Food stamp challenge
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A food stamp challenge or SNAP challenge is a trend in the
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popularized by politicians, religious groups, community activists and
food pantries A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food direct ...
, in which a family of
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chooses to purchase food using only the monetary equivalent of what a family that size would receive in the
US federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fed ...
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),
colloquially Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversa ...
called food stamps. In 2015, this amounted to
US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
194.00 per person per month, or $6.37 per day.


History

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reporter Sean Callebs did an
experiment An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome oc ...
where he spent the month of February 2009 eating only as much food as what a person could get with the maximum possible amount of food stamps. Since he was living in
New Orleans, Louisiana New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans
, this amounted to $176. At the end of the experiment, he said that he had eaten pretty well, and that the biggest drawback was a social one, not a nutritional one, because he could not go out to eat at restaurants with friends. In
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, Food Outreach executive director Greg Lukeman has led a food stamp challenge since 2008, during September "Hunger Action Month" to bring awareness of the nonprofit organization's clients. Community members, Food Outreach staff and supporters, area politicians, and members of the local media have participated and blog about the experience. In October 2010, a new documentary '' Food Stamped'', where a couple live on a food stamp budget for a week, premiered at the
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. In May 2013, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) took part in week-long SNAP Challenge during which he
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: "Living this wk on $4.80/day food budget. Got on scale this morning - lost 6 lbs in 4 days." In June 2013, Donny Ferguson, the communications director for Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), attempted to counter the popular opinion that food stamp funds were not enough to survive on. He spent $27.68 without a shopping list or coupons or discounts, and argued that at such rates, the government could afford cuts to the SNAP program as deep as 12%. He further argued that savings could be made by buying vegetables instead of rice and beans, advanced planning, and pooling of resources with a larger family stipend. Ferguson overperformed the challenge by buying enough food for and participating for 10 days instead of seven. In April 2015, actress Gwyneth Paltrow purchased $29 of food for one week, and posted a picture of the food on her Twitter account. Beau Brink, a nutrition writer for the Frisky, said of Paltrow's food choices, "Nutritionally speaking, this is a
vitamin A vitamin is an organic molecule (or a set of molecules closely related chemically, i.e. vitamers) that is an essential micronutrient that an organism needs in small quantities for the proper functioning of its metabolism. Essential nutrie ...
bonanza. But people who live on SNAP benefits don’t just have to get nutrients, they have to get actual
calories The calorie is a unit of energy. For historical reasons, two main definitions of "calorie" are in wide use. The large calorie, food calorie, or kilogram calorie was originally defined as the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of o ...
, because they tend to have very physical lives, doing service labor and taking care of children and not necessarily being able to afford a car and so forth." Brink also suggested a completely different set of food items for the same amount of money, which would have yielded 2,530 calories per day: five pounds of potatoes, two dozen
eggs Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...
, five pounds of flash-frozen
chicken The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...
breasts, a block of cheese, a gallon of
whole milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfed human infants) before they are able to digest solid food. Immune factors and immune-modulating ...
, four pounds of
apples An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, ' ...
, three pounds of oatmeal, a bag of
celery Celery (''Apium graveolens'') is a marshland plant in the family Apiaceae that has been cultivated as a vegetable since antiquity. Celery has a long fibrous stalk tapering into leaves. Depending on location and cultivar, either its stalks, ...
, 16 ounces of peanut butter, 15 ounces of
raisins A raisin is a dried grape. Raisins are produced in many regions of the world and may be eaten raw or used in cooking, baking, and brewing. In the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and Australia, the word ''raisin'' is reserved for the dar ...
, one pound of carrots, and 28 ounces of
rice Rice is the seed of the grass species '' Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima'' (African rice). The name wild rice is usually used for species of the genera '' Zizania'' and '' Porteresia'', both wild and domesticat ...
. Brink also pointed out that such a shopping list was only realistic for someone who did not live in a food desert.


Criticism

The Food Stamp Challenge ignores the ''supplemental'' portion of the SNAP program, which does not intend for SNAP benefits to be the only source of food. 75% of SNAP participants use their own money to purchase some of their food, and the remaining 25% would receive benefits larger than the average employed in the food stamp challenge. Only 20% of SNAP beneficiaries have no income; for those with income, families are expected to contribute 30% of income to their food budget. Therefore, SNAP benefits and the Expected Family Contribution (EFC) always equal the maximum benefit ($668 for a family of four). Food Stamp Challenges challenges therefore result in menus bearing little resemblance to the USDA official food plans calculated on the maximum benefit because they ignore the effect of the Expected Family Contribution.


See also

*
Live Below the Line Live Below the Line is an annual anti-poverty campaign run by the Oaktree Foundation. The campaign began as a challenge in which participants would feed themselves on the equivalent of the extreme poverty line for five days in order to gain an ...


References


External links


SNAP/Food Stamp Challenges

Dietitian's attempt at SNAP Challenge
{{Challenges Federal assistance in the United States Hunger relief organizations Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Challenges 2009 introductions 2009 establishments in the United States