Living hungry

Have those who want to cut food stamps tried surviving on $30 in groceries a week?

Even as I write this, I’m hungry. The truth is that I’ve been a little hungry ever since I began the Food Stamp Challenge. Along with more than 75 other Marylanders — including Anne Sheridan, executive director of the Governor’s Office for Children; Gerald Stansbury, president of the Maryland State Conference of the NAACP; and former SNAP recipient and “Innocent: Confessions of a Welfare Mother” author Barbara Morrison — I committed to living on $30 worth of food for a week. That $30 is the average Food Supplement Program (FSP) benefit in Maryland.

We aren’t pretending that this one week is the same as being in poverty or the same as being an FSP recipient. But it will give us a flavor of the challenges that more than 795,000 Marylanders, 330,000 of them children, deal with on a regular basis, the challenge of living on a limited budget and trying to afford enough food.

When I went shopping at Shop Rite in Glen Burnie for the week, I had a plan. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to eat salad every day for lunch or dinner as usual — that was out of the budget. So were seafood, dessert, and a daily glass of orange juice. Not being a coffee addict, I didn’t have that challenge, but I was only able to get a single frozen can of apple juice for the week, plus a small box of assorted teas.

I was able to get an apple, a banana, a pear and some grapes. Not enough fruit for every day, but I’ll stretch it. I bought a couple of cans of vegetables (green beans and peas and carrots) but not the fresh need it the most. The House of Represpinach that I like so much. sentatives recently voted to gut the

Chicken quarters were on sale, so I got program by $40 billion, and the Senate four, plus a bag of russet potatoes, some would strip $4 billion. Either scenario whole-wheat spaghetti and a jar of store means less food for low-income people, brand spaghetti sauce. I also got a bag of and frankly that just seems mean. pinto beans to make soup, a bag of brown Thirty dollars doesn’t go a long way, and rice, a loaf of wheat bread, some peanut people are going to have to do with even butter and jelly. Using store discounts (and less on Nov. 1. That’s when the boost that getting 15 cents back because I brought my FSP was given in the stimulus legislation to own canvas grocery bags), I was able to combat the recession ends. Every person make it through the checkout line with who receives SNAP will see a drop in their $2.52 to spare. Fortunately, Maryland benefits. Never mind that the lingering doesn’t tax food. effects of the recession are still obvious,

Also fortunately, I didn’t have little kids here in Maryland and all over the nation. with me, clamoring for brand-name sweet It’s clear that most members of Congress or salty snacks that weren’t on my list. My just don’t get it — or don’t want to. college student kids declined to join me on If you are still skeptical, I encourage you the challenge — are they smart or scared? to take the Food Stamp Challenge. I believe My spouse also declined — too bad that if you succeed in living on the average because I would have benefited from the weekly food stamp benefit of just $30 per additional $30 dollars for the two of us. But person — or about $4 a day — you will those were choices — choices real FSP come away with a more concrete underrecipients don’t get to make. standing of the daily struggles thousands

I also have a working refrigerator, stove, of our neighbors face as they attempt to microwave and automobile — tangible stretch limited budgets into enough healtools for shopping, storing and preparing thy food for their households. You too will food that most of us take for granted. agree that Congress must protect the

What’s omnipresent is this sense of nutrition programs that are so effective in what I am missing. And the continuing improving child health, preventing hunger sense of being just a little bit hungry. for low-wage workers and their families,

It’s also what people who don’t have this and helping to rebuild our fragile econochallengemy.don’t understand. Most folks on FSP are working, or they are kids, or they Me? I’m going to bed now. I may be are disabled, or they are seniors. Some in hungry, but I’m over budget. Food will Congress want to cut the program that is have to wait until tomorrow. providing a lifeline to folks who need it — undercutting hard-working families who need a temporary hand just when they