Food Stamp Challenge Day 0

Snap Food Challenge:

Total weekly budget: $31.50 $4.50day $1.50 per meal

1 day nutrition requirements:

Approx. 2000 calorie/day diet

50% Veggie/Fruit 25% Carb 25%protein split.

For the next 7 days I will be embarking on the SNAP challenge or more commonly known as the food stamp challenge. While this challenge fails to adequately express the difficulty and true struggle that nearly 1 in 7 Americans face daily it will be a valuable insight and experience.

In conjunction with the SNAP challenge I will, to the best of my ability, try and fulfill a 2000 calorie per day requirement utilizing the Harvard Guide to Nutrition’s My Healthy Eating Plate’s recommendation of a 50% vegetable/fruit, 25% carbohydrate, 25% protein split.

I will note the price, recipe, and nutritional content of each meal through USDA’s super tracker website.

Before I begin I must address a few critical advantages I will have.

1. I have the knowledge and education on what a nutritionally balanced meal and diet is.
2. I have formal chef training from Le Cordon Bleu Paris as well as limited experience cooking in the restaurant industry to draw upon including culinary techniques, budgeting, meal planning etc…
3. I have previous experience planning and portioning meals
4. I have free time to cook and prepare meals

I will write and try to post a short video recap of each day and its unique struggles in the hope of bringing even a small spotlight on the issue of food security and nutrition in the country.

This being the first post I opted for a dry and factual tone. For the rest of the blog posts it will be a stream of consciousness style of writing. I suspect with the difficulty and stress involved with the challenge that my posts may devolve into swear laden rants and complaints.

http://frac.org/initiatives/snapfood-stamp-challenges/

http://www.choosemyplate.gov/supertracker-tools/supertracker.html

Post Shopping Update. WHERE IS THE BACON

I can already tell this is going to suck. Me and my big mouth had to make it harder than it needed to be.

“Were gonna follow the Harvard Plate and try and fulfill all the nutrients needed on a food stamp budget”

I.D.I.O.T.

I wont crunch the nutrition data until the end but I can already tell that Ill fall short. There simply wasn’t enough in the budget to get that many vegetables let alone ANY FRESH PRODUCE. Or garlic, basil, herbs, spices, bacon.

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BAM! For the past 3 hours I’ve been hopping between grocery stores to compare prices and crunch the numbers for an alarmingly long time to ensure that I had a meal plan that wasn’t  too removed from the Harvard plate and had enough calories.

Planning my meals so thoroughly was stressful, mind numbing, depressing all at the same time.

I can only imagine the psychological toll it would take on a person who had to struggle to get food on the table week in and week out.

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I ended up going to the Foggy Bottom Whole Foods (Bougie for a food stamp challenge no?) and spending 31.59. Yes, its 9 cents over my budget. No, I don’t give a damn.

There are actually some valid reasons for me choosing Whole Foods as my grocery store.

1. While Whole Foods in undeniably more expensive for many items, its frozen and canned food prices actually are better than the local Safeway. Shocking. I.E. WF 365 Canned Black Beans 89 cents, Safeway Brand 99 cents (for 14.5oz)

2. I wanted the best quality possible in my budget

3. The Watergate Hotel Safeway was under renovation and the next closest Safeway on Wisconsin was entirely too far. I would have cabbed it but thought it would be against the principle of the challenge. And walking sucks.

Grocery list:

Item	Price	Total Quantity	Total Price
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour	2.99/2lb	2lb	2.99
Chicken Leg	6.17	4.15lb	6.24
Frozen Broccoli (365)	1.49/lb	2lb	2.98
Frozen Peas (365)	1.29/lb	4lb	5.16
Frozen Spinach (365)	1.69/lb	2lb	3.38
Whole Canned Tomato (365)	.85/lb	3.5lb	2.98
Beans: Cannellini-Garbanzo, Black (365)	.89/can	5.4lbs (14.5oz can x 6)	5.34
1 Dozen Eggs	2.49/Dozen (Cheaper than Safeway by 50cents)		2.49
		Total lb: 19.5lb food + 1 dozen eggs	Total: 31.59

This means I can have about 2.8 lbs of food per day. According to the USDA, the average American eats 4.7lb of food per day… This is going to suck.

*A quick note on the whole wheat flour. While its more expensive than the processed wheat its better for you. A major complaint is that whole wheat pasta is coarse and gummy. A way to mitigate some of that is to use pastry flour which is ground more finely than all purpose flour thereby resulting in a lighter texture. It is however higher in starch and lower in protein content than whole wheat AP flour.

Proof:

Stay tuned for the next post.