A recent survey conducted on the student population revealed that over 57% of meals consumed during the school year cost no more than $1.58. These meals are usually a low-cost, low nutrition microwave noodle-based meal. The State-Run Media tracked down a student who admits to eating a large number of these noodle meals.
“I buy them mostly because they’re cheap and require no skill to make. Also if you put a little sriracha on them they actually taste pretty good,” he said while forking noodles out of a styrofoam bowl. A quick look in his kitchen cabinets revealed a month’s supply of the noodle cups. “There was a really good sale,” he explained.
The student, who prefers to stay nameless, lives in a single-bedroom, on-campus apartment. He’s a junior computer science and philosophy double major. In his free time he enjoys semi-professional ballroom dancing and polo.
In response to questions about difficulties paying for tuition or housing the student said “Oh no I’ve never had trouble with that [slurping noise]. Every semester the balance just seems to somehow pay itself.” He responded similarly to questions about expensive textbooks. “They just appear on my doorstep, [slurp] a few days before school starts.”
Inquiries into the possibility that the student could manage to spend more on food, perhaps buying vegetables, fruit and meat to round out his diet, were met with a negative response. “Dude, I’m in college. I’m barely scraping by. There’s no way I could spend any more on food,” he said as he sat down on his leather reclining chair across from his sixty inch flat screen television.
It appears that this ecosystem has given rise to a new type of financial species, one that has a necessity to be thrifty, but only for a specific category of commodity: food. The State-run brought this information to Economics professor Dr. Jamie Tarter. Dr. Tarter stated that “this type of economic niche has never been observed before.” A group of graduate students have started studying the student in question and promised the State-run updates if any discoveries are made.
