HALIFAX, NS — With Halifax rent prices as high as they are, many students have fallen back on ever reliable, affordable meals like ramen to save cash. However, geology student Cassidy Reynolds has developed an unorthodox diet in order to bring food expenses down to almost nothing. She has started eating every rock that she finds.

According to Reynolds, the new diet idea came from a place of curiosity. “Well pumice sort of rhymes with hummus so I was curious to know if they tasted similar,” she explained. “They do not. But they were really filling, which gave me a great idea, that I could just keep eating rocks to get through the term with basically no expenses.”

However, what started out as a simple plan to eat street gravel gradually grew as she attended more geology classes. “So I learned that shale often contains scattered organic matter, which basically makes it a granola bar,” she explained, crunching through the sedimentary rock. “And basalt, I mean come on, it’s high in magnesium and already has salt in its name.”

Reynolds’s roommate, nutrition student Kelsey Bowers, was less enthused by this cost saving plan. “The fridge shelves have already broken three times from the blocks of granite she puts in there,” she shared. “Why do they need to be cold? They’re rocks!”

However, this dietary breakthrough broke down when Reynolds went for a dental check up. “Yeah, her teeth are beyond fucked,” her dental hygienist explained. Thanks to her Dal health insurance, Reynolds only had to pay thousands of dollars to get her entire mouth,throat and stomach fixed. “I definitely learned my lesson. Well, unless Dal increases tuition again, but in that inevitability I’ll just eat the soft ones like chalk”

By Sam MacDonald