Veggies on a budget: A tough row to hoe

By Natalie Hampton 

I’m failing. I’ve failed. During the second week of my SNAP challenge my international stew was so repulsive that I couldn’t bare to eat it over the weekend, and instead reverted to my traditional weekend fare of restaurant food. I did manage to polish off the stew during the work week instead of heading across the street to my fav sandwich spot. Too much pride to do a weekday cheat after making a pledge to my office mate to stick to the budget for a month. Though I suspect that after smelling my stew all week, she may have preferred that I put a stop to my charade and acknowledge my failure.

Though the weekend’s divergence from the SNAP budget was prompted by an aversion to the gruel that seemed to be growing ever larger in my fridge, I was also feeling pretty puny. My paltry nutrition led to some unpleasant mood swings and lethargy. I knew that if I didn’t change the plan, I would have been in for a dreary weekend, unmotivated to leave my house, stuck with a fussy Natalie as my only companion. The difference between my simulated poverty and real poverty is that I could divert from the diet.

Though I knew that this experiment would be far from a true approximation of poverty, I did think that it would be easier than it turned out to be. After all, I am a fairly small, middle-aged woman, and therefore require relatively few calories. Additionally, I am healthy, live in a safe and comfortable environment, and probably know more than the average bear about nutrition. And yet, I was already experiencing the psychological effects of faulty nutrition.

I was shocked to find that I actually gained a little weight from the first week of the diet. It may have been bloating from the extra sodium I was consuming in an attempt to make my home-cooking edible, or from the copious amounts of butter I was eating to satiate my cravings. The reality is though that after being hungry all day, I sometimes cheated and binged on some high-calorie, low-nutrient comfort food at night. If I had been on a true SNAP budget, maybe I wouldn’t have had cash supplements, but I suspect that had I been dependent on SNAP alone I would have eventually purged veggies from my grocery list and given in to the call of cheap, high-calorie food.  This helped me understand the reality of our country’s sad link between obesity and poverty. While I can plan to eat all the theoretical kale I want, when the rubber meets the road, and I’m feeling hungry, fussy, and weak, affordable, high calorie food would likely have replaced the veggies once I continued to feel the psychological effects of diet. There’s a reason it’s called comfort food. Poverty can be depressing and frustrating and I understand why people choose to buy the most fat and calories for the buck, not just to satiate hunger, but also to soothe the spirit.

However difficult surviving on a SNAP budget may be, I feel fortunate that I would be eligible for the program, however insufficient, should I lose my job. I have friends who are not so fortunate. Because of a prior drug felony, they will never again be eligible for food stamps under current Missouri law. No matter how long they have been clean, and regardless of how physically or mentally disabled they may be. Missouri is one of only nine states that persist in banning drug felons for life from qualifying for SNAP (yes, robbers and murders do qualify). The policy attempted to stop drug addicts from selling their food stamps to buy drugs. Unfortunately, the policy failed to consider the reality of drug addiction. Being hungry and depressed from lack of food only fuels relapse. Not only that, but when people can’t find jobs and can’t buy food, sometimes they go back to selling drugs to feed their families. The ban affects both the mental and physical health of ex-drug felons and their children, who suffer as well. Even those who thought this 1992 policy was a good solution acknowledge that later changes have actually made the policy obsolete. “Food stamps” no longer come in stamp form, and are transferred electronically to a card issued to the enrollee, making it difficult to trade or sell food stamps.

Anyway, food for thought.

The SNAP Challenge has helped deepen my understanding of the challenges faced by real people in economic crisis. My health communication take away: don’t talk down to people who make bad food “choices.” Healthy stew recipes are great, and have the potential to help inject some nutrients into one’s diet. But that comes at a sacrifice of belly-filling calories, leaving one feeling hungrier. Nutrition education is wonderful and necessary, but nutritional education alone will not fix the choice limiting circumstances of poverty and food policy that makes unhealthy food more affordable. The reality is that until we are able to adequately address policies and circumstances that contribute to the cycle of poverty, the abundance of hunger and obesity are likely to continue.

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