There was more to consider than just substituting vegetarian items for nonvegetarian items; I also had to figure out how to manage the prep time. The end of the school year was fast approaching; the entire time I worked on the menu, the stack of my students’ essays on the counter haunted me. They had been written over a week earlier, and I had only graded two out of almost eighty.
According to the Thrifty Food Plan, the meals are supposed to be “quick, easy, tasty, and economical,” and I hoped they lived up to this expectation. I felt pressed for time as it was, but I wasn’t encouraged as I looked over the meals, which conveniently come with estimated preparation and cooking times. Some of the meals that were planned for lunches seemed challenging for people who worked. For example, Friday’s lunch is potato soup, which appears nowhere else in the week’s menu. It isn’t a leftover from another meal, so it needs to be made the day before. When I created our version of the menu, I made a note when we needed to prepare food for the next day. For example, after dinner, or while making dinner on Tuesday, I would need to start cooking baked potatoes to go with lunch on Wednesday. On top of that, because the meal plan is created for a family of four, our daily nutritional values would still be off because we’d be eating quite a few more leftovers than the two-week plan included.
Because we were substituting products, the nutritional value would be different, but we stuck to replacing milk with soymilk and meats with soy and wheat-based alternatives or other proteins such as legumes. Furthermore, we also had to consider the cost. We weren’t sure how our milk and meat alternatives would compare to the real thing. We would make it a point during our shopping trip to price-check the products that we didn’t purchase (e.g., milk) and compare the prices with products we did purchase (e.g., soymilk), to see how much of a difference it made in our totals. We found that while some of our items were a little more expensive, it wouldn’t completely throw off our project. The meat alternatives, such as mock ground turkey and seitan, were comparable in price to the cost of the actual meat, although, on our first shopping trip, we did find soymilk to be more expensive by about a dollar a gallon. We probably could have shopped around to find better prices, but as much as possible we were attempting to go to as few stores as we could. Often people don’t have the luxury of being able to spend an afternoon looking for the best price. Then there’s the trade-off of running around looking for a bargain, and the cost of gas or bus fare it takes to do so.
Again, we can’t pretend that a monthlong experiment is an accurate portrayal of people’s experiences. There are many differences between what we were setting out to do and the everyday realities of people living at poverty level. Realistically, Christopher and I could quit anytime, but we also were only experimenting with food. During this month, we wouldn’t have to make a decision between eating and paying a bill, a trip to the doctor, or child care. Another big difference between our experience and that of those who actually receive food assistance is that Christopher and I could go through a grocery line without the stigma attached to paying with food stamps or an EBT card. We didn’t have to fear that people were looking at how we were paying and then scrutinizing our choices. One of the friends who grew up with food stamps told me that she used to hide at the magazine rack and pretend to read while her mom paid because she was so embarrassed.
It was early evening by the time I conquered the menu. We gathered our shopping bags and headed for the car. I double-checked to make sure my precious list was tucked into my purse. When we started the dollar-diet project, I was full of anticipation. This time I was confident that we would make it through, but I felt anxious about what was in store. “You ready?” Christopher asked as I clicked my seat belt into place. I nodded. He started the car and we headed off.
8
Strange Combinations
Christopher
Striding through the automatic doors at one of the conventional chain groceries in town, we grabbed a cart and pushed through the immaculate entrance. Having spent a month eating on a dollar a day, we felt confident that with our purchasing power more than quadrupled, we would now be able to live the good life on just over four dollars per day. If we could survive for an entire month on small servings of beans and rice, homemade soups, and tablespoons of peanut butter, this new challenge would be easy. No more itsy-bitsy portions, no more nutritional deprivation, no more monotonous meals. Liberation had arrived. We were looking not just to survive, but to thrive.
As we scanned our USDA-approved shopping list, which seemed longer than any list we had ever made, we rolled the cart over to the produce section. Kerri whipped out her phone calculator: It was time to get down to business. Working out the best deals on cabbage, carrots, potatoes, apples, bananas, oranges, and cantaloupe, we paused to savor the bounty of fresh fruits and vegetables in our cart. I glanced at Kerri and smiled; this meal plan was going to be delicious. I envisioned packing melon slices into Kerri’s lunch in the morning and putting some into my own lunch bag as well. However, once we turned down the next aisle, things became more complicated. Staring down the seemingly endless row of boxes and cans while Kerri surveyed the cost per ounce of vegetable oil, my initial eagerness started to fade.
“This bottle is cheaper, but it’s way smaller. It doesn’t make sense to buy this size, but that’s what we can afford on this budget,” Kerri complained.
She was right. It made little sense for us to buy things in such small quantities if the next size up offered more value per ounce, but we had no choice. Buying in bulk wasn’t an option. It was clear that this project would offer some challenges we hadn’t anticipated. While I was excited to push our meal planning to the next level, I started to feel frustrated. Laboring over the cost differences between brands and sizes wasn’t something I had been looking forward to, and yet here we were again discussing exactly that. Such conversations were novel during the dollar experiment, but by this point, the mystique had vanished. I just wanted to shop and eat.
Never again would I spend carelessly on food (the dollar-diet project killed that habit), but at this moment, my mind began to fog as the arduous task of counting pennies unfolded before us once again. I could have been doing a ton of other things at this moment that would have been far more productive, and thinking about them only increased my frustration. I could be planning new courses of study for my students. I could be exercising. I could be reading or making lesson plans. Anything would be better than pushing this metal cage on wheels while punching numbers into a calculator for every item on our list. Grocery shopping is not an electrifying experience as is, but having to do it with tough economic restraints made it downright painful. The shopping routines we developed during the first project definitely made things easier, but it did not make things pleasurable.
As we neared the end of the second aisle, more processed items found their way into our cart. Kerri sensed my shopper’s fatigue and did her best to remain cheerful, but by the time we hit the cereal aisle, about halfway through the store, an hour had passed. I grabbed a large box of store-brand cornflakes with mild enthusiasm; at least breakfast would be better than before. We still hadn’t touched our leftover stash of oatmeal in the cupboard since we ended the previous project.
It was clear, despite our reservations, that this diet would be somewhat more varied. However, in addition to sacrificing bulk values because of our food stamp budget restraints, this plan was already showing another sign of inadequacy. It was difficult to shop for just the two of us on a program constructed for a family of four. Things like the box of cereal in our cart were only available in one size, and no other manufacturer sold a smaller box of cornflakes. We did our best to adjust as we went along, but once we hit the bread section, it was obvious that in some cases, we were better off shopping “off the list” and at our natural foods store instead. After searching for about ten minutes, we found a couple of different loaves we could buy, but both were far too expensive. If I’m going to pay three dollars for a loaf of bread,
it might as well be organic and made from whole grains with fewer processed ingredients. The options in front of us were neither healthy nor worth the cost. Luckily for us, we live in an area that boasts several different places to shop; we had options, unlike many in redlined urban areas.
When we reached the checkout, our cart was full of food, and we prepared to spend a large portion of our month’s food stamp budget. Since the meal plan and the list were designed for four, this food would have to last at least two weeks, hopefully longer. It dawned on me that this process is what low-income families must do if they are going to effectively feed their families for the month with help from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. I had read that families who receive this assistance often struggle to make the food last for the entire month, and now I could see why. While there are other government food programs to help our citizens—such as the Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program, which provides vouchers for particular products, such as frozen orange juice, and the school lunch program—most people in need of assistance from the government do access SNAP.
The food stamp program got its start in 1939 due to a push from industry to help sell particular surplus foods by giving people orange and blue stamps each week. The orange stamps could be used on any food item; for every dollar’s worth spent using orange stamps, participants would get back fifty cents’ worth of blue stamps, which could only be used on those targeted surplus items. In just a few years, four million people were participating in the program, but as surpluses diminished, so did the support for the program. Farmers alleged that the program was being abused by recipients, and by grocers who would accept the stamps for nonsurplus foods or cash. By 1943, the program was eliminated.
Twenty years later, President Lyndon Johnson launched his war on poverty, and in 1964, after a three-year pilot program in West Virginia, the Food Stamp Act became law and was expanded to many other areas in the Midwest. After a steady number of reports emerged about the hardships of Americans living in economic distress, a CBS television documentary entitled Hunger in America highlighted poverty as a national issue. Robert Kennedy toured the South, as did other members of Congress, to see the plight of America’s malnourished firsthand. What they saw greatly startled them and moved them to action on the issue. Republican senator Bob Dole and Democrat George McGovern crossed party lines to work together on finding solutions to the nation’s poverty epidemic. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, several groups conducted surveys assessing the health of people living in poverty.
Although the validity of some studies was questionable, and the results highly varied based on a number of different factors, one thing was clear: Hunger was indeed a major problem. Children suffered stunted growth and brain damage as a result of malnourishment, and adults became so nutritionally impaired that they could not work. Several nongovernmental hunger organizations sprouted up, and President Richard Nixon held the first and only White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health to address the issue of hunger in America. In 1974 the program went nationwide, and three years later, under President Jimmy Carter, several changes were made, including raising the general resource limit, penalizing heads of households who voluntarily quit their jobs, restricting eligibility for students and nonresidents, eliminating the requirement that households receiving assistance must have cooking facilities, and requiring states to develop disaster plans. The reforms in 1977 ultimately made the program far more accessible and far more efficient.
When these and other changes went into effect in 1979, participation increased by 1.5 million people in the first month alone. Through these efforts, our country helped put an end to the worst cases of hunger in the United States. However, during the era of President Ronald Reagan, the number of Americans facing food insecurity rose significantly. Reaganomics failed to bring wealth to anyone except the already wealthy, and sharp cuts to a slew of social services, including WIC and food stamps, which even included keeping the food stamp program from doing outreach, gave rise to thousands of food pantries and other nonprofit feeding groups nationwide. President Reagan’s cuts to social programs, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates at $110 billion from 1982 to 1986, were arguably not the most memorable part of his domestic policy. When his administration tried to cut funding for school lunches by attempting to categorize ketchup as a vegetable, it was so ridiculous that commentators and editorial cartoonists couldn’t help mocking the idea.
More changes to the food stamp program were made under President Bill Clinton, and by 1995, the participation rate was at a historic high. In addition, the growing economy allowed many people to walk away from the program altogether. Throughout the Reagan and Clinton administrations, program growth slowed, but in the years that followed, most of President George W. Bush’s attempts to cut food stamps failed, and by 2006, participation levels were back up to what they were in the mid-1990s.
Today, SNAP helps bring food to over twenty-nine million people in the United States, and while many people like to think of the average food stamp recipient as a loafer living off the public dole, this stereotype has little evidence to support it. According to the USDA, about half of the participants are children, 76 percent of benefits go to households with children (the majority of which are led by single mothers), 16 percent go to people with disabilities, 9 percent go to elderly persons, and 29 percent earn income through work. And of those who receive benefits, half leave the program in nine months or less; the average recipient participates for less than two years. Additionally, eligibility requirements for SNAP make sure that participation is limited to those who have less than $2,000 in “countable resources,” which includes all possible bank accounts, and even something like a car. If your car is worth more than $4,650 in market value, it is part of your countable resources and limits you from receiving aid. If you are an able-bodied person between the ages of eighteen and fifty-five, with no children, you can only receive benefits for ninety days total over a three-year period. The amount of these benefits fluctuates based on a few different factors.
Efforts such as SNAP, WIC, the school lunch program, and other initiatives have moved our nation’s impoverished from a state of perpetual hunger to one of food insecurity, which is progress. Before starting this project, I, too, was unsure of just how the food stamp program worked and could do nothing but sit silently as people I knew talked about “those people living off our hard-earned tax dollars.” As Kerri and I now waited to be rung up, I wondered how many people had come through this line today ready to use their EBT cards to buy groceries. Once the clerk scanned all of our items, the total came to just over $117, a little less than half of our monthly budget. On the way home from the store that evening, it was clear that this was not going to be as easy as we had thought.
The next morning was our first breakfast on the Thrifty Food Plan experiment, and we were pleasantly surprised by the change from the dollar diet. I opened the cornflakes and scooped three-quarters of a cup into my little white bowl, dropped the English muffins into the toaster, and opened the door of the fridge to pull out the orange juice. Even though we still had to measure our portions, the fact that they were far larger and more palatable made it less of a bother than before. When Kerri emerged from the bathroom, I measured out the soymilk and dumped it into her bowl. Crunching through cornflakes felt great. There is nothing like relishing the flavor of this sweet American ritual, especially if you haven’t had them in years. The English muffin sat waiting for me to chew through its toasted goodness, and the orange juice made for a smooth chaser.
I took a look at the menu to start preparing lunch: turkey burgers, coleslaw, and more orange juice. I wasn’t sure how to approach this new change in packing lunches; it took much longer than I had time for. Surely they didn’t expect working people to have the time on their lunch breaks to stop and cook up a burger or chop cabbage for slaw. Kerri finished her breakfast a few minutes later and started to work on making the coleslaw as I pulled t
he vegan chicken patties, our substitute, from the freezer.
Kerri very rarely had to help me make lunches on normal mornings, but there was a time or two when the alarm failed to go off and Kerri pinch-hit for me. Today the clock was ticking. I grabbed a couple of hamburger buns and dug around in the top shelf of the refrigerator door to find some leftover ketchup packets from a previous visit to Rico’s. I threw the burgers in the Foreman grill and shortly afterward put them in the buns and sealed our lunches in small containers.
Kerri had finished making the coleslaw and was measuring out our servings and packing them up. I had never liked coleslaw and wasn’t sure if her efforts would be worth the trouble if I couldn’t bring myself to eat the stuff. This extra time spent preparing lunch had already put me fifteen minutes behind for work. I couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to transport three-quarters of a cup of orange juice with me to school as the meal plan stated, so I drew an arrow from the orange juice down to the “Snack” section. We could drink it after work. Besides, we had used our only pitcher to make the orange juice, so the proposed lemonade in the plan wouldn’t be happening just yet. Behind schedule and ready to leave, I made a mental note to make sure that this wouldn’t happen again tomorrow. I had appointments with students every ten minutes starting at seven a.m., and being even a minute late would push everyone back and make the start of my first class even more stressful.
At lunchtime I gave my burger a quick zap in the microwave and, after dutifully enjoying every moment of it, I opened up the coleslaw and dared to take a bite. I lifted the shredded cabbage and carrot mixture to my lips, my nose crinkling as the vinegar dressing coated my tongue. Actually, it wasn’t terrible. The half-cup serving was gone in no time, and I found myself licking the dressing from the sides of the plastic container. Was I really doing this? I’d spent my whole life avoiding the dish at family get-togethers, and during my previous fast-food life, it was the only container still full at the end of one of the KFC meals that other people’s parents picked up for dinner. Lunch left me feeling satisfied, but I wondered for how long. Usually when I get home from work, I need an after-school snack—a habit that still lingers from my elementary school days.
On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America Page 10
