Pictures and Words

Here they are, the official science-making graphs and charts from StinkyPete 1.0!

As you can see, we had a lot of trouble holding onto meats in this project.

This, I should point out, was on an "out of 10" rating.

The individual meats:

The Kangaroo Steak was one of two meats to survive the whole 6 days.

The Pork was the first meat to be completely stolen.

The bolognaise sauce also lasted all 6 days, steadily getting tougher and less popular...

This graph looks like two horses mating. Or am I the only one who sees that?

The Can of Spam lasted exactly one day.

If anyone has any frightfully clever scientific conclusions to draw from these graphs, please, let me know.

I also took all of the individual meat data, and plotted it onto one graph, just for the fun of it:

Mondrian would be proud!

Up next: StinkyPete 1.5 graphs and charts!

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, I’m eating no more than twenty-eight dollars worth of food. With luck, death will not be on the menu. (unfortunately, none of my favourite foods will be either.)

Today's Purchases.

My housemate Cannibal Kate and I went shopping today. After last night’s dream (I was eating chocolate by the bucket) I woke up to discover that not only was chocolate off the menu, I couldn’t eat any of my other favourite foods. I decided that I’d treat myself, and get a food that I actually enjoyed, instead of slowly going mad, and losing all interest in the idea.

Also, to avoid rice-hate (not nearly as bad as “Rice Balls”, but still pretty inconvenient, if you’re living on rice) I wanted to get some soy sauce:

Never before have those "save 15 cents" stickers meant so much.

I wanted to get the 750mL bottle, but Kate suggested it would be more prudent to buy the one that only cost a dollar. She’s sure that it will last me the whole month; I’m not convinced.

While Cannibal Kate was off doing her own shopping, I went around and looked at all of my favourite foods, to see if there was anything affordable. Spaghetti bolognaise was my first stop (anyone who followed StinkyPete will know of my fondness for spaghetti bolognaise) but even the cheapest tomato sauce was $1.40, and spaghetti was 59 cents per packet.

I was surprised to discover how many of the vitals spaghetti has:

I've not seen anything else that has a decent amount of Energy, Protein, Fat, Carbohydrate and Sodium.

The tomato sauce, once opened, would go off in a few days (I’ve seen it happen) and I don’t know how long I could make the spaghetti last. Towards the end of the month, if I have a bit of money to play around with, I might go for it, but at the moment I can’t afford to dole out $3 on food that will only last two or three days.

My second favourite food is “bread and butter with honey” – honey was right out of my price range, but my third-favourite food is simply “bread and butter.”

It sounds a bit basic to be a favourite food, but many years ago I was chatting to my mother, and I asked her what her favourite food was. Her first answer was “popcorn”, but then after a few minutes thought, she added “or bread.” Ever since then, I’ve taken the time to enjoy bread properly, and it’s actually really, really nice. It was particularly crushing to Mum when she became gluten intolerant.

Recently, I was thrilled to discover this Daily Dinosaur Comic, in which T-Rex announces his favourite food is “bread”. From the ALT text:

you might question choosing humble bread as a favourite food, but next time you’re eating it consider how good it is, and how we’ve had like three thousand years to perfect it. imagine what pizza will be like in three thousand years. that’s what bread is like RIGHT NOW.

Ryan North is a clever fellow (with good taste.)

At 642g/$, it's even cheaper than the rice was!

Now bread is nice, but without something to put on it…(even with water to wash it down)

Just add a little bit of butter, however...

There was five cents difference between margarine and butter, but Cannibal Kate assured me that I’d quickly regret getting cooking margarine, so I splashed out and went with the butter. It will almost definitely last the rest of the month.

While I was tossing up between butter and margarine, Cannibal Kate had made an exciting discovery:

Cheap concentrated orange juice!

Last time we went looking for concentrated orange juice, the cheapest we could find was about six dollars. $1.04 is much more affordable! This should last me at least a week or two – apparently it provides half of your daily Vitamin C requirement, if you drink the suggested serving amount.

I won’t be, but it should still provide enough Vitamin C to prevent me from getting scurvy.

I was dismayed to discover that had I bought home brand instant noodles, it would have cost me 80 cents less than the Yum Yum, and given me one more pack! 80 cents doesn't sound like much, but you must realise that it's an entire day's worth of food to me!

I was on the way out, with all of my delicious purchases, when I passed this:

They also had packets of Tim Tams for $2. So cheap...so delicious...yet still out of my price range.

That brought my mood down a bit, but I cheered up again when I got home, and got to have some delicious bread with butter:

I worked out that if I had 5 slices a day, the loaf would last me 4 days. That's roughly how long it would take to grow mould, my team of bread scientists deduced.

It was divine. A glass of water, bread with butter…that’s all it takes to make me happy! After I finished, I found myself wanting more; it wasn’t as filling as the rice was, but it was still pretty darned good. 7/10.

I also sampled my brand new soy sauce:

It doesn't matter if you're black or white.

Rice with a hint of soy sauce isn’t particularly pleasant – I was worried about running out, so I didn’t use as much as I would have liked to. Thinking about it, that was a pretty dumb move – what’s the point of having a condiment if I’m not using enough to make it enjoyable? Tomorrow I’m going to go crazy with the soy sauce and see if that’s any better.

While I was eating my rice with soy sauce, we had guests around, and they had a meal of Nandos, and Tim Tams, and Cinnamon Biscuits baked by my housemate Cannibal Kate:

They looked delicious, smelled delicious, and (I am informed) tasted incredibly delicious as well.

There was a bit of a discussion about me buying one – calculating how much they cost to make and dividing it by the number of biscuits – but we decided that it would be against the principle of the project.

All in all, it was a good day. I had my rice and my bread with butter, and while I definitely feel like I could eat, I’m not hungry as such.

The main problem isn’t hunger – whenever I feel hungry, I can just have some rice. The problem that really gets to you is cravings. You know how sometimes you just feel like a pizza? You’re not necessarily hungry, but a pizza is exactly what you want at that moment in time. It might be a pizza, or your favourite cereal, or pancakes, or a steak, or a piece of pie…in that moment, a bite of that particular food is exactly what it would take to satisfy you.

I feel like that all the time, with every food imaginable. And worst of all, because I’ve only just started the experiment, I keep forgetting that I can’t just have that food. I will be sitting on my computer, and a picture of an apple will appear on the screen, or one of my housemates will have cooked a meal. My first thought will be “Oh god, I could totally go a whatever right now,” and it takes me a few seconds to realise that I can’t just have it.

While we were driving to the shops, we passed a fish and chips shop, and I thought “Oh god, I could go some fish and chips right now.” Then I remembered that no, I can’t. Literally five seconds later, I saw a sign for icecream, and thought “Oh god, I could go some icecream.”

I don’t know if these constant cravings will pass, but hopefully I’ll get used to them, and stop wanting some of everything all the time.

From the comments:

Dan Beeston corrects me:

The Earth bulges at it’s equator, not it’s poles.

That was carelessness on my half – I do know where the Earth bulges, but when I was typing that, I was imagining the earth to be a ball of clay, with someone holding the poles…I should have finished my thought before I finished typing it.

Also, new weight watchers expect to lose one or two kilos in the first week. I’ve heard of people losing eight in the first week but they were massive to start with. Once the first week goes by, losing more than 1 kilo a week is frowned upon by dieticians.

If, at the end of the first week, I start to lose more than a kilo a week, I shall definitely go and see a doctor!

I’ve had some worried comments, people concerned about me – I’ll point out that other people have done this, and to the best of my knowledge, they’re all alive. If it gets alarmingly bad for me, I’ll drop out, but I’ve got a lot of people looking out for me – I don’t think it’ll come to that.

Some numbers:

I only slept for 6.5 hours last night, but then I napped in the afternoon for another three. (see below)

Mentioning how much I’ve had to drink has slipped my mind until now: on Day 1, I had about 1.5L, and the same yesterday. Today, I had about 3L, and a few hours after we got home from the shops, I had really low blood sugar. I was giddy and hungry and really wanted something to eat, so I rushed to the kitchen, shakily buttered my other two pieces of bread for the day, and gulped them down.

I felt a bit better after that, but still weak – Cannibal Kate made me clean the table (the bitch!) which was the last thing I wanted to do at that point.

Interestingly, I was reminded of how it felt to be a little kid, before I understood the correlation between what I ate and how I felt. I would have something sweet and have a sugar high, and then crash an hour or two later without linking any of it. It was those times that my mum  (the bitch!) always made me clean my room, or the driveway needed sweeping.

My childhood wasn’t full of starvation and malnourishment or anything like that, it’s just a strange coincidence that two things from this project so far have brought back strong childhood memories.

My sudden low blood sugar and my increased water intake probably aren’t a coincidence though. I’ll try to drink under 2 litres (for any American readers – 2 gallons) per day from now on. Can anyone with actual medical know-how confirm this theory of mine?

After the table was clean, I went and had a nap for a couple of hours. I was awoken by my housemate coming home and yelling quite loudly (I think he was excited to be home from work, but I was mightily pissed off, I can tell you that.) He stopped when he saw me lying in bed, but by that point, I wasn’t actually asleep any more.

I thoroughly enjoyed my glass of orange. I couldn’t feel the vitamin C coursing through my veins, but it would have been surprising if I could. 

Total spent today: $4.46 ($1.04 for orange juice, $1.04 for soy sauce, $1.29 for butter, and $1.09 for bread) but the butter will last me the whole month, and the soy sauce should last me a while as well. The bread was $1 for 4 days, so I’m still well under $1/day so far.

Tomorrow: Daily weigh-in!

(total money spent so far - $16.66)

Hello! My name is Peter C. Hayward, and for the month of February, 2009, I’m only eating twenty-eight dollars worth of food. Hopefully I shall not die!

I forgot to turn the flash on, so you can see me taking the reflection in the photo. I double checked to make sure you couldn't see any of my junk.

72.8kg means that I’m down half a kilogram! (any Americans reading; that’s exactly one pound.) Still no word on what constitutes an unhealthy rate of weight loss, but if I was on a diet, this would be…well, a good diet involves a lot more taking care of your body, and a lot less posting pictures of yourself on the internet, so this would be quite a terrible diet. But losing half a kilo in a day would probably be a cause for celebration.

Cannibal Kate was awake to take photos of me in my underwear this morning (“You have the strangest requests, Peter”) so the photos are less blurry, and I’m a lot more cheerful:

"You do realise," Cannibal Kate said while taking the photo, "that now everyone will know exactly how tidy we keep our house." Considering the photos are of me in my underwear...no, that wasn't my first concern.

My stomach looks slightly less pointy than it did yesterday, but that might be because I’ve improved my posture. I don’t think changes will be visible for a week or so.

Dream:

Last night, and I’m not making this up, I dreamed that I was in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. I was running around, trying all the chocolate, gorging myself. I had been allowed all the free chocolate that I wanted, and I was taking full advantage of the situation.

What’s more, I was aware of the project, but (and this does make a lot of sense) when you’re in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, allowed as much free chocolate as you want, bugger the project. Even conscious, I completely agree with the choice I made.

This dream was probably inspired by the fact that my housemates were eating Tim Tams, and (forgetting about the project) offered me one.

Waking up was quite a miserable experience. To cheer myself up, I’ve decided that when I go shopping today, I’m going to see if there’s any (cheap) way I can spoil myself, just a little bit. If I see a five-cent piece of chocolate, I’m going to buy it. Will report back!

Tonight: Daily Food Post + shopping!

(total money spent so far - $12.20)