It's just one of the many lovely encounters I've had with food.
"Yara what are you eating?"
But for one week, I tried eating like a refugee. I attempted what's called the Ration Challenge.
That means I lived off the same food rations handed out to Syrian refugees by an Australian NGO
and observed the effects it had on my body.
It was actually really hard.
"Brain just hurts."
"I was constipated."
"Very lethargic."
"I can't even talk."
And at times,
How did I get involved in this? Well, at AJ+, we cover the refugee crisis closely.
They've been on this road since September.
And although I've even made videos about refugees, I've always felt disconnected from their struggles.
So when my coworker Christina suggested I take the Ration Challenge,
I thought maybe, perhaps, possibly,
I'd catch the tiniest glimpse of what they go through every single day.
The food rations were sent to me in a package.
"Guess what this is Yara."
I sense lentils.
Before I unboxed it though,
I thought I'd get some tips from people who had already completed the challenge,
which raises money to pass out the exact same food rations to Syrian refugees.
What am I getting myself into?
You're getting yourself into a week of ...
You're gonna be hungry. You're gonna be tired.
You will never feel full or satisfied.
And with that, I got to opening the box.
I'm supposed to eat whatever's in this box.
That included: sardines, red lentils, dried chickpeas, oil, red kidney beans, and rice.
And some extra rice and flour that I had to supply myself.
Altogether, the instructions said the meals contained a little over 1,700 calories per day.
But something was noticeably absent.
"I wonder how much salt and pepper I can use ...
... salt and pepper ...
... salt ...
... salt and pepper ...
"They didn't give you any salt or pepper in here?"
There were recipes for a number of dishes like falafel and hummus.
But the ingredients were so limited.
"Seriously, like, how much falafel can you make with this?"
"Like, three falafels?"
"One very large ..."
And I wanted to make sure I got a little bit of everything in every meal.
"This has to last me through the week."
"This is like having my own cooking show."
"Oh my God, that looks ...
not great."
So, I basically made one dish with slight variations and ate it every single day for lunch and dinner.
And when I ran out of lentils, I added in a can of kidney beans that I'd saved for the end.
Breakfast was basically two thin slices of flatbread that I made in one batch.
As I started my first day, I talked to Karen.
She's part of the campaign.
"The physical and mental toll that it takes on your body in a week
– you'll see it in a few days' time –
is huge.
It makes you really angry and frustrated and unable to concentrate.
For refugees, you can't walk away from this.
This is their everyday."
Day 1 looked like this:
... which progressed into ...
And then ...
Over the course of the week, I got a number of headaches.
I had trouble thinking and working.
My roommate told me I looked kind of pale.
I regularly felt exhausted and sometimes cold.
I also noticed changes in my personality.
"I'm becoming more direct, less polite."
The instructions came back to haunt me.
it says.
"What does that smell? It smells vinegary."
– "What is that?"
"Cinnamon donut."
"These images of Fettuccine Alfredo ..."
"What is that?"
– "What you have?"
"Oh, it's just some leftovers."
It was kind of like what Karen said.
"If you're living on this kind of diet, which is basically carbohydrates and oil,
you're getting just enough calorie intake, but you're not getting any fresh food,
you're not getting nutrients.
You're not getting all of the things that, you know, are meant to boost the human body."
So I asked Martin McDonald, a nutritionist.
The diet that you followed was by any stretch of the imagination not particularly healthy.
Martin told me my symptoms were caused by a number of factors.
I was exhausted because I wasn't getting enough calories for someone of my weight, height and age.
I need about 2,100 calories a day but was getting 1,700.
"I have a call with someone in a few minutes. I don't have enough energy."
It didn't help that vitamins and proteins were lacking too.
– "Yes, there's half a dismembered sardine inside of this rice."
But why couldn't I concentrate at work?
"Concentration, brain function, can be heavily related to things like dehydration."
But I thought I drank plenty of water throughout the challenge.
"Even though you had some access to water,
you don't have salt or potassium to help you retain some of that water."
Ultimately, I learned one of the biggest flaws in my diet was
"You probably were getting between a fifth and a sixth as much iron as you would need."
Iron deficiency is actually the most common nutritional deficiency in the world.
And for growing children, it's a serious health risk.
Your body uses iron to make red blood cells.
But what happens when you don't have enough iron to make them?
You could develop
For kids and infants, anemia weakens their immune system
making them way more susceptible to disease and infection.
and it can permanently impair a child's mental development.
That's a terrifying prospect when you consider that half the world's twenty 22.5 million refugees are children.
2016 study revealed something shocking at one of the UN's largest camps for Syrian refugees in Jordan:
Nearly 50% of children suffered from some kind of anemia.
And it's not just among Syrian refugees.
Anemia is thought to affect one in three children worldwide.
Refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia have some of the highest rates of anemia in the world.
Refugees across the world are not eating exactly what I ate
This is, after all, one specific food ration passed out by one specific Australian NGO.
Refugees might combine them with other ingredients they have access to.
But they also might not have access to anything at all.
But there are some basic realities.
Refugee diets are usually lacking in fresh produce and meats.
If you're a refugee in a pinch, you'll probably have to eat a food ration at some point.
And those food rations are nowhere near ideal.
You can survive off them, but your body will be hurting.
It all reminded me of something I was told earlier.
"I was able to do this challenge, and I always had in the back of my mind, like, 'This is only for seven days.
I can get through this.'"
Refugees live this life for days, months and years. I only ate like them for a week.
I didn't have to worry about shelter, weathering the sub-zero temperatures of the winter in my tent.
I didn't have to worry about contracting a disease, the psychological trauma of fleeing a war,
looking after kids, trying to find a job to make some extra money on the side
so I might – just might – be able to procure a tiny amount of meat or fresh produce.
I was uncomfortable,
but I was privileged in a way refugees are not.
So, when you hear about families fleeing their homes in Iraq,
in Syria,
in Sudan,
in Eritrea,
in Myanmar,
in Afghanistan
try to keep this in the back of your mind:
"When you struggle with something yourself so much,
you start to understand someone else's pain – when you actually put yourself in their shoes.
And you can look away from a video or you can forget about a political argument
or a discussion that you may have had,
but when everything about what you're eating and drinking and doing in your life has to do with that,
The Ration Challenge really put things into perspective for me, but just one note:
It's not a way to simulate the experience of a refugee,
and I would never frame it that way because there's no comparison.
But for me at least, it was an opportunity to learn about some of the basic realities
that refugees face on a daily basis.
So if you have any friends or family who might not be fully aware of some of those realities,
send this video over to them and see what they think.