scrappybadger June 5th, 2007
A few weeks ago Reps. Jo Ann Emerson, Jim McGovern, Tim Ryan, and Jan Schakowsky finished the Food Stamp Challenge. Each lived for one week on $21 for food, the average allowance for foodstamp recipients. I think it was a pretty good idea. I mean, sure, it had its problems. They knew, for example, that no matter how hungry they got that eventually they would be able to fill their bellies on their nice, high priced food again. Still, it is an interesting way to bring attention to an important issue — one that is all too often derailed by comments about giving away money and food to people who aren’t willing to work.
The fact is, there are lots of people in the U.S. and beyond who work every single day but still don’t have enough to eat nutritional meals on a regular basis. In this country too many people are spending their time wringing their hands and exclaiming that we’re all going to die of so-called morbid obesity to realize that lots of people, even the ones who don’t look like it, don’t have enough money for food. The link seems obvious to me. A small bag of cheetos, all food morality hemming and hawing aside, tastes good, fills you up with its combination of fat and carbs, and costs about $0.99 in most places. Try finding an orange that cheap.
I know how difficult it can be to find food that is both affordable and good for you. Before coming back to graduate school I was out of work for just over two years. It was shortly after September 11th, the company I worked for suffered major ad revenue losses forcing a 30% cut in work staff, and no one else was hiring. It wasn’t a good time. I was lucky enough to get unemployment, but it wasn’t much, and it sure didn’t go far with bills. Piig and I moved in together, we cut out unnecessary expenses like cable and nearly all entertainment, and we started pinching pennies extra hard. About a year into my unemployment Piig switched jobs and started working in the Art Department on campus, so we supplemented our grocery purchases with free wine and cheese at all of the local art shows while at home we ate mostly beans and the occasional veggie burger. It wasn’t rock bottom, but it wasn’t the best of times either.
The thing is, this kind of thing can happen without people even knowing — none of our friends really knew how close to the edge we were. While they half jokingly talked about being poor, we were busy trying to figure out how to pay our electric bill from two months before. We managed to scrape by, but you never really know whether the person living next to you doesn’t have enough to eat that day or the next day or the next week because you can’t always just look and tell. Many people have it far worse than Piig and I did. At the worst point we were actually able to borrow small amounts of money from family to help us make it. Without that help, the kind of help that doesn’t exist for lots of people, we would have been in far more trouble.
I would like to see people paying real attention to this issue. Take, for instance, an “expert” recently featured on a local public radio talk show about <insert scary music and circa WWII announcer voice> the Obesity Epidemic! When a caller mentioned how difficult it is to eat well on a small budget, the <announcer guy voice> Obesity Expert claimed that you can get, for the same price as a large order of fries from a fast food joint, an entire bag of potatoes. This, people, is fairytale land. I don’t know where she lives and what size bags they sell their potatoes in, but around here you could probably get 2 baking potatoes or 3 regular potatoes for that price. It’s hardly an entire bag.
We are so invested in this image of the overindulgent, fat, lazy American that we often can’t stop long enough to see that the fatest people around are also some of the poorest. We aren’t living in 1935 anymore. Skinny no longer automatically means poor, and fat rarely means wealthy. There has been a good deal of research in cultural studies to suggest that the roles have been reversed. Today’s thin, the kind that so many people aspire to, often requires money. There’s a gym membership, personal trainers, leisure time for working out, and sometimes surgery. And then there’s food. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and lean meats are expensive. Thin often comes with a price tag. Processed foods, fast food, food with little nutritional value and lots of salt, fat, and sugar — the bulk of what gives it any flavor — is cheap to make and easy for people on a budget to buy.
The lack of affordable food choices is the true epidemic.
