Starving on $280/month

[aevans1206]

I'm wondering if comments would not be so accusatory of her buying junk food if the woman were white. She does not appear to be a junk food eater and appears to be rather in shape.

I have a very good friend (black, by the way) who got pregnant at 16. She chose to keep her baby, but also chose to attend college. She received assistance during that time so that she could go to school to become a teacher. She now is a phenomenal teacher, mother, pays for everything she has and paid for her masters degree. Public assistance helped her to become a self-sufficient and successful woman. Granted, not everyone uses public assistance as it was intended, but this woman does not seem to be abusing it as she is going to school.

I am not ashamed to admit that I cannot feed my family in the area in which I live on $280 per month. Chicken breasts alone cost over $4.00 per pound, prices of meat are sky rocketing and it is actually more expensive to buy healthier foods such as produce than it does to purchase a 25cent bag of chips. This does not even account for the fact that many impoverished families in Chicago live in what are known as grocery deserts where there is no store in the area (they must take buses a far way to purchase groceries, etc.) and thus many times survive on what they can buy from neighborhood corner stores, etc.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

This family that you cannot feed on $280 ( plus $65--the person in the story gets an additional $65), does it consist of one female adult and one 4 month old baby?

[cicy33]

Yes, I do believe that people would be just as upset if she was white, blue, pink or yellow. The facts are that there are some people on welfare that take advantage of it. That is what gets people so upset. Especially when some are struggling and are just over the line for assistance or donot want assistance and make it by struggling. I also agree that there is no way she shouldn't be able to do it on $280.00 Plus the 65.00. Remember this is just food. It does not count anything else so I am only basing it on food at this point. I feed two of us all week and four kids 3 times a week and I spend less than that. and now I feed a baby part time when I watch her. She barely eats table food yet. If you coupon and watch sales then you can eat for less. Especially if it is just her that is eating the main meals. I can make a lasagna for less than $20.00. That would feed her for at least 6 or 8 meals. She could freeze a little of it. True fresh veggies are pricey. Frozen is cheaper and is better than nothing. I think it is great that she is going to school to better herself but she also needs to think of ways to better budget that food bill cuz I really do think if she was paying cash for all of it, she would figure out a way.

[Homebody]

Wow you all better brace yourselves for universal health care for everyone when we are paying for the addicts and their MRSA infections and rehab treatment and all.

Whew what a load of generalization on this subject! Maybe this mother in the article did not have a car. Maybe she has a panic attack when she gets on the subway, I am shocked at how judgmental you all are.... really, we have no idea what is going on in that single mother's life.

The young mother is trying, she is training or has a job....for the record I was 21 when I had my first child and we were on food stamps for a brief period of time. So what, I am a productive tax paying citizen, who raised three tax paying productive daughters. But you know what, my youngest daughter's husband has a degenerative eye disease and if they qualify for assistance I will encourage them to get it..... actually she is on WIC right now and her husband is in the military, probably will be medically discharged.

Another thing if you read the article closely:
Sylvia Ford is one of them. The $135 she gets each month lasts two weeks, leaving her dependent on food banks such as Bread for the City. A year ago, the single mother of four grown children could afford lemons. Now it's only lemon juice. Gone are the occasional treats of shrimp or crabmeat. Instead it's stews or soups that she can string out over several days.

Repeat: GONE are the occasional treats of shrimp or crabmeat.

Sheesh, and I'm a Republican.....

[cptacek]

WIC is different a it's geared towards pregnant women/mothers and infants up to the age of 5. The goal is to make sure low income women get the nutrition they need during this critical period

How is this different? Isn't the goal of food stamps to make sure low income people get the nutrition they need? Everything is computerized now anyway, so the people who have food stamps could get a list and when they swipe their cards to pay, the little scanner thing could beep to say it is a non-allowable item.

[aevans1206]

My 85 year old mother-in-law, who lives off of social security, et al., has a link card. I've gone shopping with her and they only reimburse her for certain items with the link card. However, junk food is definitely allowed.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

Actually, I am not even completely opposed to buying junk food with foodstamps! BUt that does not change that I think $280 should be enough for one person being fed on $280. Basically the baby is fed from the WIC supplement, so that just leaves the mother to be fed, unless the mother is nursing, then some or all of the WIC is for her. (If she is nursing without artificial formula bottles in addition, then all the WIC food is for her.) If someone came to this forum telling us they were running out of food on $280 a month, wouldn't we have all kinds of idea for them to sail through the month on less food expense?

The junk food issue is kind of ticky. I mean, where is the cut off? Are those orange-colored, packaged cheese snack crackers junk food? Maybe so. How about white soda crackers? They provide little but calories, too, so are they junk? Well, then, how about tortillas which have pretty much the same ingredients as soda crackers? Oh, well then, white bread?-- That's about the same as tortillas except we substitute some yeast for some fast acting leavening....So the cheese crackers were junk, but tortillas and white bread are not? Hmm, at least the cheese crackers add some protein.

Besides the issue of deciding what is junk or not, I think food is immensely important to the psyche. This is true around the world. Food helps provide not just energy and physical health, but also a skosh of mental well-being. So a little something "extra" does not bother me, I think it is a good thing. But just what is a little something extra does not have to be blown up into a daily or even meal-by-meal expectation. How is any food extra or special if it is the daily expectation? So really, I think it is okay to work in some potato chips, frozen pizza, some juice boxes, moon pies, yes even some shrimp (You can buy small packages of it at Aldi's or Save-a-Lot for under $2). Those things should be rare enough that eyes sparkle and smiles stretch across faces to see them because they are so special. But one cannot make those things the basis of meals. One has to plan first for nutrition and making the food dollars stretch. If you have $280 to spend on one person's groceries and you run out of money half way through the month, then you are not spending the money well. You just aren't.

However....that article is really odd. If you read the few words from the foodstamp recipients themselves, I don't see any of them complaining. It feels to me like an article written by a journalist who wants us to react with judgment against these two people. I mean, even the title here on this thread says something about starving on $280. But I don't see the woman the article opens with making claims to be starving. The article says she has to resort to canned ravioli and peanut butter and jelly by mid-month, but do we see a quote to show the foodstamp recipient actually couched it that way?

I can imagine that the woman was interviewed by the journalist and said something along the lines of, "Well, when I first get my EBT card, I go to the store and load up an as much as I can carry home without a car. I try to get things that will last for two weeks, 'cause I have a hard time getting to the store more often than that. So at the end of two weeks, I have pretty much finished the fresh things and the frozen things that fit in my little freezer---like the ground turkey and ground beef, the fish sticks, even the cheese I put in there. So that is when I will eat more of the canned things like, oh, the canned beans that I mix with some rice, the canned ravioli that I ate yesterday --Boy was that a mistake.I won't be trying that again-- and my old stand-by peanut butter and jelly. But yeah, by mid-month, my kitchen is getting kind of low on food and I have to try and get a neighbor to watch my baby so I can get to the store to stock up for the second two weeks of the month. Then by the end of those last two weeks, yep, my refrigerator is pretty empty, but my EBT card comes just in time and I head to the store again and start it all over."

I could see the interviewee having said things like that, then then journalist twisting it to come out the way it did. The journalist "appears" to be trying to make a sympathetic case for why foodstamps should be increased, yet she says ridiculous things (like implying that it is deplorable that foodstamp recipients might stretch their money by eating pasta and potatoes) to make the case. That makes me think that she is not really trying to make the case that foodstamps should be increased, but that she is being duplicitous, trying to make us react with snide judgment to say that foodstamps do not need to be increased if the problem is simply stuff like not being able to afford crab legs and shrimp, for goodness sakes.

So---Yes, I do think $280 worth of food is enough for one person for a month and it is even enough to provide some special treats. No, I don't think that article was being honest in what it was presenting or advocating for.

[FrugalFish]

I am not aghast to hear that someone eats peanut butter, bread, nor even jelly. I think it is normal, not a shocking indignity and likely mark of malnutrition.

I agree. When my DH went through an extended unemployment (19m), we did not receive foods stamps and had no money for food. We survived on beans, rice, potatoes, and eggs (as well as any seasonal produce we could get cheap). They were all inexpensive at the time and even today are still relatively inexpensive, but only ONCE have I seen someone on food stamps buying beans; I'm sure some do, but not in the grocery orders I've seen.

It was not fun at all to eat that way long term, but we didn't starve, and we walked away from the UE debt free. I know what it's like to be poor, and I truly feel for people who are working hard to get out of the system. Quite frankly, canned ravioli would have felt like a luxury item to me at that time. I suspect the poorest people in this country are not even on food stamps, be it pride or something else that keeps them away- those must be the oneswho go to bed hungry.

Again, I think the programs are very important, but our goal seems to be off the mark. When someone is asking Joe Taxpayer to feed him, to what degree should Joe Taxpayer have to provide? But we've already hit on this here.

[LuxLiving]

Well said Joan of the Arch, just what I was thinking about the journalistic twisting of the knife! Maybe if we spread a little cheap ketchup on there it'll look like she's really bleeding! Bahh!!!

Starving? Hardly. Malnourished? Maybe! For $280.00 a month a person could eat fast-food for every meal and have money left over. Granted you might have to buy off the dollar menu and drink water with the meal, but shoot, so do I if I want to feed my family that stuff. (Yes, I know, we're talking food stamps here, not a cash voucher.)

What color she is doesn't matter. What matters is that we have a support system in place. What matters is that we don't have people abusing the system. I don't think this lady was - it would appear that she's trying to improve her lot in life by getting schooling. She may need help with her nutritional choices and dollar stretching methods.

The one issue that needs more air time is the food deserts. She may not be in one, but many are!

[Scanner]

I think the poster who offered to volunteer her time to help a person make $280 stretch is the most thoughtful.

Generally speaking, tuna and eggs are your cheap proteins. . .you can structure some relatively cheap carbs around those staples and then throw in some cheap cuts of beef and chicken.

The rest of this is Conservative Prattle.

I am taken aback by the mere fact we have the largest, most robust economy in the world, where we herald capitalism as the example of how run an economy (which I would actually agree) to other countries and apparently, 1 in 11 people is on food stamps.

Apparently, a rising tide has not lifted all boats the last 8 years, has it?

Soup kitchens. . .here we come again.

There should be a national goal of reducing that to 1 in 30 people on food stamps and let people have opportunity to feed and clothe themselves.

As far as this comment:

Wow you all better brace yourselves for universal health care for everyone when we are paying for the addicts and their MRSA infections and rehab treatment and all.

That's just what the Conservatives don't understand. . .we do already.

[StressLess]

Joan of the Arch, I was thinking the same thing, but you put it so much better than I could. I had this feeling that the reporter was either a) from a very upper class background and genuinely shocked that someone would eat canned ravioli, or b) trying way too hard to punch up the drama of the article. The two low-income women featured in the article aren't the ones using the words "reduced to" or "dependent on."

[quote=Joan.of.the.Arch]

"However....that article is really odd. If you read the few words from the foodstamp recipients themselves, I don't see any of them complaining... But I don't see the woman the article opens with making claims to be starving. The article says she has to resort to canned ravioli and peanut butter and jelly by mid-month, but do we see a quote to show the foodstamp recipient actually couched it that way?"

[LivingAlmostLarge]

My mom already volunteers trying to help people on food stamps. Considering she used to be a social worker and helped to run her department I think she's more than adequate to comment on the fact about people of any color on food stamps (and my mom's not white!). And my mother was a single parent who never went on food stamps!

So I volunteer at a food bank. There at least I get to see people who seem to need food and aren't using it for junk. It's more canned goods and non-perishables.

And how can people on FOOD STAMPS eat SHRIMP and CRAB LEGS????

I don't eat that and we make a decent income.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

It's been a while since I had it, so I'm not sure of the price any more, but Aldi's used to carry frozen shrimp, about 6-8 oz for under $2. My son used to break them up into small bits and put it in enough fried rice to serve a family of 8. I can definitely tell you I know of a foodstamp receiving family who uses it in the same way. I think that can fit into the well under $280 budget....I think the article as written might be leading us to think something exaggerated about shrimp and crab leg treats.

Actually, I think another local market sells such a packet of frozen shrimp for exactly $1, but I do not buy it because it comes from Chinese estuaries whose plant and animal products I am not confident to eat.

I've had"imitation crab meat", mostly compressed pollock turbot flakes with gelatin added, Perhaps that is really what the person in the article used to buy. It goes for a similar price as the frozen shrimp at Aldi's. I think people use it to make salads and appetizers.

[LuxLiving]

I think too that a person may eat more seafood products as part of a cultural diet or location base, more so than as an extravagant food treat. As an inlander, I'm not big on seafood and it would be a treat and higher priced in my location. Depends on where someone is located whether or not it is overly pricey.

[Homebody]

Scanner, you obviously missed my post. This is not conservative blather, it's something a little more universal in both parties.... and actually more so in the Democratic party... it's called elitism.

If you read any of the blogs on this site, a lot of these posters are NOT conservatives. Stop generalizing!

and Living Almost Large, again, the article said she GAVE UP shrimp and crab, not that she was buying them now.