I know I’m lucky I was born in the United States to the parents I was born to.
But, what if I wasn’t “lucky?”
There’s no reason for why I was born in Chicago to a middle-class existence as opposed to being born any place else to anyone else.
No God, god, or gods Involved Here
Half of the World’s population are born into circumstances limiting them to eat less than $7 of food per day and 10% of the World’s population’s life-circumstances only allow for $2 of food per day.
Empathy
I’ve always had a lot of empathy. It’d be easier to not have so much empathy.
Judging, criticizing, ignorance, and distance come easy without empathy.
Feeling, experiencing, understanding, and responsibility are necessary with empathy.
By luck, by pure chance, it’s normal for Chicago-born me to be eating more than twice the calories of my could-have-been Afar-born me.
Afar-Born Me
Afar is a region of Ethiopia in which 91% of children are born into abject poverty.
The United Nations defines abject poverty as a condition characterized by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education, and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to social services.
I’ll never know who Afar-me might’ve been, but that doesn’t keep me from wondering.
The month of February 2023 I put my wondering into action. In one small way, I lived as Afar-me to feel, experience, and understand who I might’ve been.
The small way I lived as Afar-me was by diet. A diet determined by abject poverty.
Abject poverty does at least two things to a diet: It makes the diet limited and it makes the diet chaotic.
Limited
My diet during the month of February 2023 was limited in calories, a possible 1,557 per day (as mentioned, the average number of calories consumed per day by an adult living in Ethiopia); and my diet was limited in its diversity of food items, on any given day, it was potentially composed of beans, rice, potatoes, or fish (some of the most likely food items available to those living in abject poverty).
Chaotic
My diet during the month of February 2023 was chaotic in its number of calories and limited food items, as they were both determined by rolls of dice. Specifically, an 8-sided die was rolled at the beginning of each day to determine if 1,557 calories was available for me that day — a roll of 1–7 determined calories were available, a roll of 8 determined no calories were available.
If calories were available for me, then a 20-sided die was rolled to determine the diversity of my diet — a roll of 1–10 determined a diet composed of beans and rice, a roll of 11–16 determined a diet composed of beans, rice, and potatoes, a roll of 17, 18, or 19, determined a diet composed of only beans, only rice, or only potatoes, respectively; lastly, a roll of 20 determined a diet composed of beans, rice, potatoes, and fish.
As With Most Stereotypes, This One About Poverty is False
Before sharing what happened to Afar-me in February 2023, I want to address the commonly believed stereotype of poverty being about laziness. Poverty is not about “being lazy.” Living in poverty often demands more work. Regardless of having an abject poverty-determined diet, my Afar-born self would’ve been working every day for myself, my family, and my community, to obtain and sustain food, water, shelter — and peace. My Chicago-born self did this too — working as a professor, regardless of my abject poverty-determined diet during February 2023, I worked every day for myself, for my family, and for my community, to obtain and sustain food, water, shelter, and — peace.
What Happened to Afar-Me in February 2023?
My eating experiences mostly followed the mathematical “chances” of the abject poverty diet:
I had a 12.5% chance of not eating on any one day — and I didn’t eat on 5 of the 28 (18%) days in February.
I had about a 50% chance of eating beans and rice on any one day — and I ate beans and rice on 11 of the 28 (39%) days in February.
I had about a 30% chance of eating beans, rice, and potatoes on any one day — and I ate beans, rice, and potatoes on 7 of the 28 (25%) days in February.
I had about a 5% chance of only eating beans on any one day — and I never ate only beans on any day (0%) in February.
I had about a 5% chance of only eating rice on any one day — and I ate only rice on 2 of the 28 (7%) days in February.
I had about a 5% chance of only eating potatoes on any one day — and I ate only potatoes on 2 of the 28 (7%) days in February.
I had about a 5% chance of eating beans, rice, potatoes, and fish on any one day — and I ate beans, rice, potatoes, and fish on 1 of the 28 (4%) days in February.
Physically, “I’m” Different
The day before and the day after being on the abject poverty diet, I weighed myself and took 59 blood and urine tests including: A Lipid Panel (tests evaluating cholesterol), Comprehensive Metabolic Panel (tests evaluating the functioning of my liver and kidneys, as well as my body’s fluid balance and general metabolism), Complete Blood Count (test screens for red and white blood cells, platelets, and hemoglobin), and a Complete Urinalysis.
Weight
The abject poverty diet had a relatively dramatic effect on my weight, 6% of me went away, I lost a total of 11.3 pounds from February 1st (188.5 pounds) to March 1st (177.2 pounds).
Blood and Urine Tests
Like the pre-abject poverty diet test (102 mg/dl), my post-abject poverty diet test of Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (LDLC, 142 mg/dL) was high (it should be less than 100 mg/dL). The pre- and post-abject poverty high LDLC is not too concerning, as Chicago-me has always had slightly elevated unhealthy levels of LDLC, but Chicago-me also always has had significantly elevated healthy levels of High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol (HDLC, 69 mg/dL) which results in a very healthy and low cholesterol/HDLC ratio of 3.2. Ratios lower than 5 are considered normal and healthy. All other Lipid Panel tests were normal and healthy.
Results of all the pre- and post-abject poverty diet Comprehensive Metabolic Panel and Complete Blood Count tests were normal and healthy.
Like the pre-abject poverty diet Complete Urinalyses, results of my post-abject poverty diet Complete Urinalysis were normal and healthy.
“Physically Different” Conclusions
It’s amazing how versatile and adaptive the human body can be for one month. Despite the abject poverty diet, my physical health remained relatively intact. However, what is concerning is how much higher my post-abject poverty diet LDLC is relative to my pre-abject poverty diet LDLC is. Despite not consuming meat for the 28 days of the abject-poverty diet, my LDLC significantly increased. This says something about how important and necessary a variety of fruits and vegetables are to a diet when it comes to maintaining healthy LDLC levels. And one can just imagine how different Afar-me’s LDLC levels would be after two months, six months, a year — a “life” time on the abject poverty diet.
Note: For comparison’s sake, my LDLC level following a month (February 2022) of consuming one McRib, one small french fry, and one HiC Orange Lavaburst per day — and nothing else, was 102 mg/dl; and the lowest my LDLC has ever been on record (90 mg/dl) was after I followed a strict vegan diet for one month (June 2022).
Another “physical change” should be noted here. The abject-poverty diet lowered my 24-hour resting heart rate to a level it has never been before: My average resting heart rate for the month of February was 51 beats per minute (bpm) — my average resting heart rate in the 13 months before the abject poverty diet was 54 bpm.
Psychologically, “I’m” Different
The abject poverty diet has waxed me psychologically more so than any previous adventure has — and that’s saying a lot, as my middle name is epistemology.
35 Lessons Learned
The best way I can share with you how the abject poverty diet psychologically impacted me is through lessons. From the sublime and philosophical to the personal and real, Afar-me taught “me” a lot of lessons. As a teacher, I easily can imagine creating a class — a class on life, designed around these lessons.
In no certain order, these are my Afar-me lessons:
1. One can only eat so much rice and beans.
2. Even when you’re hungry — really, really, hungry, there still will be food you just don’t want to eat.
3. Question: What if you’re allergic to the only food you can afford to eat? Answer: You eat the food you’re allergic to and suffer the consequences for doing so — on top of the consequences of hunger.
4. Fasting for 24 hours is different from not being able to eat for 24 hours.
5. In public, food is everywhere, which makes it difficult to not eat when you don’t want to eat; but it’s an entirely different level of difficult, to not eat when you can’t afford to eat.
6. Flatulence is positively correlated with caloric intake.
7. More of life’s experiences are designed around eating than is eating designed around life’s experiences.
8. I’m not disappointed it took 50+ years of living to finally experience a 28-day-straight period of drinking nothing but water.
9. If a person cannot afford food, then this person loses out on the benefits of fellowship.
10. The routine of an impoverished diet has powerful effects on making life mundane.
11. Much like the alcoholic requires those around them to be also drinking, an implicit social rule of the American culture requires anyone you know who is in proximity, should be eating — or at least, able to eat when you’re eating.
12. When not being able to eat, don’t watch episodes of the Netflix series, “Taco Chronicles.”
13. Not affording to eat causes one to say no to charity. (Yes, this is written correctly.)
14. Lots and lots of intense thinking and laughing and professing with cool people can (at least temporarily) change the order of things in Maslow’s hierarchy.
15. As satiating as potatoes are to an empty stomach, so too is giving.
16. Patience is more than a virtue while hungry; patience while hungry is truth.
17. Morals be lived and ethics be followed when your stomach is full; morals be damned, and ethics be ignored when hungry.
18. Laws should be made only by those with empty stomachs.
19. No matter how powerful the mind may be, the brainstem’s wants come first.
20. The basic neurophysiological motivators of behavior are intimately associated with one another in a symbiotic fashion — if one motivator is negatively affected, all other motivators WILL react with compensatory behaviors. Although physiologically adaptive, these behaviors may not be psychologically or sociologically adaptive.
21. Luck will happen.
22. Chance breeds coincidences which breed serendipitous chance coincidences.
23. It’s at the same time fascinating and obvious how accurate chance is in predicting the future.
24. What you’ll do today is only dependent on the size of your die.
25. Hard to imagine, but true: ALL of life’s experiences are because of chance — no reason, no cause.
26. People don’t like “knowing” their fundamental experiences are mostly due to chance. So, they mask this knowing with noumenal deities and ideological religions that are deterministic.
27. The devil is phenomenal not noumenal.
28. God has a wicked sense of humor.
29. Don’t mess with God.
30. Success comes to those who define their crosses as opposed to having their crosses define them.
31. You can only know what you know, but consciousness — when unbridled, is aware beyond our selves.
32. The best thing we can do for ourselves is do something for others.
33. Naysayers say, “You can never understand someone who is not you — no matter what you’re doing, but let ME and my IDEOLOGY tell you about who this someone is…”
34. I’ve never been much interested in people who like to talk about what they possess, but I’ve always been interested in people who like to talk about what they give.
35. If you’re aware and you’re growing, then as soon as you figure out something in life, you’ll find you haven’t figured it out at all.
…
Dr. Don Lucas, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology and head of the Psychology Department at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio Texas. He loves psychology, teaching, and research.
If you like this story, then you may like Don’s videos on his YouTube channel, 5MIweekly or his other stories on his Medium site.
Life’s Meaning, Poverty, Food Insecurity, Caring, Empathy, Diet, Health Self-Improvement Food, Life, Existentialism, #safoodbank
