A woman has gone viral on TikTok to highlight the dangerous impact of the cost of living crisis – challenging herself to live off of just £1 a day shopping at Aldi.
Kathryn Leech, 26, from Manchester, wanted to see how difficult it would be to live on a £7 weekly food shop budget, and shared the result in a series of videos online.
The digital media manager pointed out that the tiny budget is something that some people may actually have to live off and found the challenge to be an eye-opening experience.
Kathryn’s supermarket of choice for the challenge was Aldi, and she filled her basket with pasta, frozen sweet corn, tuna, bread, kidney beans and tortilla wraps to make a week’s worth of meals.
“With the current cost of living crisis and the constant rising inflation, a lot of people are having to cut back just to get by,” Kathryn told NeedToKnow.online
“For a lot of people it doesn’t matter how much they budget; the real issue is that the average cost of living is consistently rising but salaries aren’t at the same rate.
“This is quite an extreme food budgeting challenge, but it was interesting for me to see if it’s possible to live on a budget this small which some people might actually have to do.
“I ate the same thing every day for the whole 7 days. I had toast, kidney beans and pepper wraps, and Tuna and sweetcorn pasta.
“It was extremely difficult to make meals with such a small budget, and I had to eat the same thing every day which got incredibly boring.
“It also wasn’t healthy as there was no way I could get enough nutrients in, and I definitely didn’t eat enough calories.
“The hardest part was eating the same food every day. It wasn’t filling and it wasn’t healthy.
“However, I made the food in bulk, so it cut down on cooking time as I only had to cook a couple of times for the whole week, and I just warmed it up each day.
“I think it’s an eye-opening challenge, and I would recommend it if anyone wants to try an extreme food budget to see if they can do it.”
She shared the start of the challenge in a TikTok video that has been viewed over 681,200 times and racked up over 30,700 likes.
One user wrote: “The point is… you shouldn’t have to.”
“Couldn’t eat that 3 times a day for a week. No meat either. No proper sustenance. Vitamins protein,” said another person,
“That’s a snack?” wrote a third person.
Another person suggested: “Always buy a whole chicken u can do so much with it.” [sic]
“Very helpful well done! Sometimes you need a cheap week to get you thru!” said someone else. [sic]
“No chance. I see dinner, and at a push, plain toast for breakfast,” another user commented.
Someone else quipped: “Well that’s lunch sorted.”
“Where’s the food?” joked another person.
