Seattle woman will eat food only from Starbucks for a year

“That’s going to cost a lot of money.”

“You’re going to gain weight.”

Those are the reactions a Seattle woman gets when she tells friends about her plan for the year.

Beautiful Existence, her legal name, is only going to eat food and drink beverages from Starbucks for all of 2013.

“I’ve been going in and getting their nutrition by the cup charts for all their serving sizes,” she says. “I’m already getting a feel for what to eat – the plain nut pack as a snack because it only has 190 calories, compared to the piece of pumpkin bread.”

Lucky for her, Starbucks bought a tea business and a juice company last year, so Beautiful will also purchase food from Evolution Fresh and Tazo Tea.

“I’m still trying to figure out how I can do sushi,” she says. “I have two friends who are chefs and I want to see if I can get them to help me tear down some of the products at Evolution fresh and do something else.”

Are you still trying to figure out why she’s doing this?

Beautiful, who does not work for Starbucks and isn’t getting paid by the company, designs year-long challenges for herself.

I met her after she spent a year shopping only at Goodwill.

This year’s project is about more than eating turkey paninis and sipping green tea, she says.

She wants to document her experience to show how communities benefit from Starbucks.

“The company pays good benefits for part-time workers. That’s where my money is going,” she says.

In keeping track of her receipts, so far she’s spent an average of $18.79 a day on food and drink from Starbucks.

“We’re really lucky and I would say actually spoiled as Americans because we have all these different eating options,” she adds.

“You go to all these other countries and they don’t have these luxuries. Really? Is it really going to be that hard for one year of my life to limit my menu? We’ll find out.”

By LINDA THOMAS