Are you Hungry?
Some of you might know that last month the “Congressional Hunger Caucus” did an experiment where they tried to live the life of an average food stamp recipient. Well, not really. But they tried to limit themselves to $21 a week for food, the amount the average food stamp recipient gets.
This is all well and good, and it does raise awareness in an important problem. However, I don’t think they went about it in a very ingenous way.
First of all, doing it for one week makes it harder than it should be. It makes more sense to do it over a month. There are lots of foods that cost too much to buy for one week, but ammortized over 4 can fit into an $84 budget. Suddenly you can buy a bottle of cooking oil, and a large bag of rice. Oh, meat is on sale one week:
<todd> Safeway has tri-tip for $3.49/lb this week, with a coupon for $5 off a minimum purchase of $20. That’s almost 6lbs of beef for $15.
Suddently your dinners get a lot more interesting. You can also buy the 18count package of eggs when they are on sale for really cheap:
<dpk2> yeah, safeway online has 60 eggs for $7.49. thatsalotta eggs.
Yes, I just would have spent over a weeks worth of food dollars. But I have protein to last me ALL MONTH. I also notice that sweetcorn is on sale, 10 ears for 2 bucks. You can freeze corn. This might even be cheaper than buying a bag of frozen niblets. Etc, I’m sure I can find lots more examples.
Here’s my point- living on $21 for food a week would suck. However, it’s not quite as dire as the politicians are making it out to be, for anyone with half a brain. It would be dull, and repetitive, but not necessarily completely devoid of nutrition.