Canadians Challenged to Eat, Drink on $1.75 a Day

Live Below the Line challenge raises awareness, funds to fight extreme poverty

Teenage girls enjoy a coffee outside the local store on the Fort Hope First Nation in Ontario. Many of Canada’s First Nations communities have long grappled with poverty. The Live Below the Line challenge raises money for organizations that deliver programs focused on nutrition, water, health and sanitation, and education. The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz

TORONTO—Eating and drinking on $1.75 a day is not something Vancouver chef Trevor Bird had ever considered.

That’s the Canadian equivalent of the extreme poverty line, an amount that 1.2 billion people around the world must live on daily for all their needs.

But Bird, co-owner and head chef of Fable restaurant, agreed to put his culinary skills to the test to develop low-cost recipes for participants in the 2015 Live Below the Line campaign.

“I was, like, ‘I don’t even know how to cook anything that cheap because I’ve just never even thought about it,’” he said by telephone.

“Being Canadian and pretty privileged, it’s like your brain doesn’t conceive it until you look at what you can make for $1.75 a day—not per meal, but in a day—and it’s pretty shocking how little it is.”

The challenges were: just what can you eat for 40 to 60 cents a meal? It's really hard.

— Vancouver Chef Trevor Bird