Posted on 09/22/2011 7:36:30 AM PDT by Abathar
(CNN) -- That is the reality for the more than 40 million Americans who rely on food stamps. According to the Food Research and Action Center the average food stamp allotment is just $30 per week.
I began thinking about taking a food stamp challenge earlier this month when I met several women who we profiled on hunger for two CNN stories airing this week. These women had to make tough choices between paying bills and buying food. Often they skipped meals so their children could eat. Often the amount of food stamps they received was not enough.
Living on a food stamp budget for just one week won't begin to put me in these women's shoes or come close to the struggles that millions of low-income families face every day; week in and week out, month after month. But I do expect to gain a new perspective and a better understanding.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindychannel.com ...
Talk about stretching a dollar...and my kids still ask me to make my mother's pasta fagiole. They love it.
My bet is you could live on $10 of rice and beans a week, and eat all you wanted.
Your definition of nutrition is unscientific.
Budgeting in any area is an acquired skill, just like anything else.
I keep a budget spreadsheet which helps me a lot, but I do get lazy from time to time. :)
Mochelle wouldn't make it past her first morning slopping for under $50.
Amen! Family of five, about 50 bucks a week, supplemented by items from Walmart that Aldi doesn’t stock.
As a food service professional, I have to disagree with you. There is no such thing as "empty calories". The body uses the starch in ramen noodles as well as it does brown rice or beans and rice.
As for your assertion the meats mentioned are "meat remanants, also bravo sierra. The body uses bologna and hot dogs the same way it does filet mignion.
You have highly romanticized view of food.
/johnny
$5 of beans and rice will take you a lot further than $5 of bread and bologna.
$30 a week might be harder if your are a single person but for families.
When my sonIL was out of work for a couple of months my daughter applied for food stamps, they are family of five and received $800 a month plus WIC for the two under five.
They had more than enough food.
When my sonIL start working again two months later they dropped the food stamps and went back to their food budget of $350 a month.
Bologna, hot dogs, and Ramen noodles. Ya, that’s the ticket. Thats a recipe for a heart attack.
Maybe not, but replace the Ramen noodles with Peanut Butter and you'd pretty much have what we fed our brood over the years. Not a sick or obese one in the bunch.
It's a safe bet that she couldn't eat her fill on $30 a meal.
when i was on welfare, back aounr ‘80, my food budget was eleven bucks a week. i doled it out carefully, and survived on it. the government cheese was a godsend.
*embarrassed* I'm a kept man who gets fed three squares a day by my incredible wife, those are the first things that came to mind from someone who doesn't make good life choices if left to his own devises on diet...
30.00 a week X 4 people = 120.00 a week
120.00 X 4 weeks in a month = 480.00 per month - breakfasts and lunches for 2 kids 5 days a week at school. (if I’m correct in all this)
That is MORE than I spend and I homeschool so I have to feed them every meal.
Read the article. The author is complaining that she ran out of money when she bought chicken breasts at 4.69 a pound and fresh broccoli. Honey, you need to shop at Aldi’s or Sam’s Club.
*snicker* She is going to starve.
I see a lot of that. Yesterday, I found beef shanks that were beautiful, and $1.70 per serving. I bought 2 and a package of beef bones for $0.80. I'm making the brown beef stock now, for the occo bucco and polenta that will be tonight's supper for 2, with a total cost of less than $5.
At the restaurant where I learned to make the dish, we charged $35/plate for that meal.
It's very high quality gourmand fare.
But it does take time and effort I started the stock yesterday at 1400.
/johnny
Just on the gas alone.
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