Yes, I'm hungry

I just finished off my $3 worth of food, so I've completed my day of the Food Stamp Challenge.
I skipped breakfast, had 3/4 of a $3 box of cereal, one bowl of which with milk, and a few leftovers from my friends' dinner.
The most telling part of this experience was sitting among friends at dinner and really wanting to have some of the very appetizing food that they were eating. Instead, I had to eat only the dry cereal I had brought with me. This was the moment when I felt most hungry, when I could compare my food to the food of those around me. This moment obviously gives some insight into the experience of those poorer than I, who must surely undergo similar experiences, sitting around the lunch table at work very jealous of their colleagues' food. The feeling of relative lack is definitely a harsh one, especially so with food, which is something that is so close and visible to others when eaten in communal settings.
My "lunch" experience, I believe, shed light on another aspect of not having much money for food; I did not meet friends at the Slifka Bagel Brunch, which would have cost me $10 alone. This meant foregoing the social nature of food, which is often dependent on a certain amount of money. Meeting others at a restaurant is unaffordable for many, and meeting others for a meal at home just tends to not work out - restaurants and similar places are neutral zones, communal meeting spots, in the way that homes are not.
Yet these experiences shed light on the peculiarities of modern food culture in ways that are not all bad. It may not be a good thing that we primarily meet other people in neutral spots and not at each others' homes. It seems to represent a certain non-intimacy as the primary mode of interaction in today's society. Similarly, I am happy for being "forced" not to overeat or pig out on junk food and the like. I do think that we eat too much in today's society. And though it would be better to choose to eat less, the economic situation encourages us very strongly to eat too much - food (or at least certain foods) is artificially cheap due to overproduction.
In one sense, dealing with a finite set of food led me to appreciate what I was eating more and to pay more attention to food. Yet on the other hand, the feeling of chomping down leftovers felt a bit undignified. I resent the societal atmosphere that leads to this feeling, but it is real, and I must be able to recognize it.
In conclusion, though I may be critical of today's food culture and the way that it artificially labels some as poorer than they actually may be, the relative nature of life means that it still hurts, and I cannot ignore this victimization, artificial though it may be.

A Day on the Food Stamp Challenge Leaves Me Thinking

“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.

Interesting to see the cereal selection, in past focus groups with low-income kids in New Haven, I found that many eat cereal almost exclusively (plus candy and soda). The teenagers I have spoken to had kitchens, but did not want to take (or did not have) the time to cook anything (although many helped their parents to prepare large meals shared with extended family over the weekend and knew how to cook). The time factor seems to be the biggest change for me as well. I had been eating out (subway, burrito,etc) almost daily over the last few weeks as I have gotten busier with school and work. If I did not have the money to do that, I may have switched to cereal instead of cooking.

I am not living in a dorm, so I am well set up with a kitchen, pots and pans and tupperware, which makes preparing real food possible. However, if I were moving around a lot and living with other people, I would not have these kitchen supplies.

I also agree that the social function of food and the culture of "eating out" is a major social problem during the challenge. I skipped a party tonight because I did not want to be around the food. I am not sure that this is as much of a day-to-day problem in general as it is for the challenge. If everyone I knew was living on a food stamp budget, our social interactions would not be set up in the same way. What this does highlight is the enforcement of class segregation through the use of consumer- or food-based extracurricular activities in organizations that have a chance at fostering cross-class relationships, such as schools. If I am friends with people at school and they all go out to eat together on the weekend and I don't have money to eat out, I'm not going to get to be friends with them outside of school.

Anyhow, today I had:
Breakfast: 3 eggs
Lunch: leftover rice, yellow split peas and spinach
Snack: Apple (small halloween candy from friend)
Dinner: 1/2 sweet potato and 1 carrot sauteed, black beans, brown rice
Snack: Corn tortilla and black beans



I noticed that I have been adding more salt than usual to the things I am cooking. I can't decide whether this is because I am not eating the fake meat products and canned beans, or because I am making up for lack of herbs and vegetables by adding salt.

Our Challenge's Challenges

There are some things you can figure out about the US Food Stamp Program without actually living on it - that $3 per day is a pitifully small amount, for example, or that spending so little on food leaves little room of nutritional quibbling.

On the topic of knowledge of the FSP, I'm unsure how much if any good this challenge will actually do. It is good intentioned, to be sure, but what exactly will be learned? I can tell you right now, as I start the challenge, that being on a limited government assistance program is obviously undesirable. Being hungry is obviously unpleasant, and hunger a blight on our national conscience. These things I already know, but perhaps I will learn new things, or have my opinions changed this week.

Whether or not I will be wasting my time, I headed over to Sam's Club to find the lowest unit prices for food. I took a simple approach to the challenge, and since I don't mind repetitive eating (after all, I eat Yale Dining), I mainly focused on purchasing enough food energy for the week. I bought a large box of Honey Nut Cheerios, a large box of NutriGrain bars, and some green bananas. This was about $17, though I plan to use milk from the dining halls for my cereal (either transport it back to my fridge or bring cereal to the dining halls), so I consider the remaining $4 my milk money.


Calorie calculations:
Breakfast Bars: 140 calories x 48 servings = 6720 calories
Cereal: 150 calories including milk] x 49 servings = 7350 calories

That's 14070 calories, which is just right for an average of 2000 a day. Plus there are the bananas, if they ever ripen.


My biggest question about the practicality of the challenge has to do with the social nature of eating here. Of the time I spend with my friends, a large portion of it is spent in the dining halls. Because of this, I will either have to eat in my room and then go to the dining halls with my friends, or else bring my own food to meals.

Another note on the challenge: simulating living off the FSP is both difficult and perhaps ultimately unrealistic. As a Yale student I have many opportunities for free food (study breaks, Master's Teas) and discounted food (butteries), not to mention the fact that, if I were actually in danger of starving, I have no doubt that my friends would feed me for an indefinite period. I'll try to simply ignore those factors, and stick to the food I've set out.

What about lunch dates?!

I coldn't do the challenge today.

I did it yesterday:
breakfast was oatmeal with some cinnamon and instant black coffee, which I simply could not choke down.
Lunch was frozen spinach, a can of tuna, and some mustard packets snatched from a lunch place nearby.
Dinner was...exactly the same. Eventually I'll get some variety in there, but I needed something fast, and this was already made.

I spent a lot of time all day thinking about what I was going to eat. I wondered when to eat so as not to get hungry later. Staying up late studying was particularly hard. I tried studying in a library where no food was allowed, but i found it really hard to concentrate because I kept imagining all the food they were selling at the Buttery in the basement. I began to understand even more the necessity of breakfasts and lunches in our schools. You really cannot learn when you are hungry! I ended up walking back home, knowing that I had left my reading half done.

But today I got a call from a friend I haven't seen in a while. She asked if we could meet up for lunch in Berkeley. I thought about explaining the Challenge and suggesting another way for us to meet up. Honestly, though, I couldn't think of much else to suggest. It seems like most of my interactions with people involve buying food--a meeting at Koffee Too, lunch in a dining hall, or even drunken pancakes at A1. I ended up going to the dining hall. While a part of me felt guilty for abandoning the Challenge, I was really happy to eat a big, heaping salad with crunchy lettuce (none of that frozen and reheated spinach!), lots of colorful vegetables, and even some tofu on top! As I walked out with my coffee and milk, I felt practically gluttonous. I picked up that unfinished reading.

-Mimi Lewis

FS Challenge

I agreed to do this challenge because it may help to focus attention within the Yale community on both the type and amount of food stamp benefits. More broadly, the challenge highlights issues of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition that are too often ignored.

However, I have a number of reservations about "food stamp challenges" in general, mainly for the reasons already expressed this blog. What is a week, or any defined period of deprivation? The artificial nature of the challenge struck home as I was checking my carefully selected groceries out of the store yesterday. As I stood in line planning my meals for the week, the man in front of me warned the clerk that he may not have enough to pay for everything and that he wanted to ring up each item in a specific order. He was not able to purchase the bottle of generic soda and looked both distressed about the lack of the soda and slightly embarassed about not being able to afford it. I felt embarassed about what I was doing, about how much care I had just spent selecting food items, when I could have purchased all of them. He did get to purchase toilet paper, chips, a loaf of white bread, deli meat and ramen noodles. Although I could quibble about the nutritional value of his purchases, I know that he was getting a very good value per calorie. If I were doing this every week, I might be buying the same things that he did.

Also as noted in the set-up, my other concern with this challenge is that it changes the nature of the problem by using $21 per week instead of the value of the thrifty food plan (TFP), which for my age and gender is about $36. Even Americans who are suffering from hunger (about 3.3 percent of the population) are spending closer to the amount estimated in the TFP. If I were spending closer to $36, my choices would more clearly reflect the very serious nutritional challenges facing people on food stamps.

All of that aside, I hope that this challenge will help me and others to learn about food insecurity and nutrition in the United States. So, for the week I was able to purchase for $20.80
-2 lbs Macoun Apples: $1.38
-1 lb carrots: $.99
-2 lbs yellow onions: $1.50
-1 lb sweet potato: $0.99
-2 lb butternut squash: $1.18
-1 package frozen broccoli: $0.99
-1 package frozen spinach: $0.99
-1 lb canned pureed tomatoes: $1.19
-10 corn tortillas: $0.99
-1 lb dry black beans: $0.99
-1 lb dry navy beans: $0.99
-2 lb dry yellow split peas: $1.34
-18 large eggs: $2.50
-4 lbs brown rice: $4.78

During the shopping experience I noticed a few things:

Mood: I usually enjoy grocery shopping a great deal. I found myself anxious throughout most of the trip and taking far longer to make decisions that I usually skip over completely.

Produce: Buying seasonally was the only thing that made this even possible. Local produce ended up being cheaper for teh apples. I usually buy Granny Smith apples from Washington State or even South America, but they were $1.79 vs. the $.69 deal on the local apples. I was worried that the apples I bought would be soft; why else would they be THAT cheap? They are soft. I also purchased onions in a bag, which were half as much as the onions that I could pick. Although I tried to find the best bag, I am not very excited about all of the onions. The butternut squash turned out to be a great deal, and much cheaper by weight than either the peeled squash or the peeled and chopped squash. I often buy more expensive pre-cut vegetables to save time, but not this time. I debated about buying a cabbage, which seemed to be another value. I wasn't even looking at lettuce, herbs, mushrooms, summer squash, green onions, fresh ginger, fresh garlic, tofu, veggie sausage, peppers, fresh tomatoes, berries, avocados, oranges or any of the many other things I usually buy in the produce section. I ended up purchasing relatively starchy vegetables in the section and am short on green things.

Green stuff: There wasn't a huge difference in price at Shaws between frozen and canned greens, but the frozen vegetables are much better nutritionally and are much more appealing to cook (taste/look better to me). I was also thinking that if I had to travel by bus for a long distance (I live close by and could walk), that getting frozen produce home could be difficult. I have noticed that a number of small delis stock canned produce, but don't have the freezer case for frozen vegetables. I wonder if the city or state could provide funding and marketing support for frozen produce in small stores.

Rice and Beans: I never eat this many beans and often buy canned beans so that I don't have to plan ahead. As a vegetarian who grew up eating lots of meat, I usually buy things made out of beans and flavored and marketed to remind me of meat. After the first day, my stomach is hurting a bit from all of the beans. It works out that I will eat about 1.5 cups of dry rice and 1.25 cups of dry beans every day, which is six times as much rice and five times as many beans as I eat on a normal day. Brown rice is also much more expensive than white rice, but I wanted to spend on this staple. If I were doing this for real, I would try to find bulk brown rice. However, I have noticed that most large bags of rice (over 5 lbs.) I have seen in New Haven are white rice.

Oil: I did not include cooking oil in the budget, counting it as a condiment, but I probably should have. Vegetable oil is significantly cheaper than olive oil and cheaper than Canola oil as well. Although there are potential health benefits to using these oils instead, they are not substantial enough to make me want to switch to them if my budget is as tight as it is here. After I got home and ran the calories on all the food, I realized that I would have to use a great deal of oil if I wanted to maintain my weight during this week. I remembered eating at a friend's house who has recently arrived from Mexico and is sending most of his money to family at home. I thought it was strange that the rice we were eating for dinner was gleaming with oil (I never add oil to my rice). Now it makes more sense.

Dairy: Didn't have the money. I usually spend a third of my grocery on dairy items.

Eggs: I had to ignore the cage-free eggs this time. $2.50 for 18 eggs is a great deal. The cage-free hens still get killed in the end anyway, right? Being forced into this position makes me feel defensive, which makes me feel like opposing animal rights campaigns, both to protect my cheap eggs and because I don't like being judged for something I would not choose if I had the extra money to spend. Marion Nestle spoke at Yale today about the mainstreaming of animal rights issues in American culture. I was thinking about how my food budget was defining my animal rights attitudes and how my egg purchases would shape my animal rights perspective in domains unrelated to food. Who's mainstream?

Time: When people get more money to spend on food, they often spend it out of the house. I usually eat at Subway a couple of times a week. Two meals would set me back $15. But I am spending time now cooking and cleaning dishes that I would have had to spend on other things, like working. The irony is that most of the meals I will eat this week are actually healthier than the things I buy when I eat fast food.

So, I was trying to balance nutrition and taste and was thoroughly unsatisfied with the mix of foods. If I was spending the additional $15 to get me up to the TFP budget, I would probably add more frozen vegetables, oil, cottage cheese, shredded cheese and soda. If I weren't vegetarian I would spend most of that money on meat.

First day I had:
Breakfast:
3 scrambled eggs
Lunch: Brown rice and yellow split peas with spinach, onions, carrots, dried oregano, garlic powder, salt, canola oil and pepper.


Snack: Apple
Dinner: Brown rice, black beans and two tortillas

I'm hungry.

Some guidelines..

We know that one day on a Food Stamp budget cannot truly show what it is like to experience the long-term physical or psychological effects of hunger. This challenge is not the definitive experience. Most people on food stamps use the money as a supplement for food. Also, one day on a food stamp budget does not allow you to shop for food or prepare meals. We know all of this and yet we still believe that the Challenge is worthwhile; hopefully it can give us some small glimpse of the struggles and considerations that were made by the over 200,000 Connecticut citizens who were on food stamps every month in 2006.

In order for this to be a truly meaningful experience, we do have a few guidelines:

1. Don't starve yourself. Seriously--eating for $3 a day is impossible! The challenge is not to see who can go the longest on $3, it is to feel the limitations and struggles of the Food Stamp lifestyle. The $3 a day is symbolic and should be understood as such. If you would like to really have the full Food Stamp Challenge experience, we encourage you to try to eat for $21 the entire week of November 1-8.

2. To be reimbursed for your $3 (or $21) spent, you must blog the next day about your experiences. The first 10 blog entries each day will be reimbursed. Sorry--we have a budget, too! Everyone who responded to FSChallenge.yale@gmail.com or mimi.lewis@yale.edu is now an adminstrator of this blog, so you can log on the morning after your Challenge and record your experiences.

3. In the blog entries, please try to be descriptive--tell us what you ate, how you felt, and what conclusions this has helped you to build. Keep your entries respectful and add your name at the end.

4. Spread the word! This Challenge is not intended to be a stand-alone experience; we hope that your feelings after participating will convince you to push for changes in our federal nutrition programs. Check the blog for announcements of follow-up activities.