SNAP Challenge Recap

At the suggestion of my wife, Rita Osborn, I participated with her in the $4 a day SNAP Challenge.  I found it very challenging, indeed.  My meals consisted mainly of cereal and milk for breakfast, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch, and some type of rice and beans concoction for dinner.  I drank water and coffee. For one of the few times in my life, I went to bed hungry and woke up feeling hungry.  It was sobering for me.  I learned that a poor person's diet is greatly impoverished by the high cost of fresh fruit, vegetables, and other healthy options. I found even more appalling the realization that a billion people on our planet experience such hunger each day. 

I was not fully faithful to the SNAP challenge, I must confess, as our week-long experience was punctuated by a restaurant visit with our two adult daughters.  This type of "family meal" is one of my most cherished activities and it is simply not possible on a daily food allowance of $4.45.  Our Mexican meal included rice, beans, some meat, and drinks with a total bill that exceeded more than $4 per person, needless to say.  By that meal, however, Rita and I acknowledged that we were both very hungry and I was noticeably lethargic and grumpy.  Hunger is not ennobling.  Although I failed at doing the full five-day challenge, I realized how much I take for granted my ability to dine out and enjoy full meals.  

Besides feeling some physical hunger, I felt an increasing sense of anger that food choices were limited and clearly inadequate on $4 per day.  This challenge forced me to think about food deserts in poor urban areas and about massive government subsidies (i.e., corporate welfare) to agribusinesses in the USA and in other parts of the developed world.  During this time, moreover, House Republicans voted along party lines to cut $40 billion from the federal food assistance program over the next 10 years, offering draconian cuts and new rules to prevent poor people from having access to food stamps and other beneficial programs.  At least 4 million poor Americans would be affected and harmed by this legislation.  Of course, this is the same body and the same party that endorsed a "Farm Bill" in July 2013 that provided, once again, for billions of dollars in commodity subsidies and crop insurance that flow disproportionately to our country's largest farmers in "agribusiness." 

I could continue with a rant, but I'll leave this topic in the capable hands of Nobel laureate Paul Krugman who recently wrote, "Free to Be Hungry."  He points out that the SNAP program has been good public policy and sound economic policy.  In his view, the Republicans' "war on food stamps" underscores their stance as "meanspirited class warriors." See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/23/opinion/krugman-free-to-be-hungry.html?ref=paulkrugman

Before closing, I want to share insights from Timothy Egan who points out that the many people receiving food stamps live in Republican-voting rural counties.  He notes that "Among the 254 counties where food stamp use doubled during the economic collapse, Mitt Romney won 213 of them."  Some of the country's poorest rural areas are represented by Republicans who have voted to cut SNAP allocation and who refuse to approve a raise in the federal minimum wage. See "Red State Pain" at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/red-state-pain/  Iron County falls right in line as a poor county (20% of households at or below the poverty line) that is represented by a Republican who joined all of his party brethren in voting to cut the SNAP program.

I doubt that I would have paid as much attention to this legislation or the politics of food had I not also been personally affected by going a little hungry for a few days. The SNAP Challenge has been educational in many ways.