Try it yourself!

 

If you want to give my experiment a try for yourself here are the instructions;

First determine you budget

1.   Assume that you are working twenty hours a week at the minimum wage of your State rounded up to the nearest dollar and you get paid every two weeks.

For me that was $10 and with two pay periods per month that came to $800.

2.   Calculate your family’s net income according to USDA standards (theirs is a little more complex with exceptions for the disabled, the elderly, and people who pay child support but for the sake of simplicity, this works fine for an able bodied person under 65).       

-Step one deduct 20 percent from your total income.

-Step two subtract the cost of your rent and utilities up to 50% of your total income (but no higher than the limit of $496)

I assumed that I was living in Section 8 housing and only had to pay 40% of my income in rent and utilities ($320). So my formula was $800 - $160- $320= $320 of net income

3.   Now calculate how much you’re getting in SNAP benefits (food stamps). Find your household size one the chart and see what your maximum benefit is. Then subtract 30% of your net income from that amount.

People in Household	Maximum Monthly Allotment
1	$    200
2	$    367
3	$    526
4	$    668
5	$    793
6	$    952
7	$ 1,052
8	$ 1,202
Each additional person	$    150

 

I have a household of three so that is $526 maximum. Then I subtract $96 so that means that I would get $430 a month.

4.   Now WIC comes into play, consider that any infants in your home will not need any food stamp money as that will be covered with breastfeeding and/or formula and that children under 5 who are eating solids only need 30% of their portion of their food stamp money.  Subtract that from the total food stamp budget.

These numbers were a best guesses by me, so feel free to play around with them to be more accurate for your children. But that meant for me that my son would only need $43 (30% of one third of $430) of food stamp money per month.

5.   Now subtract the amount that children will be using and find the portion that each adult should have.

For me that was $193.50

6.   Then divide that amount by 30.416 (the average amount of days in a month) and multiply it by seven and that is your weekly budget.

For me that was $44.50

Now that you have determined your budget

here are the rules:

1.   You must do all your shopping at a major grocery store chain that does not require a membership fee (the type of grocery store you could reasonable expect would be accessible in most neighborhoods in your area.)

2.   You can only eat what you buy with the food stamp budget and nothing else, not even salt for seasoning or oil to grease a pan.

3.   You can only use basic appliances and kitchen utensils (i.e. refrigerator/freezer, oven, stovetop, microwave, pots, pans, bowls, fork, spoons, knives, spatulas, etc.)  for your food prep and cooking.

4.   You must meet (or get as close as you can) to the USDA guidelines for proper nutrition. 

USDA guildlines for proper nutrition

You can find out what they are for you here but for an adult on a 2000 calorie diet it goes as follows:

6 ounces of grains per day, 3 ounces of which should be whole grains.

2.5 cups of vegetables per day with the following criteria:

• 1.5 cups of dark green vegetables per week.

• 5.5 cups of red or orange vegetables per week

• 1.5 cups of beans of peas per week

• 5 cups of starchy vegetables (for example corn or potatoes)per week

2 cups of fruit per day with the following criteria:

•         There must be a variety of fruit (which I interpret as at least 3 different kinds)

3 cups of dairy per day

5.5 ounces of protein foods

• Protein foods are meat, nuts, peas and beans. Peas and beans can count towards your vegetables or Protein but not both

• You should include two 4 ounces servings of seafood per week.

No more than 6 teaspoons of oil per week

No more than 260 calories from added sugars or solid fats (butter, lard)

No more than 2300 milligrams of Sodium total.

Total Calorie intake should be 2000 per day.

There you go there are the rules. Do it for 7 days and please let me know how it goes for you. I would be very interested to hear your perspective.