Lesson Learned: First Week

Food Stamps work.

I have been thinking and writing about food quite a bit this week. I've been discussing it with my family, numerous colleagues, and fellow students. I have found that our eating habits are somewhat atypical. While I love eating yummy meals and snacks, I never before really placed my diet in the context of most of the U.S. population (except when reading Michael Pollan or being surprised at the amount of soda that people drink). I don't eat meat, though I don't think much about the quantity of meat that others eat. I don’t eat much prepared food, but I never really give it much thought that most of the food sold in Smiths is heavily processed.

My first clue was when Casey the morning guy on KUTV2 took me shopping with the Grocery Guru two days before the project began. The Guru took me around Albertsons and we picked out about $130 worth of food for about $30 after coupons. The Guru paid for the food and I don't think that he could quite understand why I was going to bring it to the Utah Food Bank (which I did... the food weighed in at over 60 pounds!). There were two reasons: 1) I didn't want to stock up for the project, and 2) the food that he purchased for me wasn't as a whole the kind that my family eats.

My second clue was when a fellow student told me that his family with three children has a total monthly food budget of about $350. "How?" He answered that his family eats according to what is on sale. "If a mango isn't on sale, then we don't eat it." They buy items that are nearly expired from the "cart of cheap stuff that will soon be thrown out."

How has the Food Stamp budget been working for us?

Over the first few days of the poverty project my wife and I complained a bit about being hungry. This was probably as much psychological as anything. We certainly have not had much money left over for snacking. But we are not starving. And I do not think that the Food Stamp program is made to have people starve. It is supposed to be enough money for enough nutritional food.

Food Stamps work.

They feed families in need. Without our Food Stamp budget we would have needed to live on $11 for the three weeks. With this governmental assistance, hypothetical for us, we can eat many of our same meals, though with much less cheese and fruit, fewer vegetables, and very little snacking between meals.