The Food Stamp Challenge

“Dad, we’re almost out of food here.  Will we have enough”

Last year, Ivan Herman wanted to know firsthand: what was it like to worry about food and to struggle to feed your family?  To find out, Herman, his wife Susan and their 2 children ate the way they would if they were earning just $23,000 a year and surviving on food stamps.  Their church has a food pantry, and Herman wondered, how do all those families get by on the other days of the month? 

One evening last year, he brought up the idea of the “Food Stamp Challenge: with his wife, as a way of getting his family to think differently about food.  The Food Stamp Challenge is a commitment encouraged by some, of intentionally eating on a food stamp budget for a set period of time, usually a week or a month.  His family agreed to do it for 40 days,

They cleared out their pantry, basically starting from scratch.  The Herman family, Ivan, Susan, and their 2 children, ages 7 and 3, lived on a food budget of $396 per month.  That was the amount they calculated they’d be eligible for in good stamps if one adult worked full-time, 40 hours per week earning $11.50 per hour.  In this imaginary scenario, the other parent was assumed to be caring for the children and an elderly parent who lives nearby.  In 2012, the federal poverty level for a family of four was $23,050.

For the Herman family, this budget meant:

            -Spending about $1.10 per person per meal.

            -Eating, most of the time, no meat or fish.

            -Cooking from scratch, which tends to be more economical.

-Emptying the refrigerator before daring to go back to the grocery store.  If they    didn’t go to the store, they couldn’t spend more money.

So what did they learn?  He discovered that people on food stamps can’t afford much fresh fruit.  When school let out for spring break, his daughter stayed home, and her not eating 5 meals at school, meant squeezing 5 more meals into the budget.  One day, he snatched a banana from the top of a trash can.  It was sitting on top of a bed of dry paper, and the peel was clean and unbroken.  He put it on the front seat of his car, to save for later in the day.

People from their church approached Herman and confided in a hushed voice, that “I was on food stamps once too.”  One day, a friend walked up to Susan in the church parking lot and handed over a paper bag of food, saying, “Take it.”  Inside was some food and a note.  The food would stretch the meager food money, the friend wrote.  “In my life I have found it easy to be on the giving end of help.  It is hard to ask for help from a friend or family member.  But when your family is in need you have to push aside such pride and be willing to take a helping hand.  So this is our gift to you, some food for thought.”