ColumnCould you eat on $4 a day?

There are more people on Food Stamps, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), than ever before in the United States. As of May, 45,753,078 Americans were enrolled in SNAP, an increase of over 60% since the recession began in April 2008 and a jump of 12.1% over May 2010. That’s nearly 15% of the U.S. population, or around 1 in 7 people. Additional program data can be found here.

Though the program was designed to be supplemental, according to data collected by The New York Times, about 6 million Americans receiving food stamps report they have no other income.

Who relies on food stamps?

• 49 percent of all participants are children (18 or younger), and 61 percent of them live in single-parent households. 33 percent of households with children were headed by a single parent.
• 52 percent of SNAP households include children and 76 percent of benefits go to households with children.
• 9 percent of all participants are elderly (age 60 or over).
• The average gross monthly income per SNAP household is $673.
• 43 percent of participants are white; 33 percent are African-American, non-Hispanic; 19 percent are Hispanic; 2 percent are Asian, 2 percent are Native American, and less than 1 percent are of unknown race or ethnicity.

What’s it like to rely primarily on food stamps to put food on the table?

The average amount food stamp recipients receive is $4 a day per person. In 2009 the amount was raised temporarily from $3 to $4, which makes a big difference. However this temporary increase was instituted as part of the economic recovery program and is due to expire in October 2013. To be eligible to receive any food stamps, gross income for a family of four must not exceed 130 percent or less of the Federal poverty guidelines ($2,389 per month/$28,668 per year for a family of four)

What can you buy for $4 a day?

You can buy a fair amount of cheap, processed, sugar-laden food. What you can’t buy is very much unprocessed, organic, responsibly raised fresh food. And you can forget about extras like coffee, wine, nice cheese, expensive fruit like peaches or berries, and welcome a whole lot of starch into your diet. Also, if you want to fulfill your caloric needs in a somewhat healthy way, you need to know how to cook and you need the time to do it. You’ll also need regular access to a kitchen and some basic kitchen utensils. Not everyone has those things.

For two years in a row I participated in the San Francisco Food Bank Hunger Challenge, which gave me a tiny snapshot of what it’s like to live on food stamps. After just one week, I was hungry, angry, bored, and tired. And that was with the luxury of time to cook, a well-stocked kitchen, and the lucky addition of a few extra items of fresh produce that would have been available to clients of the San Francisco Food Bank during that time.

During the 2009 Hunger Challenge I shopped for one week for 2 people and spent $41.08 out of a budget of $56.

My shopping list:

One Stick Butter  .88
Cooking Oil $2.59
1- Quart Milk $1.39
1 Organic Chicken  $8.85
Peanut Butter $2.99
Long Grain Rice from Bulk .75
1/2 pound Pinto Beans from Bulk .55
3/4 pound Ground Beef $2.47
Dozen Cage Free Eggs $2.85
1 Loaf Wheat Bread $2.49
Oatmeal from Bulk Bin $1.08
Corn Tortillas $2.39
Canned Tomato Sauce .79
Canned Enchilada Sauce $3.89
Monterey Jack Cheese $3.09
1 pound Sweet Potatoes $.54
1 piece fresh ginger .49
1 bunch cilantro $1
1 bunch green onions $1
1 bunch bok choy $1

Budget for Two: $56
Total Spent: $41.08

Cushion: $14.92

If you want to read in detail what I did with these items, read all the posts from my Hunger Challenge week in 2009. Other participating bloggers also blogged about their experiences in detail. Amy of Cooking with Amy made a new friend in oatmeal and learned that purchasing jam without high fructose corn syrup at a price she could afford was nearly impossible. Genie of The Inadvertent Gardener had an anxiety provoking shopping trip that had her choosing value over nutrition. Faith at Blog Appetite got creative with menus to help future challengers and food bank clients. Gayle at Been There Ate That notes that the Hunger Challenge is just a tedious, frustrating, eye-opening activity she does once a year, but for the 150,000 San Franciscans facing hunger every day it’s a way of life.

Find out for yourself what it’s like to live on food stamps in America and sign up for the Hunger Challenge this year. I promise you’ll learn something.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate,  on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

Images:Jetheriot,  AJ Mexico, Andrea_44.

The post Hunger Pains: 6 Million Americans Struggle to Eat appeared first on EcoSalon.

Since participating in and blogging about The San Francisco Food Bank’s Hunger Challenge for 7 days in September, I’m more acutely aware of hunger – both its prevalence and its unpleasantness.

People have always been hungry in America, but as more people are thrown out of work, hunger is increasing. A record number of people are applying for food stamps. More than 35 million people in America now receive food stamps. That’s 1 in 9 Americans.

There are many people who make just slightly more than the very low figure that would qualify them for food stamps. To give you an idea of how much money that is, it’s just short of $23,000 a year for a family of 3 in San Francisco, one of the country’s most expensive cities. Stop the Hunger has real time worldwide hunger statistics that will blow your mind.

When referring to the people who suffer from hunger, I prefer to say “hungry people” rather than the often used term, “the hungry” because “the hungry” puts hungry people in a separate category from everyone else, making them “other”, when in reality hunger could happen to anyone living paycheck to paycheck. It’s likely people in your neighborhood and children who go to school with your children are hungry.

All these hungry people, yet every day edible food is thrown away in restaurants, stadiums, schools, hospitals, corporate cafeterias, grocery stores and farmers’ markets.

Not only does that food shamefully go to waste, but as it rots in landfills it contributes to global warming. Rotting organic matter that is not composted but instead exposed to the anaerobic conditions of a landfill releases methane, a greenhouse gas many times more potent than CO2.

I don’t think diverting almost-discarded food to hungry people is a very good solution to hunger. I think the root causes of hunger (poverty, bad government policy and corporate mismanagement) need to be addressed.

Nor do I think diversion is a good solution for reducing food waste, which should be prevented through better planning and buying. But since we don’t live in my perfect world, I do believe it’s important to get the food into the mouths of hungry people. Thankfully, there are some very good programs doing just that.

One of the more interesting ones came to my attention through our friends at MNN. Rock and Wrap it up! was launched by Syd Mandelbaum, whose parents nearly starved in concentration camps.

By all accounts, he’s a man who knows how to get things done.

Mandelbaum often picked up food after rock shows at Jones Beach in New York, and took it to a local soup kitchen whose board he served on. One night in 1993, a backstage manager gave him the idea of asking bands to put stipulations in their contracts requiring all food to be donated to hungry people.

He started contacting bands and asking them to put riders in their contracts. He quickly signed up The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Bruce Hornsby, Phish, Michael Bolton and Nine Inch Nails.

Rock and Wrap It Up! launched nationally in 1994 and had 15 cities covered almost immediately. Now Rock and Wrap it up covers almost 80% of the cities in the US and has a database of over 43,000 shelters and soup kitchens. There’s a school program, and a sports program called Sports Wrap, and now the program is going international.

There are similar programs all over the country.

In San Francisco, Food Runners picks up surplus food from restaurants, special events, and farmers’ markets. Portland, Oregon has the Urban Gleaners. There’s the Food Donation Connection, which has recently partnered with the National Restaurant Association, and many more across the country.

If your workplace often has leftover food from meetings or events, or if you work in the restaurant or grocery industry, you can look into having good food diverted to hungry people.

In the past, I have tried to do that and been told that it’s impossible due to liability worries, but liability shouldn’t be a problem. I researched this and learned that 50 states and the District of Columbia have “Good Samaritan Laws” protecting companies, non-profits and individuals from litigation associated with food donated in good faith by limiting liability to acts of gross negligence or intentional misconduct. So waste not, want not. But if you do, donate it.

Image: theilr

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

The post Treating Hunger with Surplus Food Is a Tactic, Not a Solution appeared first on EcoSalon.