On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America

by Christopher Greenslate

  As I made my way to the back of the store to pick up the seitan, I couldn’t help but notice that most of the shoppers around me were women. The worn-out notion that “a woman’s place is in the kitchen” should have come with a complementary addendum like “and the grocery store.”

  This wasn’t the first time I had reflected on the disparities between the sexes. Growing up in the punk scene during high school, my introduction to feminism and questioning gender roles came in the form of groups like Bikini Kill, folk singers like Ani Difranco, and the lyrics of male-fronted bands like Good Riddance and Snapcase, who screamed for the equality of women. The ideas took root quickly, and I have considered myself a feminist ever since.

  That week in my social justice class, a group of students were working on a case study exploring the current status of the women’s movement. One of the young women in the group had asked, “What types of things do you think we should look into?”

  I offered up some of the old standbys that still held some power: a woman’s right to choose, equal pay, and sexual discrimination. I even suggested that they take a more global look at these issues and study the gender dynamics in places like Afghanistan and Iran—which I thought would expand their discussion of the issues a little bit. However, while helping them develop their ideas on types of questions to ask during their inquiry, I realized that I had some of my own searching to do. In my past relationships, I tried to keep on equal footing with my partners, especially when we started to slip into more traditional roles.

  Yet I was letting Kerri take on the bulk of the work at home. How had we relapsed so easily into this patriarchal tradition? How could I change this? These questions had obvious answers. I just needed to repeat what I did in earlier relationships: to do my share of the work and stay vigilant about not exploiting my partner. This included running to the store to pick up the odd grocery item when needed.

  I returned home with the necessary supplies, a renewed sense of responsibility, and a growing concern for those women, many of whom are single parents, who work all day and still need to receive federal assistance to feed themselves and their children. When I set the groceries on the counter, I was pleased to see that Kerri had put on some pajama pants and had a forgiving look in her eyes.

  The rest of the week was a blur of casseroles and tomato-based dishes, punctuated by a turkey chili served over macaroni that Kerri actually enjoyed. Luckily I had grabbed enough zucchini at the conference to help us prepare a couple of meals, and one night we fried up the green freebies and enjoyed them with biscuits.

  By Saturday, the cupboards were starting to look pretty bare, but we weren’t yet at a crisis point. In fact, I felt comfortable enough with our newly developed low-cost eating skills that I pulled a couple of cans from the cupboard to place in a bag to put out by the mailbox for the nationwide “Stamp Out Hunger” day. This annual event, the largest one-day national food drive, is sponsored by the National Association of Letter Carriers, and takes place on the second Saturday in May. Close to ten thousand cities in all fifty states participate, and the food collected is distributed within each respective community. In 2009, while unemployment crept to 9.5 percent, and one in nine Americans received SNAP benefits, a record 73.4 million pounds of food was collected through this event.

  As I put the canned mandarin oranges and organic tomato sauce in the bag, I wondered about whether or not efforts like this, while commendable in their own right, were part of a greater policy push to end hunger in the United States, or just another drop in the food basket. We had seen the work done by volunteers and the Community Resource Center firsthand, we had given the $2,300 in donations from our readers to help support their food programs, and it felt good to be part of an effort to help those suffering from food insecurity—but was it actually helping? As I watched for the mail carrier to pick up the cans, I hoped Kerri wouldn’t be upset that I was giving away some of our remaining food.

  While waiting, I got online to check out whether or not this effort was part of a greater plan to help end hunger. I discovered that of the forty thousand or so feeding programs nationwide, most stay away from working on the policy end of the hunger issue and do very little to change the system that creates food insecurity. In reading the work of Joel Berg, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, who also served for eight years under the Clinton administration working at the USDA on several high-profile initiatives to fight hunger, I learned that “trying to end hunger with food drives is like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon.” The problem, according to Berg, is that local charities cannot possibly feed the 36.2 million people who need it; that their valiant efforts are only reaching 3.6 percent of those people suffering from food insecurity; and that many of these groups don’t focus enough on helping people become self-reliant. At their record-breaking best, these organizations are doing very little to address the overall problem.

  Mark Winne, who spent twenty-five years as the executive director of the Hartford Food System in Hartford, Connecticut, explains that food banks and large national feeding organizations generally do not speak up to promote a national conversation about hunger, food insecurity, and poverty because they don’t want to alienate the corporate leaders who serve on their boards, who are also influential in government.

  Winne’s analysis makes sense, but recognition of this alone won’t solve the problem. Of course, it doesn’t mean that the efforts of food banks and charities are useless—quite the contrary. But it signals that these groups should also push for changes in policy, as well as help their participants become more self-sufficient, as opposed to just handing out food. In fact, these organizations are possibly the ones best equipped to do so. I was pleased to find that our local group does more. The Community Resource Center works to help community members find access to employment, medical treatment, mental health services, affordable child care, and enrollment in the food stamp program, among other services. Self-sufficiency is an integral part of their vision. When I looked out the window again, the bag at the mailbox had disappeared.

  Sunday morning, I cooked tofu scramble and hash browns, and we each had three-quarters of a cup of orange juice. The Thrifty Food Plan called for pancakes, but as we were still catching up with our leftovers, we substituted breakfast with a meal option from earlier in the week that our morning rush made difficult. After we enjoyed our carefully planned portion sizes, Kerri got to work on seeing how much money we had left and mapping out our menu for the week.

  Remembering my grocery store revelations, I did a survey of the contents of our fridge, freezer, and cupboards to come up with a detailed inventory of what we had left. Items such as a half bulb of garlic, two slices of bread, and a third of a bag of lima beans went into our calculations. With only a week left, $27.75 to spend on food, and a pantry nearing a historic low, we would have to do our best to follow the Thrifty Food Plan while enduring the pressures of supermarket prices that seemed at odds with our budget. While standing in the kitchen and looking at the list of ingredients we needed, and the amount of money we had left, we wondered why certain items were more expensive than others. Why did one store charge two dollars more for an item than the store across the street? With fuel prices coming down from record highs, why had food costs not adjusted six months later? Was the size of this box of cereal actually shrinking?

  Now, we aren’t economists. We aren’t grocery store executives. We don’t process or manufacture food, nor do we transport it. And we definitely don’t grow it to sell it. Our role in the food production machine is confined to that of the consumer; we are at the end of the line. We shop, we cook, and we eat—which I assume makes us a lot like everyone else. We aren’t really sure why the cost of produce goes up or down, and we have little insight into why raw ingredients like corn, soy, and wheat are more expensive than ever. Driving from store to store to get the best deal on beans was not only time-consuming, but an extra hassle that most people wouldn’t endure.
But after doing some basic research, we learned that there are a number of factors that determine why particular food items cost what they do, some of which we knew of, but many of which we are still learning about. There was one thing we knew for sure: We needed healthy, affordable food.

  An article by Mike Hughlett in the Chicago Tribune that came out the day after Christmas explained why it would be a while until consumers felt some relief at the supermarket, even though commodity prices had fallen dramatically since summer. Essentially, the article stated that it would take months for the savings in decreased fuel costs to work their way through the intestines of the American food machine. While companies had already enjoyed the benefits of cheaper inputs, most of us were still eating their products, and paying through the teeth for them. The plain economic logic—there was no incentive to cut prices unless the competition started doing so—made sense from a business perspective. But meanwhile, the consumers who bore the burden of rising prices to cover the increase in fuel costs were now being exploited to expand the profit margin. This, of course, was not the only way that food companies were making more money.

  Kerri’s grandfather, who spent his career in the corporate office of a grocery retailer, said that someone should do an exposé on the shrinking size of food products. While this may not come as a surprise to many people, companies have continued to charge the same amount for things like mayonnaise, even though they have shrunk the size of the jar. The volume has changed, but the cost is the same. From yogurt and cereal to coffee and peanut butter, short-sizing (as it’s called in the industry) is an all-too-common way to pass off cost increases to customers. And it is being done all over the store. In order to avoid this scheme, we did what cost-cutting shoppers have been doing since the modern grocery store started: We shopped around and looked for the best price per ounce on nearly everything, which often meant buying in bulk, or at least buying a larger container of the product. However, the Thrifty Food Plan made this practical approach extremely difficult, as we didn’t have enough money to get the best deals.

  In addition, we learned that while we had the luxury to shop around in our community, we were actually already paying less than what low-income Americans are offered at the stores in their neighborhoods. DeNeen Brown, a writer for The Washington Post, detailed some of this phenomenon in an article titled, “Poor? Pay Up.” She found that the smaller corner markets serving low-income communities do not have the purchasing power to get the low wholesale cost that the larger suburban markets do, and other costs, such as housing, going to the Laundromat, and fees at check-cashing bureaus, accompanied by lower pay, make being poor in urban areas quite expensive.

  Of course, what is not included in DeNeen’s calculations is the time spent waiting for public transportation, waiting in line at the medical clinic, the risk and worry involved with living in an area that has a higher crime rate, as well as the missed educational opportunities that abound in wealthier suburban schools. The stress experienced by individuals living in such conditions takes a serious toll on their heath, and with a lack of affordable healthy food, as well as concerns that are far more pressing than getting into a spin class after work, it becomes easier to understand why people like us, in the privileged class, have little real understanding as to why programs like food stamps and other initiatives to address poverty are so essential.

  If we were struggling to follow the Thrifty Food Plan in our suburban upper-middle-class community, where the farmers market is the place to be on Sundays, and the gym is always busy, our experiment was clearly an inaccurate way to truly understand what it’s like to have to eat on food stamps. Though we did not start our experiments in low-cost eating with these more global implications in mind, the reality check it provided as we approached our last week on the Thrifty Food Plan had humbled us further, and we longed to have this conversation with others. So while food prices started to come down in 2009, the challenges facing Americans living in poverty continued to grow, and our experiment continued to change us.

  11

  Macaronipalooza: A Pasta Extravaganza

  Kerri

  Ordinarily, I feel that I know my way around the kitchen, and I pride myself on my cooking ability. However, there were times during this project that I found myself making stupid rookie mistakes. Recipes we made the last week called for a couple different varieties of pasta. During one shopping trip, Christopher and I decided to save some money by purchasing a large inexpensive bag of macaroni, which was the best deal, instead of a smaller bag and an additional bag of noodles. I would just substitute macaroni for other pastas in the recipes. When I made the saucy beef noodle casserole one night, I replaced the noodles with the macaroni without considering that they might have a different volume when cooked. It even felt wrong as I scooped out the pasta into the pot.

  Halfway through, I took the bag into the room where Christopher was working. I asked him, “Does this look right?” There was nowhere near the amount I needed, and I had used almost half of the large bag. True to his own strict cooking style that never departs from the recipes, Christopher shrugged and said, “What did the recipe say?” When I told him how much, he responded, “If it says six and a half, that is what you should do.”

  Back in the kitchen, I put the pot back on the stove and continued to measure until I had almost emptied the whole bag. As it cooked, I kicked myself. Lesson learned: Macaroni doubles in size. By the time it was ready, there was more than twice the amount that I would need for the casserole. I set aside the excess, threw the ingredients for the casserole into the baking dish, and put it in the oven. It was clear that we’d be eating quite a bit of macaroni during our last week. I checked the cupboard to see if we had what we needed for the chili, which was served over it, then pulled out some containers to store it.

  Despite the macaroni mishap and the larger-than-usual amount of pasta we ate that week, things were going well. With only a few weeks left of school, we were wrapping up projects and grading. We were spending more time at school, and less time with each other. One evening, when we both got home around seven p.m., neither of us wanted to cook. We had leftovers in the fridge—namely, dishes that contained macaroni—in addition to another large bowl of the pasta that wasn’t yet mixed into anything. We tossed around dinner ideas, but nothing we had sounded appealing. Christopher said, “You know why nothing sounds good? It’s because what I really want is a Rico’s burrito.” I had been thinking the same thing.

  While in the dollar-diet project that would have been out of the question, this time there didn’t seem to be a reason that we couldn’t use some of our supplemental funds for eating out. We started discussing whether or not we could afford it. I sat down to do the math. With only seven days left and the amount of leftovers and pasta in our fridge, we might be able to make it, but it would be close; we’d be eating nothing but macaroni for the rest of the week. I whined that I didn’t want to continue eating as much pasta as we had been. I was sick of it, and I told him that I felt as if I was gaining weight. To illustrate my point, I pulled my shirt up and grabbed a roll to show him. According to the scale, I hadn’t actually put on any extra pounds, but I felt as if I had, and the vast quantities of carb-loaded pasta were the perfect item to blame. It took me back to my first year of college, when my roommate (who had little room to speak) felt he needed to point out that I was making my way toward the “freshman fifteen.” Pasta is cheap, and an easy way to feed large groups of people. It comes as no surprise that it’s a common item in dining halls and the apartments of college students.

  But now I was looking for sympathy about my perceived weight gain. Instead, Christopher laughed at me and said, “Why don’t you write about it?” Since we had begun chronicling our adventures in eating, every concern, complaint, or success was an occasion to write. Needless to say, this suggestion didn’t go over well with me. I gave him a dirty look and grabbed the calculator again to find out if we could pull it off. I don’t know why I believed that a
burrito would be healthier than the pasta, but I wanted one anyway.

  We pondered the money we had left, and our cupboard inventory list. Could we stretch our food budget by eating whatever was cheap or should we stick to the original goal of eating what the meal plan asked us to until we ran out of money and food? In the end, we couldn’t find a way to justify spending the ten dollars it would cost to eat out and decided to do the best we could to eat close to the meal plan menus for the rest of the week. Fortunately, the week before, we’d had a bit of luck that saved us some money.

  Usually a trip to our mailbox is followed by a stop at our recycle bin to throw out the flyers and ads from companies we haven’t yet called to get off their junk mail lists. During our third week, I walked down the driveway, expecting much of the same. When I opened the mailbox, I found the usual: bills and junk. Then a bright red card, slightly larger than a postcard, caught my eye. I unfolded it and found our golden ticket. It was an advertisement for the grand opening of a store in our area. It was the same chain, Smart and Final, where we bought most of our bulk items during our first project, but now they were opening a second location about a mile from where the old store had been. Geared toward typical shoppers rather than bulk buyers, this store promised the same low prices with smaller, more convenient sizes. The prices seemed unbelievably low, such as four avocados for a dollar. It seemed too good to be true. I skipped into the house to share the serendipitous event with Christopher.