“Do you eat to live, or live to eat?”
-Unknown
right: The author, at 11, enjoying some cake
In response to this age-old question, with only some exaggeration, I’d say that I live to eat. My closest friends are well aware of my “food-centric” personality, and know that a good meal can make my day. A freshly toasted bagel smeared with cream cheese, a slice of roast beef with the perfect amount of pinkness, and a steaming, soothing bowl of wonton soup: these are life’s little pleasures.
The fact that I derive so much pleasure from food often makes me think about the people who don’t know where the next meal is coming from, and who must literally eat to live. I have now been at Yale for ten weeks, and most days I pass people on Broadway asking me if I can spare a little change for food. During my time overseas, traveling in countries like India and Cambodia, I have been exposed to hungry people—the street children, the mothers holding tiny babies and pointing to their mouths, the emaciated elderly—but I realize that I truly do not understand the emotional and physical implications of not knowing where the next meal is coming from.
I decided to participate in the Yale Food Stamp Challenge to ponder hunger and the hungry. I know that going on a low budget diet for one day will only give me a small, somewhat accurate snapshot of what being on a low food budget in New Haven would be like. But I also know that it would be harder for me to think about hunger and low purchasing ability if I were sitting in the Davenport dining hall, eating delicious fare like organic pizza, couscous, and fresh salads.
October 31, 2007
I prepared for my day on a food stamp budget (approx. $3/day) with a visit to Shaw’s grocery store. Shaw’s is located on Whalley Avenue, which has been less affected by the economic development that has benefited other parts of New Haven. It is interesting to note that several fast food outlets, which are markedly absent from the area directly surrounding Yale, are located on Whalley, providing much cheaper—and much unhealthier—dining options.
At Shaw’s, I set my limit at $9, enough food for three days. Although I do not plan to participate in the challenge this long, I thought that buying three days worth of food would give me a better picture of what eating on a low-income budget would be like, because it is hard to buy anything for just $3. Imagining myself as a hungry person who wanted to get the maximum amount of food for the money, I bought a basket of apples (about 15 apples), a bag of generic white bread (24 slices), and Shaw’s peanut butter. Anything that involved cooking was out, as I do not have easy access to a kitchen, a predicament faced by many living in shelters.
The shopping experience was somewhat frustrating. Although I try to be careful with money and to find good deals, I had never actively put myself under such financial constraints. Everything suddenly seemed very expensive. The price of even the most generic bread was close to $3, the cheapest jar of peanut butter was about $3, and unnecessary expenditures like jam were completely out of the question.
The amount of money I spent initially came to about $11—I had misread the price of the apples. Noting my frustrated surprise, the cash register used her own Shaw’s discount card on my purchase, reducing the price to $8.11. This act of kindness saved me from having to forgo the apples, and I do not believe that it made my experiment invalid, for surely anyone who lives in New Haven and goes to Shaw’s on a regular basis would have the complimentary, money-saving discount card.
On my way out of Shaw’s, I saw one of the regular campus panhandlers standing by the store’s entrance. Though I wondered how much money he had to buy food and what he planned to buy, I did not linger.
November 1, 2007
I divided the food I had bought into what I would theoretically eat over three days. My allotment for today was eight slices of bread, a third of the jar of peanut butter, and five small apples.
After only three meals on this diet, I was feeling hungry and in need of something more tasty. The white bread was thin and rather papery, both in texture and in taste, and the apples were tasty, though not as filling as I had hoped. The thought of the food in the dining halls proved to be a big temptation all day long, and I found myself annoyed with my lack of fortitude.
On a day long basis (and I’m certainly not talking about longterm), the meals I had eaten were adequately nutritious and adequately filling. Moreover, I faced the Food Stamp Challenge having been well nourished all of my life, so one day on this diet should not have posed any kind of hardship.
However, I believe this one day challenge felt more difficult than it actually was, for two reasons. First, I woke up feeling unwell anyway, and being hungrier than usual made me feel much worse. Second, although there have been days when I have eaten unhealthily or in small quantities due to various circumstances, I always had the option to eat more or to eat what I wanted. Sticking to this Food Stamp diet, I could only eat the peanut butter sandwiches and the apples, and it was this lack of optionality that was most frustrating. I felt excluded from the club of people going to the dining halls and restaurants and eating whatever they wanted in whatever quantities they desired; I cannot imagine being forced to go through every day feeling this way.
Commentary
In my hometown, Singapore, there is a hunger awareness poster featuring an empty plate with the words “No one can survive on hope alone.” While this statement is, of course, true, what motivated me all day was the hope, or rather, the knowledge that I would be back to my normal meal routine the next day. Psychologically, then, I had no way to replicate what those who do not know where the next meal is coming from, or those who are on extremely limited budgets, must feel on a daily basis. What is it like to wake up realizing that there may not be breakfast, lunch, or dinner that day?
Something else that I realized during my experiment is that it would certainly be possible to eat on only $21 a week. If one budgets carefully and creatively, I believe that one can eat three meals a day, seven days a week. However, nutrition and food quality will go by the wayside. A low budget forces one to buy food that will be the most filling and, in the short term, the most satisfying, which includes items like cheap bags of potato chips, fast foods, and large quantities of carbohydrates like pasta, rice, and bread.
Though I had previously known about the link between bad nutrition and inadequate funding for food, I had never before pondered what it would actually be like to personally be in that situation. Although it is impossible for anyone in my position to empathize with this problem due to the fact that I have never unwillingly been hungry in my life, I feel more sympathetic, as the problem is now at the forefront of my mind.
In Conclusion
I am not sure how much my “food-centric” self actually learned today; however, I feel that I was given a more personalized glimpse into what it would mean to be actually facing the problems that I had always read about.
Perhaps none of us who have daily access to a Yale dining hall or who can buy adequate food in the United States can fully understand the psychological and physical implications of the hunger and malnutrition that results from poverty. However, our lack of complete understanding should not—and, as I’ve seen through the various student groups on campus, often does not—stop us, and our political leaders, from trying to decrease the number of hungry people in this country.
As I returned to the dining hall on Friday morning and had a wonderful post-Food Stamp Challenge meal, I felt physically satisfied, but psychologically, I did not. My quest to figure out my relationship with food, both in terms of what I personally consume and in terms of hunger on a larger scale, is not yet over.
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