This week was disheartening at best. It makes me shake my head with sorrow at our broken food system and the challenges that face poor, underprivileged and impoverished families. They are fighting an uphill battle – and few are on their side despite the lip service paid by government officials and corporate spokespersons.
And, now at week 2, I’m left with startling but sturdy conclusion that some of you may call premature: No, it’s not possible to eat optimally on a food stamp budget. I know that this is not what you expected me to write, nor what you wanted to hear. Don’t get me wrong: we’ve managed a far cry better than even the Standard American Diet, and I still maintain that it is possible to eat healthfully on a food stamp budget, but this better than solution of dodging pesticides, settling for “natural†meats and relying on vegetables purchased on sales and special that rot in a few days is not optimal. It seems that better than is simply not good enough.
Let’s Talk Quality
This week our cart, like last week, was full of fruits and vegetables: tomatoes, salad greens, bananas, oranges, garnet yams, acorn squash and even two pineapples bought dirt cheap on sale. Healthy, right? Wholesome, right?
Week 2: $55.44
1 lb Pink Beans: $1.19
1 lb Split Peas: $1.29
½â€gallon Whole Milk (Sale): $1.79
1 lb Butter (Sale_: $1.99
1 Frying Chicken: $4.77
2 lbs Laura’s Lean Beef (Sale): $9.98
4.5 lbs Bananas (Sale): $2.12
3.45 lbs Oranges (Sale): $3.45
2.65 lb Cabbage: $1.83
4.5 lbs Tomatoes (Sale): $3.57
1 Acorn Squash (Sale): $2.17
1 Spaghetti Squash (Sale): $2.07
2 Yams (Sale): $2.80
1 lb Raisins (Sale): $1.50
1 lb Organic Salad Mix (Sale): $4.99
2 Pineapples (Sale): $5.98
1 Jar Natural Peanut Butter: $2.10
Rolled Oats: $1.85
Yeah, those tomatoes I picked up at $0.79 / lb sure were bright red, but they sure weren’t ripened by the sun or grown in nutrient-dense soil. Lacking those two factors, they will similarly lack the micronutrients and antioxidants found in heirloom varietals allowed to ripen the way nature intended – that is under the sun’s warm rays. While the oranges were on sale for $1 / lb, the flavor is acrid and half-rotten. And that cheap 10 lb bag of potatoes I purchased last week with the intention of feeding my family all month long? Many of them are rotten and those that aren’t are rock hard. Do you know how long it takes for a potato to rot? A lot longer than a week – or it should.
If poorer nutrient profiles by comparison to farm fresh produce isn’t enough to concern you, consider the chemical load that these fruits and vegetables carry. Purchasing completely organic fruits and vegetables isn’t possible for many people – at least at the chain grocery stores in my area. First, the variety of organic produce is limited and, secondly, the cost of purchasing organic produce exclusively would be cost prohibitive for anyone struggling on a budget of $227 per month. Never mind that even if you are fortunate enough to purchase exclusively organic produce at the grocery store, much of that produce is still grown with fertilizers and pesticides, albeit organic inputs, and without care to holistic management.
Synthetic field inputs are a serious issue, and when you eat conventionally grown fruits and vegetables your body absorbs and must filter out any residual chemicals. Your body requires nutrients to make that happen, and fruits and vegetables start losing nutrients from the moment they’re picked. In the end, were operating at a loss when eating produce from our grocery store shelves as opposed to fresh picked produce at the farmers market or, better yet, from our own gardens.
Perhaps the worst of all, high quality animal foods are near impossible to find on grocery store shelves. Grass-fed beef? Not a chance. Ask for pasture-fed poultry, and they’ll laugh you out of the store.
Sure, there’s “better than†options like Laura’s Lean Beef which is, at the very least, antibiotic- and hormone-free. And there’s Organic chicken, which is extraordinarily expensive by comparison to the regular fryers and broilers. Most stores, fortunately, carry Kerrygold butter which is sourced from cows fed on grass thus conveying the nutritional benefits of retinol, beta carotene and CLA but it is expensive. Kerrygold butter runs $9.98 / lb at my store compared to $1.99 / lb for regular butter.
The resulting problem is one of balance and one of risk. Since all of these chickens, cows and even fish are fed largely on corn and soy, as opposed to their natural diet, the composition of their fat is disrupted resulting in a very high ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids. And that’s bad news for the health of consumers choosing these foods either from necessity or preference. Moreover, since these animals are fed an unhealthy diet, they’re more apt to become ill – putting consumers at risk for salmonella and e-coli infection.
It’s depressing. And I haven’t even touched on the challenges of grains and legumes found on grocery store shelves.
Sure, organic vegetables are better than conventional vegetables and conventional vegetables are better than none at all. Anitbiotic- and hormone-free meats are better than conventional meats, and some meat is better than none at all (though I can hear the vegans moaning about that one). But a food system that relies on “better than†choices is not good enough.
That’s why, over the next few weeks of the challenge, I’m not going to focus on bang-for-your-buck gimmicks and low-cost shopping. Sure, I’ll still post grocery lists and meal plans for download because there’s a real need for those too, but, instead, my focus will center upon the factors contributing to the dismal food situation for poor and underprivileged families.
In the end, real health comes from real food and real food comes from sustainable farmers’ fields not from the grocery store shelves.
Meal Plan, Grocery List and Other Goodies
- Download this Week 2′s Shopping List, Menu and Recipes
On another Note
Did you see that Nourished Kitchen was nominated for best Green / Sustainable Food Blog? Check out the other nominees and cast your vote.
Jenny this is a fascinating challenge you are doing. I very much appreciate the research and effort you are putting forth on it. I love the menu plan too!
I happen to currently be on food stamps for my family -myself and 4 boys!! I am very grateful for them and my budget is close to $800 per month. Thankfully, I have a coop near me that is Weston Price friendly and I get raw milk, raw cheese, pastured eggs, grass fed beef, bulk grains, spices, local honey and locally grown organic produce. I am so very fortunate to have this co-op, because as you have discovered the supermarkets are a nightmare!! I also sometimes supplement at Trader Joe’s which does have some better options than the ACME might.
Anyway, keep up the good work, I will most definitely be following you along on this journey! Peace to you!
Okay, my family receives food stamps and we are very poor right now. We haven’t always been, but like a lot of America, this is our reality now.
I am kind of shocked by some of the comments on this blog– clearly by people who have no idea what it is to be poor.
Just because you are poor, you don’t suddenly start drinking soda and eating boxes of mac and cheese.
We buy beans and rice through a farm (for cheap, and organic– but doesn’t take EBT) or through a co-op grocery that does that EBT. We boy 25 lbs. whole wheat flour, and make all our bread/pancakes, etc. We buy a 25 bag of oatmeal for 11 bucks.
We grow a lot of our own food–and you can buy seeds with EBT (at least in my state). We have chickens, but still get more eggs from the store since it is a cheap protein.
We buy a whole chicken, and save the bones/skin for broth.
We don’t eat a lot of meat, because it is just too expensive.
Some veggies we buy organic or transitional farm produce, some just pesticide free/local. We are lucky to live in a city that is very close to farms and has a strong love of food.
But all of this takes a huge amount of work for both me and my husband. Let me tell you, we bust our rear-ends being poor. with the addition of being thought of “lazy” and immoral because we are poor.
But unlike a tourist, when we wake up in the morning, we are still poor. And it isn’t a cute experiment we are doing.
It is our life, and ultimately that will allow us to bring about more change in the face of food stability challenges then anything else.
As a food activist I was interested in your experiment, but people still make comments like :
“I have to say too that most people are not educated at all when it comes to food and nutrition. They do what is easy. You have to take into consideration the circumstances of the people living with this assistance as well. Not all of them are emotionally, physically, spiritually, or financially able to spend the time in the kitchen and are buying convenience foods. When you are in hard times, it is more than just the physical ability to do something that factors in.”
Which makes me think that they have little connection to the people using EBT and WIC. It is generalizations like this that just muddles the water.
WIC doesn’t exist to help the poor people, it exists to keep a oversupply of dairy products off the market, to drive prices up.
Food stamps exist to keep America from realizing how poor she really is.
I’ve been under the impression that food stamps are meant to supplement a food budget, not be the whole budget.
i’m a single parent, i feed my kids & myself for ~150$/ month. i get milk and canned goods from the food bank, but otherwise everything comes from the grocery store. this is canada, so food costs more to begin with, plus my inner city grocery store doesn’t sell organic anything, or even ripe anything. the fruit is usually rotting, the meats are prohibitively expensive… you get the picture.
so what would you do? i have no options, thanks to my location & income, but avoiding chemicals and animal cruelty is important to me. in the summer i can garden, but summer is short. we eat mostly beans & rice with canned tomatoes and frozen corn… it’s boring but cheap. what would you do/ change?
oh – forgot to mention that we eat 2 dozen eggs a week, since an amazing organic farmer friend of a friend sells them to me for 1$/ dozen, so i do have one source of free range, happy eggs. so not everything we eat is conventionally grown/ raised crap, just mostly.
I am enjoying your challenge and continue to look forward to it.
One thing I want to say (and this comes from a very low income family with a very small food budget) I do not understand why people say that buying fresh fruits and vegetables are expensive. Maybe it is the area I am in and the things available to me but it is much less expensive to buy some oranges, tomatoes, etc than a box of wheat thins! I cant imagine trying to give my kids snacks that weren’t fruits and veggies. I wouldnt be able to afford it.
I will agree that free range organic meats are near impossible to find or afford here in my area, I do at least have the option of purchasing locally raised meats instead of tyson. Instead of putting such a large portion of our budget to meat I try to find other healthy and delcious ways to get high quailty protiens. It can be done but you have to be adventurous and open minded.
Good luck with your challenge.
kj: you might eat well on $900 a month, but try feeding five people with that, and something better than conventional food too.
People think welfare, food stamps, etc. are untold riches. You’d be very surprised at the reality.