Spade & Spoon: Localizing the Way Westerners Eat
Food Stampede: Politicos Eat on $3 a Day for Hunger Awareness
By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 6-19-07
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| No longer paper, food stamps now come in cards (like debit cards). Don't loose yours though. It costs $2 for a replacement card in Montana, and that can really bite into a $3 a day food budget. | |
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Recently, a few politicians have been living on food stamps.
In April, Oregon’s Governor Theodore R. Kulongoski put away the preferred local salmon and Cascade mountain mushrooms. They were too expensive for his $3 a day food budget.
For a short stint, the Governor joined Oregon’s Food Stamp Challenge to reiterate that hunger remains a major issue even while the 2007 Farm Bill, which includes funding for food assistance and hunger programs, threatens to cut food assistance programs.
According to the New York Times, the Bush administration has proposed reducing funds to the food stamp program, including taking stamps from 185,000 people who receive other non-cash government assistance. The proposed Department of Agriculture budget also aims to eliminate programs that give boxes to half a million elderly people each month. Although the proposed Farm Bill includes new exclusions for retirement savings from income limits and encouraging purchases of more fresh produce, many legislators around the country remain concerned at the disparity between the money that food stamps provide, and what that money can actually buy.
Kulongoski’s participation in the Oregon Food Stamp Challenge proved a catalyst for others and led to a national Congressional Food Stamp Challenge where California Congresswoman Barbara Lee blogged her efforts. Other participants included Representative Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, and Eric Gioia, a city councilman in Queens, who (also according to the NYTimes) felt downright exhausted after a few meals of white bread and top ramen.
Most political participants resorted to cheap, fast food alternatives to make their food dollar go further. They gave up coffee. They bought all white tortillas rather than whole wheat because of the cost. They made daily decisions to eat things that were cheaper and bad for their health…
…just like the 26 million Americans who depend on food stamps do every day.
Of his three-week experience, Sen. Jonathan Harris of Connecticut said that he felt a deeper, even spiritual, connection to his food when he ate on food stamps rather than, “shoveling things in.”
But for the people who live this challenge every day, it is less spiritual than tangible. And while 26 million use food stamps in America, around 35 million experience hunger. And it isn’t something that they go on the Colbert Report to discuss. (Rep. Jan Schakowsky went on the Colbert Report in June to follow up on her Food Stamp Challenge experience.)
As Kulongoski said, his experiences eating on $3 a day will pass as most news stories do. What remains is the number of people who are still hungry in America, in part because we don’t give them enough to buy the food that is best. It is his hope that with expanded support of Food Stamps in the 2007 Farm Bill, we will begin to think about how much it costs to eat (and eat well) in this country.
And in fact, this month the Nutrition Title cleared the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Oversight, Nutrition and Forestry, providing a $5.4 billion, five-year investment into the Food Stamp Program (which will be renamed as the “Secure Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program"). While this number seems large, the Nutrition Title is considered by many Hunger Agencies (such as Food Banks) a modest effort to address the inadequacy of food stamp allotments because the monthly benefit remains too low.
Subsequently, the Food Stamp Challenge turned Food Stampede has given momentum to the McGovern/Emerson Bill (H.R. 2129), which is now cosponsored by 95 members. The McGovern/Emerson ”Feeding America’s Families Act,” (opens pdf) would increase food stamp benefits and other initiatives with $20 billion in new five-year funding.
Regardless of the outcome, other organizations around the country continue working to expand access and amount of food stamps. In tandem, some farmers’ markets have allowed the use of food stamps in order to expand access to fresh, local food while keeping more dollars in the community. Again, Oregon led the way with this initiative and now has 21 farmers’ markets that will take food stamps. They have also completed cost analysis studies of food stamps at the farmers’ markets, including barriers for customers and vendors alike.
Soon the 2007 Farm Bill will set the standards for food stamps in this country for the next five years and perhaps the Feeding America’s Families Act will pass. Perhaps next year, politicians taking the Food Stamp Challenge and hungry Americans taking the daily Food Stamp Challenge will be able to eat on as much as $5 or even $10 a day ... amounts that still seem extraordinarily low, particularly as food costs rise in a country led by a president who once, in reference to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and U.S. food donations, said, “I have no heart for somebody who starves his folks.”
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Comments
Food stamps are a debit card called the Oregon Trail Card where I live. I work, am old, and pay with cash. Add to that a wife with a heart damaged recently by a virus, and I have to cook all the meals, low or no salt. We eat a lot better than the Oregon Trail Card recipients, and for less money. In fact, since processed foods are about non existant in low or no salt, we have to eat fresh meat, veggies, and from the bulk food department. My wife came home from her weekly check up, plus a meeting with a dietician, and we are doing just fine. AND SPENDING HALF ON FOOD NOW COMPARED TO WHAT WE SPENT BEFORE THE CARDIO MYOPATHY EVENT!!! That has been an eye opener. The can opener has rusted shut, and I haven't opened a freezer door at the grocery in months.
I have a hard time wrapping my feeble brain around the concept of fat ass America as a place of ongoing hunger. If there is a shortage of money to have a larger free food program, it is probably because illegal aliens are using it up. Some of those kids getting two meals are theirs, and many of the WIC and Oregon Trail recipients are from that population group. I might add that my informal observations at the check out line would lead me to say those that might be illegal aliens from south of the border do a much better job of shopping for value with their Oregon Trail Cards than do the blonder, native variety of dole recipients.
I would opine that non-working by choice (ill-educated? we provided school at no cost and you didn't stay, so what? and bad choices are choices), is probably the basis for some people missing a meal. My grocery store observations are that the more tatttoos, the more likely she is paying with food stamps. Is there a tattoo benefit to pay for all the illustrations? Or is that just pissed away money that might have bought groceries? Darn. There those choices pop up again.
If all those illegal aliens are here to take jobs Americans will not do, then those Americans have no right to demand free food as a reward for not taking jobs that pay little for demanding work. Or is it we are coddling wayyyyy too many people? Is poverty in the USA a better life than that of a mid level bureaucrat in most of the world? Is there really a hunger crisis here, or is that just a perception from the professional caring crisis curing class?
I have a son who is a logger, and loggers are urine tested for drugs randomly on the job. Some refuse to pee in the bottle and just walk off, and others do and fail. Lots of money for drugs in these United States, and that keeps a lot of folks on the sidelines looking in when it comes to work. Are we supposed to FEED THE DOPERS? Is that my responsibility as a citizen? Lots of illegals, dopers, lazy folks, perverts with an ankle GPS locater, gamblers, ex- cons, and I have to feed them? I be not liking that.
So Oregon's Governor grandstands his week of fame on food stamps. First, he shops for food at the spendiest store in town. Salem has no Zupan's, but if it did, that is where he would have gone. Where he shopped, food costs a minimum of 30% more than at the bag-it-yourself store. He took a State expert, who has been on food stamps, with him as advisor (her of the $3500 a month job), who looked like she had not passed up seconds since third grade. Since he has been a high paid public employee all his life (appointed and elected: insurance commissioner, supreme court justice, labor lawyer....he was on the public teat most of his life, and high up the sow), he has not had to shop for survival. And his and his wife's choices showed that. For what he paid for a whole chicken, I could have bought 5 lbs of pork carnitas meat at Winco. That is a weeks worth of meat at the dieticians 5 0z per serving per person. Who eats wheat tortillas when you can buy a week's worth of corn ones for $1.19? We eat oatmeal (2/3 cup oatmeal with 1/2 cup oat bran, 1/4/ cup flax meal, handful of walnuts and handful of raisins----all from bulk foods dept.) every morning, unless we have a fruit smoothie (plain yogurt and fruit de jour) and a piece of toast. A head of lettuce is a buck, and two will make salads for a week. Basque salad---iceberg lettuce, cap of vinegar, tea spoon of mayonaise, spoonful of chopped garlic, ground pepper, and olive oil (or canola oil) is good and cheap. I can put carnitas meat through the grinder and use Mrs. Dashes and make no salt sausage patties for breakfast with a couple of eggs (about a buck a dozen in bulk). Or meat balls for spaghetti, since no salt tomatoes is one thing you can find in a can. A $3 bag of spuds last two weeks or more. There is always rice and pasta from bulk foods. The two of us can do quite nicely on $200 a month for food and do, BECAUSE WE WORK. I on a farm, and her doing estate sales. Our largest expense is health insurace, which we pay ourselves, because WE WORK. IF WE DID NOT WORK, THE STATE PAYS THE MEDICAL BILLS THROUGH THE OREGON HEALTH PLAN. If you work, you almost automatically make too much money to qualify unless you have a half dozen kids. We pay a lot for insurance because people who buy insurance pay for the illegal aliens using the health care system, who don't pay because they can't and are not expected to. I have an OB/GYN brother who works more for less every year. But if we had to work less, or I went of SSI, we could cut some from the food budget, and still eat healthy, BECAUSE WE ARE NOT LAZY, WOULD SHOP SMART, AND TAKE THE TIME TO MAKE GOOD MEALS.
I read about wine, and the discussion of a wine is always about the hint of blackberry, overtones of cherry, with slight lime tickle, ad nauseum....so why not just mix Kool Aide flavors and be done with it? Since alcohol can't be bought with food stamps, but Kool Aide can be, you can make your own fantasy wine.
Don't send a rich guy to do a poor man's work. He just makes a fool of himself like Kulongoski did.
And if you Google viral cardio myopathy, you might find that it is increasingly common the closer you get to the equator. Coincidence? Or just another gift from that leak we call a border?
If we and our government cannot make good choices, I guess we are in the same predicament as our beneficiaries.
I work full time in Bend, OR and do the best I can with what training I opted for once out of high school. I bring home about $1800 a month. Once my rent, utilities, car payment, insurance, phone, and daycare bills are paid I have very little left. I do NOT feel "entitled" to government assistance. I do NOT feel that I am "owed" anything, but having food stamps ($86 per month) is a huge help. My children are not obese or unhealthy and I do not purchase junk food with my food stamps. As a matter of fact we are a vegan household and I manage to buy about two weeks worth of food with $86 per month. My children would not starve, but they would be hungry without food stamps. I don't have the answer to cure all the troubles in the world, but a reasonable attitude and the abolition of self righteousness and narrow mindedness would go a long way. Just my two cents.