The rat stood his ground, his beady eyes unblinking as he sized me up. His gaze tracked upward from my red pumps to the blue latex gloves on my hands, and he scuttled off to leave me to my prize: a dumpster full of food.

It was a rainy Tuesday evening, and I had a potluck dinner party to attend. I had been asked by my editor to spend the week on $5 a day. Arriving empty-handed would have been rude. So, there I was in a dumpster with a rat in the rain, looking for something to contribute to the table. I chose slightly stale bread in a sealed bag.

The only thing separating me from the 49.1 million Americans living in households considered to be food insecure is that my constraint was by choice. The Food Research and Action Center defines food insecurity as “the lack of access to enough food to fully meet basic needs at all times due to lack of financial resources.” Sound familiar? Far too many students compromise their nutritional needs as a result of economic strife, ignorance, or lack of time every day.

For Heather Guyton, however, $5 a day is a piece of cake — and some zucchini casserole and other tasty treats. In addition to being a second-year master’s student in the Jackson School of International Studies, Guyton is also a gardener, food-stamp recipient, skilled cook and avid dumpster diver who knows how to stretch a budget.

“I’ve eaten for free for the last two weeks,” she informed me. “The trick is warding off free time and increasing your knowledge base. I spend extra time accommodating my lifestyle choices so that I can eat healthily.”

Unfortunately, however, time is something I, like most students, lack. Even before being challenged by a gastronomic budgetary constraint, I often skipped meals. I preferred to use that time to fulfill my daily responsibilities. Buying food out instead of packing lunches had become an ingrained habit. Now, if I wanted to make it through my week without fainting, I was going to have to give myself a time-management and food-security makeover.

“I plan my meals in advance based upon what I have in the house or cook several dishes at once to eat later in the week,” Guyton explained after detailing her system of freezing bulk produce from dumpsters for later use.

Following this example, I decided to make a grocery list and head to the cheapest grocery store I could find — Trader Joe’s — where I solicited advice from store employee Sarah Wilhite.

“You need to maximize your protein. Try our black beans; they’re on sale this week,” Wilhite advised. “We serve a lot of transients at this location, and I notice they bulk up on our 19-cent bananas and store-brand cereal bars; I recommend you do the same because they’re a great deal and fairly healthy.”

Another employee, Laura Paul, laughed when I told her my budget.

“Don’t most students try to live off $5 a day?” she inquired.

Paul was right. Many of us live very cheaply, either because of genuine economic insecurity or because we’d rather spend money on things like wine, pencils and accessories from H&M. We save money by limiting food intake or eating nutritionally questionable bargain “food” products like ramen noodles.

In dorms and graduate-student lounges, many students joke about their poor diets and lack of food security. They assume some day they will make up the difference after they graduate and find a job. For other students, however, hunger and a lack of adequate food has been a painful theme throughout their lives.

“I think students who grew up poor are embarrassed to let others know,” said Guyton, who interacts with many undergraduates in her role as a teaching assistant. “They are embarrassed to ask for help because they feel to do so would be to fail at the American dream or to be an object of pity or ridicule amongst their peers.”

I thought about this a great deal during my week eating cheaply. I was ravenous most of the time, even when I knew I had consumed enough calories. I was irritable, had difficulty concentrating, and wound up sick a week later. I failed to live up to Guyton’s example of well-rounded nutritious frugality.

The idea of children spending a significant amount of their time going to bed feeling the way I did all week broke my heart as I looked at my own son (who was not limited in his food intake by my experiment). My one week of discomfort helped me to understand why good parents will do almost anything to feed their children. If my situation were permanent, I would definitely apply for food stamps and visit food banks, and if that proved ineffective, I would do whatever else it took to feed my family.

Guyton is an advocate of low-income students applying for food assistance.

“I want to ask other students who don’t apply for the food stamps they deserve, ‘What is the point of a state that doesn’t take care of you?’” she said.

When my week of voluntary privation ended, I had a deep emptiness in my stomach and a great deal of “food” for thought regarding my experiences. Friends asked what I would do first — eat a large meal, volunteer at a food bank, go grocery shopping to prevent future waves of hunger?

Instead, in the true spirit of university life, none of these things leaped to my mind. I walked over to Big Time Brewery and bought a delicious baked potato with broccoli for lunch and reveled in not having had to cook it myself. Then, I reconnected with a practice my budget had denied me all week. I ordered a tall, frosty beer for the first time in seven days and gave a sigh of quenched relief.

Reach reporter Elizabeth Brady at lifestyles@dailyuw.com.