SNAPfast

Hunger Games

Saturday 3:45 pm

I just returned from the grocery store in town, a pretty normal activity for me on a Saturday afternoon.  This week’s shopping trip was a bit different, however.  I’ve decided to participate in what’s called a SNAPfast.  For the next seven days I’ll be trying to live off of $28 in food, the average food stamp benefit per week.  I learned about SNAPfast last month, when it was announced in church by Father Michael.  I toyed with the idea of actually doing it for a while, but yesterday, while attending the Bucks County Hunger and Nutrition Coalition forum, “In Our Backyard,” I decided to go for it.  Impulsively I opened my mouth and shared this with my CEO, Jamie Haddon, who promptly tweeted it out to the world.  Oh boy…no turning back now.

First, a little about me.  My name is Tim Philpot and I live in Bucks County, PA.  I work for United Way of Bucks County, where my job title is Director of Community Impact.  I live alone in a comfortable apartment, have a new car (basic, but still new), and a lot of perks and conveniences.  I make a decent, living wage, typical for a non-profit employee.   I have a savings account that’s pretty healthy.  I’m not in debt.   I don’t worry about where my next meal is coming from.  In fact, eating out is one of my indulgences…probably where most of my discretionary income goes.  I’m not particularly health conscious.  I know what healthy food choices are, but I often am too lazy to eat well. 

You might be asking the question, why would I do this?   I suppose my motivations are mixed.  First, I am a person concerned about hunger.  In my job I’ve come to learn that about 10% of adults in my county are food insecure, as are 15% of children.  My church contributes to a local food pantry that sees about 1500 visits per year.  I also admit that my political leanings are way left, and I hate to see the gap between the ultrawealthy and everyone else widen so much. I see hunger as a symptom of this and it makes me mad.  Also, part of my job is being an advocate for the hungry, so I figure that it would be good to at least try to experience a tiny bit of what food insecure people actually live with on a daily basis.  Another motive is that I like a challenge, I like games, and seeing if I can stretch a dollar is intriguing to me.  Finally, if I am honest, I must admit a streak of darker motivation – denial.  A little voice in my head whispers things like, “Can it really be that bad?  Aren’t people just making poor choices and buying chips and soda and the like?   If they really shopped smart (like me) they’d be just fine.”  I’m not proud of these thoughts, and most of the time I don’t believe them, but occasionally they nag me.   It’s time to put them to the test.

So I went up to market and pulled out my smart phone calculator and got to work.  How far could I stretch $28.00?  I started with rice and beans, figuring that these would be relatively cheap and filling.  Then pasta and tomato sauce, followed by a few canned vegetables and a loaf of wheat bread (my Home Ec. Teacher mother would frown if I were to eat white bread).   For proteins I selected “meat bologna,” one can of tuna, and some chicken breast filets.  In the dairy section I picked up a quart of milk and a small tub of butter with canola oil.  I’m not sure why I picked that particular item, except it was on sale and I figured everything else I was purchasing was really bland, so some butter would hopefully improve the taste.  I rounded off my list with some produce, including two small broccoli crowns, two white potatoes, a bag of raw carrots, two apples, and a tangerine.  I was hoping to get a bag of oranges, but realized I was overshooting the $28 mark, so I settled for one rather anemic tangerine.  I hope you can’t develop scurvy in a week.

Here’s what I didn’t buy:  soda, dessert, frozen dinners, sauces, yogurt, cookies, pretzels, or hummus. There is no beef in the haul, unless you count a little bit mixed into the bologna.  I did consider buying a whole chicken, but I’ve never cooked one and thought that this perhaps wasn’t the time to start.  I considered, but decided against frozen chicken backs (I’m not kidding).   Spam was also kind of expensive, so I skipped that as well.  No, I normally don’t eat spam, but I suppose I’ve heard the stereotype that people on a tight budget sometimes do.  I notice that about 80% of my purchase is store brand products.  I didn’t really plan that out, but went for what seemed cheapest in most cases.

On this trip I resisted buying anything else.  No toilet paper, dish soap or greeting cards.  Although I’m starting the fast tomorrow, I didn’t buy a big meal for tonight.  Either I’ll chow down on what’s left laying around my fridge, or I’ll go out. 

Finally I took the cart up to the checkout and rang myself up.  $28.01.   How did that happen?  I was certain I was under the mark.  I decide to give myself one cent of grace.  Impulsively I ask the clerk to take my picture.  I’m no good at selfies.  She treats it like a bizarre request (doesn’t everyone do this in the grocery store?) but complies.

Back at home I snapped a pic of everything laid out on my kitchen counter, cleared off two shelves in the refrigerator and packed everything in there.  I set up some rules for myself:  No coffee at home, but I’ll give myself permission to drink it in the office.  If, in the course of the day, someone in the office leaves a tray of cookies or a box of donuts in the break room, that’s fair game too, so long as I limit myself to one.  Everything at home left over from last week’s shopping trip is off limits.  I decide against doing a weigh-in…too dramatic.  I will try to write a little about the experience every day.  Not sure it will amount to much, but who knows.