Could you live of $21 a week?

[metta 0]

Could you live on $21 a week? I am certain that one can. But healthily or not is the big question.

There is an article this Sunday in the NYTimes that very succintly mapped out the connection between the farm bill, food supply and health (obesity).

The Way We Live Now

Here is part of it:

A few years ago, an obesity researcher at the University of Washington named Adam Drewnowski ventured into the supermarket to solve a mystery. He wanted to figure out why it is that the most reliable predictor of obesity in America today is a person’s wealth. For most of history, after all, the poor have typically suffered from a shortage of calories, not a surfeit. So how is it that today the people with the least amount of money to spend on food are the ones most likely to be overweight?

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Drewnowski gave himself a hypothetical dollar to spend, using it to purchase as many calories as he possibly could. He discovered that he could buy the most calories per dollar in the middle aisles of the supermarket, among the towering canyons of processed food and soft drink. (In the typical American supermarket, the fresh foods — dairy, meat, fish and produce — line the perimeter walls, while the imperishable packaged goods dominate the center.) Drewnowski found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of cookies or potato chips but only 250 calories of carrots. Looking for something to wash down those chips, he discovered that his dollar bought 875 calories of soda but only 170 calories of orange juice.

As a rule, processed foods are more “energy dense” than fresh foods: they contain less water and fiber but more added fat and sugar, which makes them both less filling and more fattening. These particular calories also happen to be the least healthful ones in the marketplace, which is why we call the foods that contain them “junk.” Drewnowski concluded that the rules of the food game in America are organized in such a way that if you are eating on a budget, the most rational economic strategy is to eat badly — and get fat.

This perverse state of affairs is not, as you might think, the inevitable result of the free market. Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

That’s because the current farm bill helps commodity farmers by cutting them a check based on how many bushels they can grow, rather than, say, by supporting prices and limiting production, as farm bills once did. The result? A food system awash in added sugars (derived from corn) and added fats (derived mainly from soy), as well as dirt-cheap meat and milk (derived from both). By comparison, the farm bill does almost nothing to support farmers growing fresh produce. A result of these policy choices is on stark display in your supermarket, where the real price of fruits and vegetables between 1985 and 2000 increased by nearly 40 percent while the real price of soft drinks (a k a liquid corn) declined by 23 percent. The reason the least healthful calories in the supermarket are the cheapest is that those are the ones the farm bill encourages farmers to grow.

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[MaRob 0]

If someone wanted to give me a free $21/week for food (or anything else), I wouldn't complain. Send it on over!!

People getting stuff for free have no room to complain, and are always free to take some responsibility for their own lives if they want to see some improvements in their situation. Give the five babies they can't afford up for adoption to those who CAN afford them, and get a freakin' job!

Cheers!

AKDiver

Amen to that!!!!!!

[tweety 1]

Thanks for posting the article metta! Very interesting!

[Jasman0717 9]

Neil and I spend $35-50/wk on groceries and always have lots left over. If you're creative, have a lot of the staples such as flour, sugar, rice, potatoes, onions, spices etc. you can make tons of things on a small budget. On Sundays we always have my parents, grandparents, and sister over for dinner too.

We just spent $400 at Costco yesterday and I have no idea why Our weekly grocery bill usually runs from $150 to $250, my baby loves steak

[isleta521 5]

steak is soo good. love my T-bones. Just cant see paying 8.00 / lb for it now .

[doodlebug 3]

weekly

Stop n Shop including food, toilet paper, paper towels, Tide, Bounce, etc. = $160

Coffee = $14

Lunch ('cause i'm lazy) = $50

Restaurants/Fast Food for dinner = $100

I know I'm missing something somewhere. It definitely depends on where you live though. I have a friend in NH who buys what I buy at the grocery store and she only spends about $100/week.

And the foodstamps are definitely meant to *supplement* the money that you earn, not be the entire food budget. When I shop at a certain grocery store that is cheaper than Stop n Shop I see tons of foodstamp clients and I'm always amazed at all the bling they have on them.

[KarenCee 3]

a package of Twinkies Not to gross anyone out or anything but....I read somewhere (trying to think where) that the average Little Debbie Snack Cake (twinkies too) has a shelf life of almost 27 years. Wow.

[Nessa 23]

a package of Twinkies Not to gross anyone out or anything but....I read somewhere (trying to think where) that the average Little Debbie Snack Cake (twinkies too) has a shelf life of almost 27 years. Wow.

According to urban legend, Twinkies have a shelf life of many years. While some urban myth websites have concluded this is false,[1] the photograph shows Twinkies which have been kept since 1998 with no signs of deterioration. In one small classroom experiment at George Stevens Academy, a single Twinkie, removed from all packaging, did not spoil for 30 years, although it became "rather brittle".[4] Another urban myth is that the cream inside of the twinkies ferments into an alcoholic beverage after eight years. This was also shown on the FOX TV show, The Simpsons. Also, on the FOX show Family Guy, after a nuclear war, the only thing that survived was a twinkie factory.

link

[MissStacey 1]

I easily spend about 120.00 CND when I go to the Grocery Store. This is buying some healthy snacks, fruits and vegatables and things I can take to work for lunch. This is only a few bags of stuff- this doesn't include any other staples.

Edited April 26, 2007 by Stacey33

[fozzie 41]

I could if my wife didn't insist on organic produce from wholefoods! Many of us have been stiudents, its easy to save your money for more important things like beer while eating nothing but pasta and sauce or a pot noodle.

Damn shaame that i love all that organic stuff too now.

[MissStacey 1]

I could if my wife didn't insist on organic produce from wholefoods! Many of us have been stiudents, its easy to save your money for more important things like beer while eating nothing but pasta and sauce or a pot noodle.

Damn shaame that i love all that organic stuff too now.

There is a Whole Foods close to Mels! What an incredible store!! We have only bought a few things there, specialty items. I would love to shop there all the time!!

[doodlebug 3]

I could if my wife didn't insist on organic produce from wholefoods! Many of us have been stiudents, its easy to save your money for more important things like beer while eating nothing but pasta and sauce or a pot noodle.

Damn shaame that i love all that organic stuff too now.

There is a Whole Foods close to Mels! What an incredible store!! We have only bought a few things there, specialty items. I would love to shop there all the time!!

I love their produce but I tend not to like any of the meats/chicken/fish. I don't know why but anytime I've bought something from the butcher section it just tasted "funny" once I cooked it. Their pizza is to die for though!!!!

[aya*abouelnasr 0]

I think all of us have missed a point here. It is assumed that most of these people are on public aid because they are lazy and don't WANT to work. That is not always the case. My parents had to go on public assistance years ago when my father lost his job and my mother suffered a major heart attack and was in the hospital for nearly a month. In just a short time they went from upper middle class to low income. It took them time to recover from this to the point they could finally give up the public benefits. My father finally found employment that offered insurance that would cover the nearly 500 a month for medicine that my mother needed to stay alive. It was then that they finally regained their pride. I am not one to point a finger, but I found the comment about putting your children up for adoption to someone who can afford them totally heartless. I work full time, but I am a single mother of three. I am the sole support of my children because their father is a louse. If for some reason I were to become unable to work, because of a health related or other reason, I should give up my children? Sorry, but I was not aware that children were disposable items. True that welfare should not be the main source of a persons income, but it is there for the people who TRULY need it in times of crisis. Not everyone abuses the system, it is the ones who do that have made the term "Welfare" a bad word.

[Nancy2015 2]

Kidding aside, me and hubby had to live off a similar amount of money at one point, when I didn't have work authorization. We tried to spend no more than $30 a week on groceries, and it really sucked. Thank God those days are long gone...

Edited April 26, 2007 by Jewel12

[metta 0]

Many years ago, I was forced to leave my third world homeland with just $65 though armed with a professional degree and proficiency in English. By a miracle, I received a grad. assistant ship that paid $350 with free tuition. So, I shared a one room grad. housing that cost me $120 per month. I saved $100 a month leaving $100 for groceries. And, I did okay with that. I shopped at Aldi and ate only chicken, rice and beans and occasional veggies. A 16 lb bag of rice would last me for a month and I cooked everything from scratch. never, had to cook back home but I learned to cook my native food by recall and it turned out that it was a good way to fight depression and culture shock.

But that was then and I never want to go back to that again.