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A Dollar a Meal
A few Congressman are trying to live a week on just $21 of food stamps. Turns out it’s, you know, really hard. One dollar a meal does not lend itself to a healthy diet.
Via Bitch, Ph.D
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18 Responses to “A Dollar a Meal”
It can be plenty healthy just not very interesting. You’ve inspired me. Tomorrow I’ll go to the grocery store, do some pricing, and post on eating on $21 a week.
Dave, I’ve had to live on a similar food budget. I wasn’t on Food Stamps, but I was in college, and just after college, and wasn’t making much money. Cottage Cheese, veggies, and whatever meat is on sale can get old quick. Plus, in winter you can’t afford “fresh” fruit or veggies because they are more expensive in winter.
Some congresspeople here in Utah are doing it too. Of course at least one of them is “supplementing” with some food staples he bought at Cost-Co the week before. He’s going to “charge” himself for the staples but not roll up the cost of a Cost-Co membership into the mix.
Food Stamps, and welfare in general, should be a stop-gap not a permanent solution. Help a family for X-time to get training and/or jobs then start cutting their food-stamps by some percentage every year until they can be weened off assistance. There will always been some percentage of citizens that will be on assistance, but we can avoid a “welfare state” by limiting it and helping them get self-sufficient. A continuation of the reforms in the 90′s.
You end up eating a lot of macaroni and peanut butter and jelly with day-old bread from the Wonder factory stores. Not a great diet. I agree that welfare recipients shouldn’t be eating pate and caviar, but most of the recipients are kids who may end up diabetic or obese with so few food choices.
Dave Schuler–
Are you going to actually abide by the 21 bucks for a week? Or just figure up some menus?
Either way, I’m looking forward to reading your post.
It’s great that lawmakers are directing their attention here, but the problem to be solved is not one of welfare/food stamps. We’ve got to go up to the supply level. For decades, we’ve given subsidies to crops that produce the most unhealthy food ingredients: corn (syrup), sugar, soybeans (oil/shortening). It’s no wonder that the cheapest foods contain tons of this stuff. If we directed subsidies instead toward fruits and vegetables that people actually should be eating (or developing the technology to make those foods easier/cheaper to harvest), the market would adjust accordingly.
For the last three weeks Safeway been trying to sell yellow onions for $1.69 a pound!
As a daily shopper for the evening meal I’ve had a chance to bitch at everyone from clerks to the produce manager and finally to the store manager and they all act as if they didn’t know that the prices of many grocery items have raised as much as 400% in the last two months… They are lying.
‘Big Business‘ and ‘The Banks‘ are coming after you and me (us) with another installment of “Forclosures and Inflation – Yippee”. I hope you’re all getting ready.
I for one sure am glad that I’m getting old and the house is paid for… 1980 was enough for me.
Is this right? I went thru the texas site and it ends up being $302 a month for a family of 4. How is it just $1 a meal? That being said so what? I have never heard that this was supposed to be the only money you spend on food. You have other income and food stamps just help or you are on SS, welfare, ect. This just seems like anouther stunt that really makes little sense.
Bones -
3 meals a day for 4 people = 12 meals a day
12meals a day for 30 days = 360 meals a month
360 meals @$1 each = $360/month
You cite $302/mo in Texas
Maybe the ‘other’ money goes for rent, school supplies, clothing and other luxuries.
doma,
Except that the average family size (according to USDA website) recieving food stamps assistance is 2.3 (since the majority are one parent households). The national average of monthly assistance is higher than the $302 that Bones used too, but even without all that his greater point is also true: the purpose of food stamps is to supplement income for food, not to be the sole source of all food revenue for the family. It’s for the working poor- if a person or family doesn’t have an employed head of household then they’re receiving assistance from TANF. Plus, in the analysis of the families on food stamps you can also include that their kids probably qualify for free lunch and possibly breakfast at school, so that cuts down on some of those meals.
I’m not saying it’s easy for families in these circumstances and we should definitely make sure that kids are fed, but safety nets should be safety nets, not a way of life. Food pantries should (and do) pick up a lot of the slack too.
I think Nitrogen Nick makes an important point: unfortunately it is much more expensive to eat healthy foods than to eat unhealthy ones and our government agricultural subsidies are largely to blame for that.
I don’t mind cutting welfare- it shouldn’t be a way of life, but I would draw the line at food stamps, since if you cut that program you would not be able to make sure that kids- who are dependent upon that program get fed. 1$ a meal is only enough if you are eating peanut butter and jelly, macaroni, rice or beans-which is nutritionally imbalanced.
Surely there is other waste that can be found- like in no-bid federal contracting fraud for instance?
CS-
What is the subject here? That’s it not easy to eat well on a limited budget.
There are a number of possible responses, and my first reaction was concern for the children in the family, regardless of what the adult to child rationis. My second concern was for the adults. The parents who develop health problems, will ibe afftecting their children.
I’m going to leave welfare reform for another day.
Kim,
I’m not for cuts either but I am in favor of being able to examine whether or not a program is producing the desired results at a reasonable rate of efficiency. One thing that I think is good about this experiment is that it highlights the fact that recipients of food stamps are likely to make food purchases that are not based on health. That might lead us to conclude for example, that a program like WIC is more effective and maybe the whole food stamp program should be set up that way as well (providing coupons for specific types of nutritional food).
Doma,
I share your concern but I don’t see the point of making an argument based on certain numbers and then dismissing it if the numbers aren’t correct. I didn’t choose to bring up family size, you did when you used this to show how the amount averaged out to $1 a meal if based on family size of 4.
I just plan to work up a few menus or, actually, a strategy.
As far as living on $21 a week for food—been there, done that. The summer after my first year of grad school I lived on far less than that. At the start of the summer I bought a bag of rice and some seeds. I ate the rice, the vegetables I grew in my garden (in an empty lot adjoining my apartment), and the fish I caught from the lake.
Dave,
I can’t top your story. I did, however, live for two years of college on a steady diet of Campbell Soup (big discounts at the plant for dented cans)..
Once a week, I could afford a plain hamburger and a piece of hot apple pie with cheese. Best food ever!
I was lucky enough to have a meal plan included in my scholarship, but one semester they closed the cafeteria three days before the end of finals (and my luck ran out here because I had a final scheduled on the last day and had no money to eat). Too proud to ask Mom and Dad, so I scrounged and went pretty hungry- including eating the popcorn that my roommate had decorated the dorm room with for Christmas! LOL
There’s always a liquid diet, if they find beer on sale.
The previous place I lived was a classic run-down Cyanide Nation Rust Belt wasteland, and person after person would be carrying beer all the time or pulling cases of beer behind them in an old-lady-style wheeled shopping bag cart. Even when it was -10 or -15 degrees F. or there were several inches of fallen snow, they’d be out there getting their beer. And boy, were they responsible when they needed to be: there was a line promptly forming every other week on the days the welfare checks were ready at the welfare office (across the street from the high school — quite convenient for the teens to see where they were headed, be it before or after they did or did not graduate).
(The key to survival there was to be away as often as possible or to live outside the city itself.)
[...] post at The Moderate Voice, which I’ll quote in full since it’s so short, caught my eye: A few Congressman are [...]
I’ve put my shopping list and menus at the link above.