in my Live Below the Line Challenge.
***
My Day 3 menu was not excellently planned: I felt the effects of a blood sugar crash come on quickly after my low-protein breakfast. Looks like it is back to eggs for breakfast tomorrow.
Day 3 Menu
- Breakfast: 1 cup Special K cereal (14 cents each), 8 ounces of milk (15 cents), 1 Banana (17 cents) = 46 cents
- Lunch: ramen (18 cents) with 1 egg (10 cents), 2 ounces chopped carrot (14 cents), just under 2 ounces cucumber (8 cents), garlic (no cost) = 50 cents
- Afternoon Coffee: 8 ounce glass = 9 cents
- Dinner: Spicy White Bean Soup, adapted from this Poor Girl Eats Well recipe (31 cents per serving, see Day 1), with 2 white corn tortillas (4 cents) = 35 cents
- Daily Total: $1.40
From Monday, May 5th to Friday, May 9th, Diplomatic Courier managing editor Chrisella Herzog will be taking the challenge to live below the line, and blogging about her experiences each day. Follow the Diplomatic Courier's Twitter and Instagram or follow Chrisella at @Chrisella #BelowtheLine for updates. She is raising money for The Water Collective here.
