Posted on 04/28/2004 5:21:05 PM PDT by FourPeas
In March, Shawn Doctor fed her family of six on $235 worth of food stamps -- for the entire month.
"By the end there, we were having a hard time," she says. "We didn't have a lot of food in the house, nothing extra."
April was only a little bit better.
Her husband, Barney Doctor, who was laid off from his factory job in January, picked up some temporary work through Manpower, bringing in a week's worth of wages.
But most of that went to pay overdue bills, not stock the cupboards.
"We've given up what we used to buy," Shawn Doctor says. "We only buy what we can afford."
The Doctors have never been flush with money during their six-year marriage.
The most Barney Doctor, 38, has earned is $9 an hour.
"He wasn't making a lot of money, but we got by," says 29-year-old Shawn Doctor.
The family has one car, rents a modest home in the Oakview Elementary School neighborhood, indulges only in the most basic cable TV package, camps in a tent during the summer with her parents.
But there is a crowd around the dinner table: Scott, 9, Shawn Doctor's son from a first marriage, whom Barney Doctor recently adopted; Elizabeth, 4; Jakob, 3; Stephanie, 17 months; a baby due in July; and, of course, Shawn and Barney.
Making sure they are fed, and fed well, falls on Shawn Doctor's shoulders.
Last year, she enrolled in the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP, for short) through MSU Cooperative Extension-Muskegon County to help her learn how to shop, budget and cook on a limited income.
"People should try (shopping) on what these families are trying to budget with," says Diane Vermilyea, nutrition project manager at Muskegon County's Cooperative Extension.
Add to that the "stress," as Shawn Doctor describes it, of making sure the food bought is good for her family.
Fresh fruits and vegetables are often more expensive than processed foods, which are high in fat and sugar -- components that only add to people's poor health.
Although obesity is not a problem for the Doctor family, Shawn Doctor worries about serving her children and husband balanced meals now so they will be healthy in the future. She cooks soups and chilis from scratch because they're lower in fat and salt than canned versions. She buys one package of apples, another of oranges at the beginning of the month, for the kids. When they're gone, she switches to generic brand canned fruits and vegetables.
She buys one bag of potato chips "because the kids love them, but when they're gone," she says, "they're gone. They're too expensive."
"Healthier foods cost more," says Ken Kraus, director of the Muskegon County Health Department. "It baffles me why, but processed foods are much cheaper.
"It's cheaper to buy cookies than it is oranges, and there's always hot dogs on sale where you get two for the price of one," Kraus says. "Food stamps aren't based on how much healthy foods costs."
With processed foods rich in sugar and fat becoming cheaper than fruits and vegetables, the poor in particular are paying a high price with obesity rates shooting up in Muskegon County and across the country.
And with obesity comes a laundry list of health problems, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
Although being overweight is usually associated with eating too much rather than with hunger, a growing body of research shows that the people who have gained the most weight in the last decade tend to have the lowest incomes, and often go without the kind of food or the amount they need.
People with limited incomes simply can't afford a totally healthy diet, says Adam Drewnowski, a University of Washington epidemiology professor who also heads a center for public nutrition.
"These people are obese, frankly, because they have no money ... The message has been to blame people -- 'you're not choosing well, you're not educated enough.' We forget there are people whose choices are severely limited by finances and time allocation," he said in an Associated Press interview.
Vermilyea says the population-at-large forgets that so many people with limited incomes face poor or no transportation to grocery stores.
"Is it safe to send your 12-year-old to the corner store in your neighborhood to get a gallon of milk ... if there is a corner store?" she says.
"Or what if only the burners work on your stove, and not the oven, which happens a lot to renters? Or if you can't count on the refrigerator to work? What kind of meals are you going to make?"
In the summer, Cooperative Extension's nutrition programs give their clients Project Fresh coupons worth $20 of produce at the Muskegon Farmer's Market.
"That's one thing that really helps. My kids love that," Shawn Doctor says. "It makes me feel better, too."
She's lucky, she says, because she has family she can turn to for help when her shelves are empty. Others in her shoes aren't as lucky, people who are forced to eat at soup kitchens or turn to food pantries in emergencies.
"Sometimes it's a challenge just getting food," Vermilyea says.
Kraus, who sees the devastating impact poverty has on the county's general health, acknowledges that buying healthy food is not always the priority for those with limited incomes.
"Man, they're struggling to make sure the heat, lights and water are on," he says. "As long as they can get (their kids') bellies full, that's what's going to matter.
"The question is a matter of what's the immediate basic need."
Basic cable? $35/month easily. That'd certainly help with the good budget.
Saddam would have let them starve to death.
I am advocating birth control. If you can't afford to have a child, then don't have one. As simple as that.
"It's cheaper to buy cookies than it is oranges,
Maybe Michigan's orange crop had a bad year?
Beats getting a job.
Lazy People for Kerry '04
Which means, frankly, that skinny people are flush with cash. Perhaps the emaciated people of Ethiopia could send some spare millions to help these poor people lose weight.
Contraceptives? Adoption? Abstinence? Natural family planning? There are lots of other options.
But, they didn't have one. They had six.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.