As part of an effort to raise awareness about hunger and nutrition for Hunger Action Month, I took part in the Food Stamp Challenge. This challenge mandates that no more than $4 a day (or $20 total for the five-day span of the challenge) can be spent on food.
With a resolute vow to avoid the oh-so-easy dollar menus, I began the challenge.
Sunday, the day before the challenge began, I found myself spending a lot of precious time in Safeway. After a few price comparisons and deciding that I was in no position to spend $2.50 on strawberries, I purchased a bag of dried red beans for $1.24 and picked up a pack of 10 tortillas for $1! Score! Delicious floury tortillas for the low price of $0.10 each? This week was going to be a piece of cake – no pun intended.
Monday morning began with oatmeal with peanut butter and brown sugar added. Luckily brown sugar was a freebie – considered a condiment rather than a food item. I began to dream of brown sugar-based desserts that I wouldn’t have to count on my log – but decided I wasn’t that desperate (yet). Even with my ritual cup of tea, my breakfast only set me back $0.38. I decided then and there to repeat this simple, filling breakfast every day of the challenge. Too bad I was blatantly shunning my own advice, which is to eat fruit with breakfast, to reach the lofty goal of two cups of fruit a day. Though this breakfast was low on micronutrients , it was a good mix of carbs and protein, making it a good breakfast after my morning run.
Lunch found me in the breakroom opening up a can of tortilla soup, with which to enjoy my delicious low-cost tortillas. If I was actually on food stamps, I think I would be eating a lot of soup. Unfortunately this left me starving at 5 pm, leading to an uncontrolled, unplanned eating attack on the Japanese snack mix I had stashed in my car after a recent road trip. As I was mowing down the snack mix, I guiltily wondered how much this snack mix was setting me back (on the first day!!). A rough calculation determined that I’d eaten only $0.87 in snack mix and it turned out after all of that snack mix I wasn’t hungry for dinner. I rung in on the first day at $3.32. I had succeeded monetarily, but didn’t do so well nutritionally. I was not worried, however, as I had previously cooked up a large vat of beans which were to provide me with plenty of micronutrients throughout the week.
Tuesday I discovered that the beans were a little bland, but I doctored them up with some tomato and avocado and of course a tortilla. A variation of this meal was repeated many times throughout the week. Though eating beans got a little old, I couldn’t really complain because the time I spent in Uganda taught me that people are physically able to eat beans at every meal and not complain. I would not have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself! And of course in Uganda they have yet to discover cheese! Cheese makes everything better. But seriously, beans are an excellent buy, from both a financial and nutritional perspective. I don’t know if I could’ve made it through the week under my budget without them.
Also fruit, as it turns out, is expensive. Snacking on fresh fruit is easier said than done. A single apple set me back $0.62 while a nectarine (and they are in season!) totaled an exorbitant $1.02! Never had I appreciated so much the sweet taste of a nectarine as when I knew it was costing me 25% of my food budget that day. I was starting to see how people might opt for a lesser priced, not-as-nutritionally-sound snack. How much are those Hot Cheetos again?
All kidding aside, the food stamp diet can actually be somewhat nutritionally sound, especially if people can be motivated to flex their problem-solving muscle. For example, I wanted to make (what else) bean tacos and a recipe I was following called for frozen corn. Surprisingly, frozen corn is expensive and there is way too much of it for one person. To get around the cost and volume issue I purchased a single ear of corn for $0.34 and boiled it to add the kernels to my tacos. It worked marvelously and greatly reduced the chance that I would find $2.00 worth of corn months later rendered inedible by freezer burn.
A bill is currently on the table to increase the funding for school lunch programs while subsequently cutting food stamp benefits. A closer look at the bill states that instead of a cut of food stamp benefits, the proposed 2013 increase will simply not happen. In my book, that’s different than a cut. The way that this bill is proposed actually makes sense (and the increase in funding for school food programs has to come from somewhere). Why bother increasing food stamp benefits if the foods currently being purchased are not healthy? Why not give extra money to the passionate and dedicated food service directors who can then use that extra money to hire a staff person to prepare healthier meals? A recent meeting with a food service director put things into perspective. Of course the bill only increased the meal reimbursement by $0.06 per meal. But that could mean a large chunk of change to any given school district. That equals another staff person to cut up oranges – which this particular food service director found had a huge positive impact on the children eating them.
My weeklong food stamp diet led me to believe that people CAN feed themselves on $4 a day, though it’s not fun. Beans every day aren’t the most exciting thing on the menu. But with a little planning, meals can have fresh fruits and vegetables. Besides, people on food stamps are eating on America’s dime and as the old adage states: beggars can’t be choosers.
For more info on the Child Nutrition Bill, click here
Thank you for participating in the challenge!