a week’s worth of food
An apple. Two tortillas with salsa and greek yogurt. Three dark chocolate kisses. A large glass of seltzer with a splash of cranberry juice. I eat some weird things after I play squash. Basically whatever’s close at hand and quick to fix. But four of those items I won’t be eating this week. They’re too expensive and I’m on a budget. A SNAP budget.
I’m embarrassed to say I’d never heard of SNAP before last week. It stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. You and I may know it better as Food Stamps, but we’re behind the times. Many, many people know SNAP, whether they like it or not, but it was the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey who brought it to my attention. In my daily perusal of online news—from NYTimes to Huffington Post to EOnline—I caught wind last Monday that Mayor Cory Booker had been to Pathmark on a grocery shopping trip. And spent just less than $30 on food. Food to last the entire week.
What was up?
A SNAP Challenge that’s what. It seems that a twitter follower had doubted the value of SNAP, and Mayor Cory tweeted back with a challenge. Let’s do this thing. Let’s see how we feel after a week living off the food budget of a SNAP recipient and then reconvene.
I was intrigued. On many levels. Could I do it? How would it make me feel? Would I still be able to be as active (play squash, do my workouts at the gym, run) as I usually am? Would I feel more connected to and concerned about social issues, particularly about poverty and wage issues here in the U.S.? Or would I just continue to feel disconnected?
I’ll be completely honest. My mother will be appalled (she recently served in the Peace Corps in Mongolia), but I don’t spend a lot of time thinking of those less fortunate than me. Instead I think about my job (publishing), my favorite activities (squash and writing), and my favorite people (as far as I know, none of whom are SNAP participants). But I do live in a city where haves and have-nots are very close to one another. We ride on the same trains, shop the same stores, walk the same streets. If I ate on the same budget, would I have more empathy? More compassion? More desire to help and affect change? I don’t know, but I wanted to try.
So that’s how I ended up at my local C-Town this afternoon, with their shopping ‘circular’ in hand. I had $33.29 to spend, according to SNAP, based on a per person monthly allowance for my home state of New York. This was, admittedly, the first time I’d ever used a ‘circular’. I’m ashamed to say that finding them littering my stoop every week had always annoyed me, because I never used them. I just go went to the store and bought whatever I need….or more accurately, wanted. But when you’re on a budget, they’re fantastic. In truth, I used their online version to pre-shop for everything, so I pretty much knew what I was going to buy and what everything cost before I got to the store. Thank god. Because if I had tried to shop the way I usually do – willy nilly – it would’ve taken me hours to figure out what I could afford.
Fortunately, I am a decent cook and have pretty good sense of nutritional value. But with just this one shopping trip, I have a whole new admiration for those who must subsist and feed others on SNAP. I quickly realized that most of the protein and produce I regularly purchase was not affordable. I usually eat a lot of fish, but just the half a pound I eat at one dinner would’ve wiped out almost a third of a 7 day budget! And fresh greens, while a purchase of Mayor Booker’s, seemed a high and less filling price to pay in lieu of the cheaper carbs from pasta, rice, and potatoes. As a casual but addicted athlete, my first concern is that I have enough energy to stay at play. I just hope that I am rolling the SNAP dice right.
So here are the results of my shopping toils. This is the list of what I’ll be eating for the next seven days. Note, no coffee (too expensive) and I went slightly over budget, due to my addiction to spinach and not double-checking the price. So I’ll cut $4.53 somewhere. Yes, this feels kind of like a game. But it’s the game of life to 47,000,000. And I’m sure it’s not fun. More to come.
I plan to post my meals and thoughts every day this week. If you have questions (the reasonable sort), leave a comment and I’ll try to answer it.
