Voluntary Rations
Last year I completely gave up caffeinated beverages for three months. I stopped when I hit dissertation crunch time and couldn’t afford to be drifting to sleep early in the evening. But going cold turkey wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be – I just started buying Sprite instead of Coke and walked right past the Snapple displays.
Now instead of going cold turkey I’m trying to limit my intake of certain things, and it almost seems harder. I have several cases of Snapple that I bought on sale, but I’m trying to hold myself to one a day. (This would be easier if I could keep up with my new lemonade habit. But of course citrus prices are through the roof, and it’ll cost me six bucks or more to get enough lemons for one pitcher. Which I can go through in about a day and a half. It’s good lemonade.) But when there are several bottles on hand, the temptation is much stronger.
I’ve also taken to eating meat at only one meal per day, partially for health reasons, partially to stretch the food budget, and partially to reduce the environmental impact of my diet. I go through a lot of protein, whether that’s in tuna, cheese, or livestock, but I’m increasingly coming to the conclusion that it’s unreasonable for me to pig out two or three times a day on a food product that’s expensive and resource-intensive. I’m reading stories about public officials trying to live on food stamps for a week, surviving on pasta and peanut butter, and I have no idea how they do it.
The major problem for me here is that this puts a crimp in my leftovers usage. If I have leftover meat from tonight’s dinner, I can’t just polish that off for tomorrow’s lunch. But for now I’m still generating that level of leftovers based on the way food is packaged and/or sold. So I’m still working this one out. But it’s been an interesting experiment so far.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.