Fair warning, there is a LOT of math involved in this lenghty post.
I've read a lot about this so called Food Stamp Diet off and on over the last few years. Celebrities and elected officials alike trying it out and failing or just being outright miserable through the whole ordeal. As if people who have a bit of money somehow forgot how to eat and count! Lessons your mother and father should have taught you include 1) What food is nutritious 2) Where to find it 3) How much it costs and, most importantly, 4) What it is worth. The cost of a particular thing is of little significance in most situations as the VALUE of that thing tends to dictate the cost. Nutritious food costs dollars. Good tasting nutritious food costs more dollars. CONVENIENT food costs the most dollars of all but usually doesn't hold much in the way of nutrition. My name is Rebecca and, not only am I a survivor of the Real Life Food Stamp Diet but, I work in a grocery store and live in a food desert! Well, more accurately, I live on the boundary between a food desert and NOT a food desert because the demographic area to the north/northeast of me is measured by city standards and the area to the south/southwest of me is measured by rural standards. I'm sitting smack on the border between the two areas. It isn't fun, I can tell you! Okay, so, back to the "diet" thingamajiggy. What we have to do first is define how much the government has decided a person should get per person per meal. We will use the information we have available on the internet. This chart from www.cbpp.org is handy, indeed. TABLE 1 SNAP Benefits by Household Size Household Size Maximum Monthly Benefit, Estimated Average Monthly Fiscal Year 2018 Benefit, Fiscal Year 2017 1 $192 $142 2 $352 $253 3 $504 $379 4 $640 $465 5 $760 $556 6 $913 $657 7 $1,009 $697 8 $1,153 $870 Each additional person $144 As you can see, the maximum amount of food stamps you can get for a single person is $192 for a whole month. Break that down by the day with some simple math. The average month has 30 days, so 192/30=6.40. That's $6.40 per day or $2.13 per meal to feed one person. 6.4x7=44.8 or $44.80 for a week. But, as the chart shows, most people don't get the maximum amount in food stamps. A single person usually gets only $142 per month according to this chart, so we will use THAT number for our exploration okay? OKAY! Maths, I do them. 142/30=4.7333333. That is $4.73 per day or $1.57 per meal to feed one person. 4.7333333x7=33.133333 or $33.13 per week. That isn't so bad at all when you consider that the creators of this challenging diet estimated the costs to be $1 per person per meal! We have 50% to 100% more money to spend on feeding ourselves if we use real world numbers, you silly celebrities! We are going to use the smaller number because that is the amount the AVERAGE person on food stamp benefits receives. It is important to note that food stamp purchases are not taxed where I'm from, so we are free to use all of the money up to the last penny even if in reality we have to spend a bit extra to cover the taxes because we are trying to make it on a food stamp budget here. To be realistic we have to pretend that the taxes don't exist. Are you ready to dive into buying food to feed a single person with only $33.13 for an entire week? Let's try! First, we're going to think about how many times per week we will want to eat meat. We're getting 21 meals and for most people, meat is eaten at least once per day. The USDA (those guys who actually issue food stamps) recommends at least 2 servings of meat or protein per day, so we will estimate two servings of meat per day which means we will need 14 servings. Second, we're going to need dairy. The USDA recommends at least 2 servings per day, so we will estimate 14 servings of this also. Third, we will need veggies. The USDA recommends at least 3 servings per day, so we will estimate 21 servings of this for the week. Fourth, we need to think about fruits. The USDA recommends at least 2 servings per day, so we will estimate 14 servings for the week. Fifth, we need to think about grains. The USDA recommends at least 6 servings per day, so we are going to estimate 42 servings of this for the week. (GOSH that's A LOT OF GRAINS!) Lastly, we need to consider extra things like spices, sauces, spreads, etc because we all use that stuff and it's what makes things more interesting and allows us to vary the flavors of what we're consuming so that it doesn't become monotonous. Since I work in a mid range priced grocery store, I'm planning to use pricing available there for my estimates. Full disclosure, I am not comparison shopping here, I am just giving you the breakdown of what you can get on average. Okay? OKAY? Let's start from the top! We need meat! A serving of meat is 3-4 oz. You read that right and I did not stutter. What are we going to buy to fill this? Oh me, oh my! Let's start with a pound of boneless skinless chicken breast. Most weeks it only costs $1.99 from the butcher counter and a pound of it will make at least three servings of meat. Mmmmm chicken! We'll round that up to $2.15 because no one ever gets it exactly at a pound. Then we can scootch over and pick up a 12 oz package of smoked sausage for just $1.29. That's another four servings of meat. A pound of ground beef $3.19, that's another four servings of meat. For our last three servings, we will pick up a package of bologna for $1.19 (it's actually more than three servings, but we can save the leftovers for next week or use them as a little snack this week). So there we have more than the amount of meat we actually need for a total of $7.82. We now have $25.31 left. Dairy. Serving sizes vary depending on the medium. So, we will pick up a half gallon of milk for $1.50 to start. That's 8 servings of dairy (8 0z per serving) so we're already halfway there! We will then pick up a quarter pound of cheese from the deli counter because we're feeling fancy today! On average a quarter pound of cheese will cost you about $1.50 and offers an average of 4 servings. (I strongly recommend you skip the Kraft and Velveeta style singles because most of them do not contain much in the way of real dairy. Read the label. They don't say CHEESE. They say "Singles" or "Slices" or "Pasteurized Processed Cheese Food" because they don't contain enough milk to be legally labeled cheese. The stuff you get at the deli counter is actually cheese). Then we will pick up a four pack of yogurt for $1.98 which rounds out our dairy needs for a total of $4.98. We now have $20.33 Veggies. A half cup of cooked veggies is a serving. Let's pick up a bag of salad mix for $1.59. That bag of salad mix will offer you a whopping 8 servings of veggies for the week, but we will want dressing to go with it and a small generic bottle costs $1.29. We can pick up a can of black beans for $0.69 which will offer us two servings. Grab a 5 lb bag of potatoes for $2.59 and get another 10 servings of veggies (these can be substituted for meat or grains due to their high starch and protein content). We will need margarine sticks to go with the potatoes, so add $0.89. And we can grab a bag of frozen broccoli or carrots for $1. A bag of frozen onions for another $1. This fulfills our veggie requirement and gives us some seasonings that can be used for other things if needed for a total of $9.05. We now have $11.28 left. We're getting low on funds now. Can we make it? Fruits. To fulfill our fruit requirements, we can substitute some juices so long as they are 100% juices. These may be high in sugar content though, so use them sparingly. A 64 oz bottle of apple, grape, or cranberry juice will cost about $2.59 and one serving is 4 oz. This one bottle of juice offers us 16 servings of fruit but it doesn't have to be consumed immediately, so we can pick up a pound of whatever apple or peach is on sale for $1.59 per pound this week to fill things out a bit and offer four servings of fiber rich fruit pulp. Round that up to $1.75 because nature is not keen on exact weights! So we have 20 servings of fruit available for $4.34. We now have $6.94. Grains. Our biggest challenge. We will start with two loaves of bread for $1.70. Each loaf contains a whopping 11 servings which is a quarter of our needs. We're halfway there! We'll grab a box of quick oats bringing us another 10 servings of grains for $1.39. And a pound of brown rice for $0.79 will give us the last 10 servings we need for a total of $3.88. That leaves $3.08 for spices. We'll grab garlic powder, chili powder, and salt this week. They will last longer than the week and they're a good investment because of their shelf life. This will cost you $2.59 and leave you $0.47 to rollover to next week's grocery bill! We did it! Maybe next week I will post a few recipes that you can make from this list of groceries I've provided. :) |
The Eccentric Foodie
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Cooking bacon in the oven is the easiest way.
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These are various recipes that either I created, or I found and adjusted to what I thought would be awesome or even healthier. Archives
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