For five days in the second week of August, I’ll be attempting to limit my food budget to AU$2 per day.

I’ll be doing it for the Global Poverty Project’s ‘Live Below The Line’ project (or ‘Live Marginally About The Line’, as a few friends and I have jokingly been calling it, depending on how you do the maths). The idea is to raise awareness about the challenges faced by people living in extreme poverty, whilst also raising money for, in the Global Poverty Project’s case, a poverty education program in Australian schools (they’ve been rolling it out to various audiences across Australia, New Zealand and the UK over the past year), and in partner organisation the Oaktree Foundation’s case, new schools in Cambodia. I’m hoping to raise $500.

Now, I won’t lie to you: I love food. And when it comes to food, my preferences aren’t exactly cheap. I pretty much subscribe to the Michael Pollan school of middle-class, privileged, self-righteous leftie eating - lots of fresh fruit and veg, fish and minimal processed stuff (Coke Zero addiction excepted). And while I love to cook, I’m pretty crappy at doing it without a recipe for at least an inspiration/starting point. And did I mention I get hungry a lot?

So learning to live off two small meals of frozen vegetables, legumes, bread and the occasional apple for week - and learning how to combine these foods in smart and appetising ways - will definitely be a challenge.

But I think it’s also a great way think critically about how we approach food, and about how much money many of us spend on relatively frivolous things each day. When I was working in Sydney, I spend $10 on my salad for lunch each day without batting an eyelid (although I did acknowledge it was a bit of a money sink). Here in London, the restaurants promoted in Time Out charge upwards of £50 per head (that’s around AU$90) for dinner… which, er, would be why I’m not eating out much.

Of course, people who are actually living off US$1.25 per day (click here to read more about how Live Below The Line calculated the amount for the challenge) have to stretch that dollar across more than food: it goes on housing, transport, medical expenses, education and so on. But it is a good first step to putting yourself in the shoes of the poorest 1.4 billion people on the planet.

I first started thinking about this stuff because my boyfriend Simon is one of the people heading up the project. Speaking to him and his colleagues about it - Richard Fleming, in the GPP’s Australian team, is a particular inspiration, having been doing this for over 80 days now - made these issues seem less remote, and more a reality.

I’ll write more about the challenge in a couple of weeks, when I’m actually doing/have done it, but in the meantime, it would be awesome if you could sponsor me - and help me reach my goal of raising $500 for the Global Poverty Project - by clicking here.

And if you have any suggestions on how to eat healthily and cheaply, please post them in the comments.