My week on food stamps.

I recently saw a document called "A place at the table" about hunger in America. It was a very thought provoking documentary and it inspired me to conduct an experiment. For one week I would live off of a Food Stamp grocery budget. The reason this experiment is that I have heard many debates about Food Stamps over the years, some arguments have been in favor of them others have been negative. I wanted to have this experience to gain a little perspective on the matter. I do not know what the following week will offer me, and I would never for a moment want anyone to think that because I am doing this that now I think that I understand all the hardships that people who need food stamps face. But I do hope to gain at least a little insight through this experience.

The Experiment

Here are the parameters of the experiment. I will live off of a food budget of $44.52 for one week, the amount of food assistance that I would be entitled to in the scenario that I have created for the experiment (more on that later). Additionally, I am going to try to have my diet match the USDA recommendations for healthy eating as best I can. am limited myself to only an oven, microwave, a refrigerator, pots and pans, and basic eating utensils for food prep. Also I intentionally did not shop at stores like Costco, Wino, Sam's Club, or UGO and shopped at Safeway. The reason is that even if the cost of membership was not an issue (which puts Sam's Club and Costco out of reach for a person on an extremely tight budget). The access to the other stores takes advantage of my location in a middle class neighborhood and my available gas money and transportation. As these stores are not as common as big chain grocery store and not everyone lives with one nearby, I figured that utilizing these stores would be taking advantage of a resources that I could not fairly assume would be universal.

 

The Budget

For those of you who are curious where the amount of $44.52 came from, here are the details. I have created a scenario where my wife and I lost our jobs and we ran out of savings. I was able to get a part-time job making $10 an hour and working 20 hours a week. My wife has not able to find full time work so we decide it is more cost effective for her to provide child care for our toddler age son than to settle for part time work. That gives me $800 a month. But for a family of three that is not going to cut it. So I apply for Section 8 housing assistance, WIC (Women, Infants and Children) and SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program, or food stamps) to make ends meet and I was able to get into all three programs. So this is how our budget goes:

Section 8 housing requires recipients to spend 40% of income on rent but it does cover the rest of the rent and utilities.

So in this scenario, we are spending $320 on housing. SNAP is providing us with $442 a month for food. That number comes from the fact that the maximum benefit for a family of three is $526. But that is only for people with no income. Since I make $800 a month in my scenario. SNAP requires that recipients should be spending 30% of their net income on food (and reduces your benefits accordingly). So this is the formula the USDA uses for net income, there is a flat deductions of 20% in addition to your housing cost up to 50% of your total income. So in my case 20% is knocked off thus reducing it by $160. Then my housing cost (thanks to Section 8, mine is less than half) so we can knock off another $320.  So according to the USDA I have a net income of $320, of which I am expected to spend $96 (30%) of my own money on food.  This means that I will not get the full $526 but $430 in food stamps.

The deduction system is logical but look at your own food budget, do you spend 30% of your net income on food? Odds are you do not, in fact the national averages is closer to 10% and that includes eating out. So in my scenario I am going to rely entirely on food stamp funding because my $800 a month budget ($420 after taxes and housing cost) just does not allow for any extra money to be spent on food.

 So back on track to my weekly budget. So we divide $430 by three and each member of my family would get $143.33 for food. But in this scenario, my young son qualifies for WIC assistance. Since he does not eat as much, we found that we only need to spend about 30% of his allotment on him, or about $43 per month. That leaves $394.16 for my wife and me, divided equally that is $6.36 a day, or 44.52 per week. And that is where I got the number. Is this the budget I would have if I was really in this situation? I do not know, but I think it is a reasonable approximation considering the average food stamp benefit in 2012 was $133.41 per person per month, or about $30.70 for seven days which would be pretty close to where I would be without WIC, which would be $32.98 per week.

Shopping

The plan is that I would start on  Sunday (April 28th). So I went shopping the day before, on Saturday. It had a different feel. In college I routinely bought all my groceries for the week in one trip, and I had to pinch my pennies. But I never had a hard cap on my budget. I always used a debit card and I had a food budget in mind but if I was a dollar over, it did not really matter. This shopping was different, I had a pen and paper with me and I wrote down the prices as I went because I did not want to hold up the line asking for them to put items back. I had a grocery list but I could not get everything I had planned on. I wanted to get some chicken and some potatoes but I did not have the money for them and since I already had sources for protein and starch I had to drop them off the list. I like spinach for salads but iceberg lettuce was a lot cheaper so that is the way I went. Other than that I was more or less able to stick to what I had planned. This is what I got:

Fruit:

• 7 bananas

• 3 cans of chunked pineapple

• 1 pound of strawberries

 

Vegetables:

• 1 bag frozen broccoli

• 1 bunch of carrots (1.5 pounds)

• 3 pound bag of iceberg lettuce mix

•  2 bags of chopped frozen onion

Grains:

• 1 pound of dried brown rice

• 1 box of whole grain elbow macaroni pasta

• 1 cylinder of quick rolled oats

Protein:

• 1 pound of dried lentils

Dairy:

• 1 gallon of skim milk

• 1 quart of low fat yogurt (vanilla)

 Other:

• 1 bag of brown sugar

• 1 bottle of cayenne pepper

• 1 bottle of cinnamon

• 1 bottle of curry powder

• 1 bottle of salad dressing

• 1 box of vegetable bouillon cubes

 

 

On the whole I think I did pretty well. I lucked out, many items were on sale (spices were buy one and two free, which I was very grateful for as it will add some much needed flavor.)

 

 

 Breakfast Sunday:

So I made this the night before. I took 2/3 of a cup of oatmeal, half a cup of yogurt, a cup of milk, a few slices of strawberry and a small spoon of brown sugar and mixed it in a bowl and left it in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning the oats have sucked up the liquid and are ready to eat.

It was not bad but I am not sure if I needed the sugar, the sweetened yogurt did just fine. I was a nice breakfast but I was pretty hungry by the time lunch rolled around.

Sunday Lunch:

The day before I made a huge curry dish.

 

 It seems like a lot but this has to be lunch in dinner for the rest of the week. Dishing it up I wondered if I had done my measuring right and if this would last the week.

 

It is rice, lentils and pasta. Cooked in a vegetable broth with onions, curry and cayenne pepper. I would have liked to have chicken and potatoes with it but I could not fit them into the budget.

 

Sunday Snack:
I have felt hungry for the most of the day. I was too impatient to take a picture first and the banana did little to help.

 

Sunday dinner: 
I was very hungry at this point so I had two bowls of salad and went heavy on the dressing.

 

Followed up with curry again

 

I got creative and made a desert of mashed banana with brown sugar and cinnamon that I baked in the oven. It was quiet good with a glass of milk.

Disaster! When opening the refrigerator door, the yogurt fell out and spilled on the floor. Lost about 2/3 of it. Breakfast will be leaner now.

Thoughts on the first day:

I was surprised how hungry I was. SNAP is defiantly a "supplement" because it is hard to go it alone with just what they give you. I wish I would have gotten some more calorie heavy foods. Like full fat yogurt and 2% milk. It is clear to me that there is no way I am meeting the USDA nutritional recommendations (I only met the vegetable requirement. I was so focus on having enough fresh fruits and vegetables that protein was neglected and I think I am running low on calories in general as I am eating very little fats. I spent most of the day hungry and I drank a lot of water to try to offset it. I am hoping that it will get easier as I adjust to a lower fat and protein diet.