Pardon me if I am being presumptuous but the title seem to imply that the author was going to use somewhat equivalent non US alternatives rather than rummaging through what they already own.

To use an analogy, it is as if you have an article titled “I survived 72 hours without eating processed foods” and the author opted not to buy non processed alternatives and just work with with whatever they have at their home. Then you learn it was a couple of onions and a tomato they had in the fridge. If they say they were starving by the end of the experiment, it does not really paint an honest picture of how hard it is to get by without processed foods.