Figure out how much money you spend per person per meal each day of the week. Pick a day, skip your lunch or dinner meal. Donate the money saved to your local food bank to help others struggle daily to put food on the table.
Accounting for spend on food is tricky with our revolving pantry. One approach I took was to look at several months of weekly grocery bills (before we started to deflect spend into local farmer's markets). We spent about $205/week on groceries. With 3 of us and subtracting the meals my husband eats in the office cafeteria, that represents about 50 meals. So let's say that is about $4.10/meal.
If we wanted a more generous figure, I looked at Mary Jane's Farm backpacker meals and see that the entrees run about $10-$14.
Next, I needed to skip a meal. I chose to eat a large-ish breakfast on MLK day (1/19/26) and then skip lunch while my daughter and I helped assemble boxes of shelf-stable foods for people in need. It was a lot of fun and they kept us so busy I didn't have time to feel hungry. As an added bonus, the scale said I had kept my lean mass but had dropped 1.2 lbs of something else!
Now, to donate the saved money to a local food bank. We are fortunate to have several charitable organizations helping with food distribution in our area. I had noticed long bread lines at the local middle school on walks and felt like of all the places to support, this one was truly local. It is organized by Seva Collective. I figure if I kept on with a one meal skip/week, that should amount to about $25/month and we can afford to round up to $26.41 to cover processing fees.
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