PART II
THE THRIFTY FOOD PLAN
7
The Next Challenge
Kerri
The conclusion of our dollar-diet project left us wondering how to better understand the challenges of living with hunger. We had learned that eating on a dollar a day was not enough to have a balanced diet and maintain physical stamina. It even put a strain on our relationship, as tempers ran high and intimacy declined. As people who have always had the means to run to the store without thinking about the cost anytime we needed food, Christopher and I weren’t sure we understood what it really cost to eat a healthful diet. But we did know, even before our project, that trips to the market were becoming more and more expensive. If the high cost of groceries created financial strain on us, two high school teachers with moderate incomes, then we knew that the rising costs had to be hitting those living near the poverty line even harder. We wondered whether food assistance programs provided enough relief to low-income families, and whether that relief was enough to ensure a healthy, varied diet. We wanted to know if it was possible for people like the ones we saw waiting in line for food at the Community Resource Center on that rainy evening when we dropped off the donation to eat a diet with sufficient enough fuel to foster productivity at work and home.
It wasn’t until we started this experience that I learned that both of my parents had received food stamps for a short time while they were in college. While my family wasn’t wealthy, growing up I never felt the insecurity that comes from wondering if there will be enough food in the house. My mom cooked dinner every night, and we always had plenty to eat. After speaking with my parents, I realized how little I knew about food stamps.
When I was in high school, the topic of food stamps somehow came up with two friends. I had no real experience with them, but, as many seventeen-year-olds do, I thought I knew everything. During the course of the conversation, I commented on my frustration with, and silent judgment of, kids who redeemed food stamp dollars for a candy bar or donut. I felt that if their family needed assistance, they should be using it to purchase healthful foods. My friends, whom I did not realize had grown up using food stamps, added their own experiences. They recounted what a huge treat it was to be allowed to go into the store and pick something out on their own. I recalled going to the store with my dad and being allowed to pick out my own candy bar, or our Sunday morning tradition of donuts at the Donut Corner. These moments were special to me, and I soon realized the faulty assumptions I had made about people who received food stamps. I guess I felt that they should only be allowed to eat healthful foods at all times—a standard that I myself didn’t want to be held to. I had no idea that these friends of mine had grown up with food stamps; for them, the color-coded tickets were a fact of life.
Several years later, I was in college and working at a grocery store. It was around ten p.m., and the store was pretty empty. I was the only checker, and one manager was on duty. Most likely I was leaning on the counter reading gossip magazines, counting down the hours until I could go home. A woman came up to the counter to make her purchase. When it came time to pay, she pulled out several loose five-dollar food stamp bills. At this time, the electronic benefit transfer cards (EBT), which function like debit cards, did not exist. The rule was that the five-and ten-dollar bills either had to be attached to the booklet they came from, and the checker or customer had to tear them out at the time of purchase, or the customer had to have the booklet with her, and the serial numbers and the stamps needed to match the booklet. To cut down on fraud, we weren’t allowed to give five-and ten-dollar food stamp coupons in change, only one-dollar coupons. I have always been the type of person who is nervous to break any rules (Christopher makes fun of me because I will keep off the grass if a sign tells me to). So I let the lady know that I would just need to call the manager over to make sure I could take them. She told me that she had been given this as change, and I assured her that it wasn’t a big deal, but I wasn’t allowed to take them until the manager okayed it.
As soon as I called the manager over, I realized my mistake and wished that I had just taken the bills. In reality, if I had just taken the loose stamps and put them in the till, no one would have known if they had been ripped out right then or not. I explained the situation, and the manager told the woman that we would not be able to take the bills. The woman insisted. She was just trying to get her groceries so that she could go home. She kept looking at me as if I had let her down. I felt horrible, and I couldn’t make eye contact with her. The conversation between the customer and the manager kept getting more heated, and I wanted to crawl under my register. A line started to form behind her. Indignant, the woman stated that she wouldn’t leave the store until she was allowed to buy her groceries. The manager’s solution was to move the people in the line and me to a different register, leaving the woman standing at the counter alone.
After I had checked out the people in the line, I looked up to see that the woman was still standing there. This was when my manager called the police. The whole time, the woman didn’t say a word, but stood there, looking down with her hands folded on the countertop. By this point it was obvious that she was shaken, but she quietly waited, clearly trying to maintain her dignity. When the police arrived, they escorted her outside. As they left the store, I heard her saying, “All I did was try to buy food.”
I can’t imagine how humiliating it must be to be denied this basic human right by a stickler of a college kid and a stubborn store manager. To make matters worse, a few days later, I saw a different manager take unattached five-dollar food stamps without a comment. My shame was palpable, but it no doubt paled in comparison to the embarrassment and frustration the woman felt that evening.
With these as my only experiences with food stamps, I expected this next project to be compelling. Of course, the Food Stamp Challenge is not new. It started with Greater Philadelphia’s Coalition Against Hunger in 2006 as a way to demonstrate the struggles of people living on food stamps. Most recently, the challenge of living on food stamps gained attention in May 2007 when Oregon governor Theodore R. Kulongoski ate on twenty-one dollars for one week, which at the time represented the average allotment given to Oregonians in need. Later that same year, several members of Congress took on the same challenge and blogged about their experiences. Typically the person or family participating in the challenge uses only the average per-person allowance, doing their shopping and eating from that amount for a week. In February 2009, CNN reporter Sean Callebs lived off the average food stamp allotment in his home state of Louisiana for an entire month.
When planning our own challenge, Christopher and I arrived at our per-day budget based on the 2007 national average per-person allowance, which at the time was three dollars a day. However, one of the largest criticisms of the Food Stamp Challenge comes from the fact that the program that provides food stamps is now called Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The words “Supplemental Assistance,” people argue, indicate that the program is not meant to be the entire budget for food. They will also claim that three dollars is not an accurate daily food budget because SNAP assistance is given on a sliding scale based on need; so some families receive more, some receive less. However, just like our dollar-diet project, it would be impossible to accurately mimic every real-life scenario and individual situation, which is why we used the average allotment. Also, while it is true that the SNAP program is meant to be supplemental, the reality is that for many people, what they receive in food stamps is all they can afford to spend on food, even though the state assumes they can contribute to their own food budget. The Economic Research Service, a division of the USDA, says that the Social Security Administration estimate in the 1960s, which is still used today, showed that people contribute approximately 30 percent of their disposable income (income after taxes) to food. That is still the system used for calculating need. However, currently the average U.S. household spends less than 10 percent of their incom
e on food, and housing takes up a larger percentage. That 10 percent for a low-income family is not going to go as far as 10 percent for a middle-income family, and the amount of assistance actually needed may not match what people receive.
Because of the belief that people can contribute, and because at the time we conducted our project the stimulus package had also allowed for a temporary 13 percent increase in SNAP benefits, Christopher and I decided that we would contribute 30 percent of a “low-income budget” to food. According to the USDA’s April 2007 issue of Amber Waves magazine, the average low-income ($10,000–$29,999 per year) household of four in 2004 spent $462 on food per month. By subtracting the national average food stamp benefit, which was $326 per month, we learned that the average supplemented contribution was $136 per month for four people, or $1.13 per day, per person. This gave us $8.26 total or $4.13 each, per day. The Food Stamp Challenge is typically done for one week, but Christopher and I decided to try our thrifty food project for a month. Unlike the dollar-diet project, we would not be purchasing in bulk and calculating only what we ate from our supplies. Instead, for this project we would calculate everything we purchased, limiting our spending to $247.80 for the thirty days.
Another difference was that we would follow the USDA Thrifty Food Plan as closely as possible. The Thrifty Food Plan is supposed to work as a guideline for low-income households to effectively use the SNAP benefits and get the most nutritional value out of the purchased food. The Thrifty Food Plan has admirable intentions. It attempts to assist recipients with creating balanced meals that follow the food pyramid and that can be purchased with the maximum allotment of the SNAP program. The Thrifty Food Plan is not intended to be a strict menu, but rather to help people learn how to make the most out of their resources. According to the “Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Meals” put out by the USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, the USDA is “deeply concerned that Americans not only have enough food, but also that the public has enough information to know what food to purchase and how to prepare it.”
The Thrifty Food Plan provides two weeks’ worth of sample menus, forty recipes, and a shopping list. One of the concerns I had about the plan was that it doesn’t necessarily list the ingredients in sizes that can be purchased, but rather in the quantity that is needed to make the recipes. Week One on the Thrifty Food Plan includes two ounces of brown sugar, nine ounces of vegetable oil, four ounces of low-salt crackers, and seven ounces of margarine. Obviously, these products can’t typically be purchased in those sizes. It was unclear whether the stated cost for the menu is calculated in the same way we calculated our meals for the dollar-diet project, only including what is consumed, or if it takes into account that if you need two ounces of brown sugar, you will most likely need to purchase a twelve-or sixteen-ounce box, or else run next door to see if your neighbor has some. Spices such as onion powder, garlic powder, and Italian seasonings are included in the recipes, but not on the shopping list. It makes sense in that you don’t need to buy spices every month, but their cost must be accounted for at some point. We happened to have the spices we needed at home, but if we hadn’t, we would have had to either eat bland food or buy them.
Another odd feature of the Thrifty Food Plan are the opening tips for shopping with cost and health in mind. The food plan seems to disregard its own advice: The tips recommend whole wheat bread, brown rice, and dried beans instead of canned, while the recipes include only white bread, white rice, and canned beans.
Despite the fact that this was unclear, we attempted to follow the plan as much as possible. Before we even started, staying on track would prove a challenge for us. The plan is designed to fit the eating preferences of the average American family of four, with two adults and two children between the ages of six and eleven. This makes practical sense; any type of preplanned diet will need to be general enough to be accessible for the largest number of people. Yet Christopher and I don’t eat meat or any other animal products, and this food plan was heavy on meat and dairy. Right away, this meant that we would need to make modifications in the menu. Out of the forty recipes, most of the side dishes or snacks are vegetable-based, but only one of the twenty entrees is vegetarian: a baked potato with cottage cheese. I felt that there should have been more options for vegetarian meals in the menu. While we are vegan by choice, there are many people who have restricted diets for other reasons. Some people eat vegetarian for religious reasons, and for others health is the determining factor in what they eat. I am certain that finicky children play a role in family food choices as well.
Christopher and I don’t have any kids, besides the furry ones, but I have seen my sisters try to feed my nieces. The girls won’t always eat what they are being served. One of my nieces, Leah, the sassy one, went through a phase where she would only eat if you asked her what she wanted. My sister was pretty smart in offering her two options, so she could chose one. This eliminated a guessing game of “What will Leah eat?” and ensured that at least she wouldn’t starve.
When Christopher and I take the dogs to visit, though, it may not matter what’s being served. The kids tend to eat less because they think it’s funny to throw food from their high chairs and watch the dogs eat it—something we try to put a stop to.
The food plan for a family of four assumes that the children are between six and eleven years old. I imagine it is quite different feeding six-year-olds as compared to teenage boys. My brother-in-law is one of four boys who are close in age, all of whom played football in high school. He claims that he never knew what leftovers were until he married my sister, because in his family, there was no such thing.
Regardless of the challenges, we decided to do our best to adhere as closely as possible to the Thrifty Food Plan. Our first task was to plan our meals and grocery list. Many of the meals revolve around some type of ground meat, and the menu includes a glass of milk daily. Because of the large quantity of meat and dairy, before our first shopping trip, I had to modify the recipes and ingredients so that we could follow the plan as closely as we could, getting comparable nutritional value. Also, the recipes were meant to feed a family of four, so we would be making the recipes as they were written, but eating them for two meals instead of one.
Surprisingly, the most frustrating aspect of preparing the menu wasn’t having to figure out how to “veganize” the meals. No, the most frustrating part was Christopher. I asked him to help me create a menu for the week, and he told me he was busy. Granted, he was reading about the food stamp system in our country, but I can’t imagine how reading about the history of the food stamp system helps when you’re trying to figure out what to eat. While reading up on history and policy would help us understand the issue in broader terms, I needed some more concrete immediate help.
“What do you think if I move the turkey-cabbage casserole to Tuesday?” I asked him.
“I don’t know” was his response.
“Okay, well, it seems like an easier recipe. Then I could make the potato soup that same night so it would be ready for lunches, but then I’m not sure when to make the meal that’s supposed to be on Thursday. That has us eating pasta for lunch and dinner two days in a row…. Can you take a look?” I tried again.
He glanced at my menu and then went back to his book. “I don’t know. Whatever you want is fine.”
“I could really use your help.” This was exasperating; my patience was waning.
“I don’t know what to do with it.” He shrugged.
“What makes you think I do?” I tossed my pile of menu revisions onto my desk. I didn’t know how to make this work any more than he did. I needed feedback, not a mumbled “Whatever you think.” When we did our original project, one reason for my hesitation was that I knew I’d be doing most of the time-consuming cooking. As it is, in general I do most of the meal planning and dinners. Christopher does school lunches and breakfasts, but those tend to be quick. We almost always do our weekly grocery shopping together, but if we need to run
back for an item or two during the week, I’m usually the one to go. I don’t know why it works out this way, but it just does.
I’m not sure at what point we fell into these conventional gender roles. When we first met, Christopher used to cook for me, and when we moved in together, we took turns, but over the years, I had taken on more of the responsibilities of cooking. In my family, my mom did most of the cooking and on the rare occasions when we ate fast food, it was often when it was my dad’s turn to cook. When we get home from work, I’m just as tired as Christopher is, but the first thing he does is read the newspaper, and the first thing I do is start on dinner. Sometimes I enjoy the setup. Christopher will sit at the island in the kitchen and read articles to me while I cook. Some days, though, I want to be the one who gets to come home and sit down. I’d like Christopher to be the one planning meals once in a while.
In that moment while I was trying to create the menu, I wanted to cry out in frustration. While Christopher’s perception was that he was helping by doing research, I felt as if I was doing all the preparation, while he was just reading. He didn’t seem to get why I was upset.
On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America Page 9
