I just finished the SNAP challenge - and it was easy

[cmerr2]

For the month of September I only spent $125 on food for myself. It was an exploration into what it might be like to rely on SNAP (foodstamps). I'm sure a lot of mustachians are easily able to subsist on much less, and it's possible, even in an extremely expensive city. Here's my article about how it went: http://www.businessinsider.com/snap-challenge-was-easy-2015-9

My overall point was that SNAP benefits are fine, and any initiatives to raise them would be better used elsewhere. This was just an exploration into the money issue - the actual cost of food, and asking myself "is it really enough?".

The comments section will be entertaining as well. I expanded a couple of points and replied a few times, but at this point I think it's best to just leave them be.

[jengod]

We were just talking about the Yahoo! News version of this article over on Mustachianism Around the Web:

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachianism-around-the-web/snap-challenge-'it-was-easy'/

So cool to see it was an actual MMM forum poster!

Any favorite takeaway tips for general healthy frugal eating?

[Cycling Stache]

The comments section will be entertaining as well. I expanded a couple of points and replied a few times, but at this point I think it's best to just leave them be.

Yes, you did a good job, and it's worth leaving alone at this point.  The most fascinating aspect of the comments sections is the accusation that you're lying to people.  You see it when MMM makes it to the mainstream press as well.  Comment after comment of "This guy is a liar.  Nobody could live on X."  After an article about how the author did exactly that, with documentation. 

The issue is really an emotional one.  I believe most people think of themselves as (1) good with money, and (2) struggling to make it.  Thus, showing that you can live well on less (than they're making/spending) gets interpreted as a personal attack on their self-worth.

[jollygreen23]

Great article!

I can't believe the biggest complaint people have in the comments is that you didn't do it longer. A month sounds like a pretty good stretch of time. Much better than the 1-week Challenge, where you could technically skip entire meals/days of eating if you had to.

We've been living well below the SNAP benefits line for 9+ weeks, now. Granted, we're not following all the rules, like turning down free food, etc. We're doing it to grow our 'stach (You know, by choice...) so it's a little different.

The takeaway I got from the article is that the amount of money you have to spend is only one factor in the cost of living. (As Mustachians, this is more obvious to us.) Being able to shop and cook from whole, cheap foods is incredibly useful, and could help solve many of the problems we have in America (overspending, nutritional deficit, health care, obesity, poverty). WHY DON'T WE TEACH COOKING IN OUR SCHOOLS?!

Now you've got me thinking. Instead of increasing SNAP benefits, would it be more beneficial to offer free shopping/cooking lessons? If I went to the SNAP benefits line and held up a sign that said "Learn to Cook and Eat for $2 a Day," would people take me up on it?

[Urchina]

This is a great article.

One thing it did not address,  however, is time.  For the working poor with kids, physical and emotional energy and time are really scarce resources. It takes an investment of time to shop, cook and clean up - and these are learned skills.  Classes that teach people how to maximize their efficiency in food prep would be really useful.

[APowers]

We've been easily beating the SNAP challenge for years now. I just tallied up our actual food spending for the last 9 months, and if we don't count the free food I get at work, we "actually" averaged $247.47/month, for four people. This is even better than the SNAP challenge for two people.

Nice article. I think it's harder for a single person than for a family, since it's harder to bring economies of scale to bear.

I reposted it on facebook. We'll see what kind of rage-storm it generates there.... :)

[Bob W]

I work in social services.  My people usually have around $90 per month in the Midwest on SNAP.   When I shop with them it takes about 45 minutes to buy an entire month of food.  So easy a social worker could do it.  When they shop for themselves their out of money by the second week and at the food pantry.   Apparently frozen pizza, soda and ding dongs are expensive.     $3 per day per person is a good amount in our area. They also have $65 phone plans and panic if their cable is cut.    Program could be improved by limiting to whole foods.only.

[Zikoris]

Yeah, these things have always seemed kind of bs to me. It really doesn't take more than a minimal effort away from Exploding Kitchen of Wastefulness to get down to that level of spending - we've been there for years now, not because of some challenge or hardship (we could easily afford to spend triple or more on groceries) but because that's just what food costs when you're cooking your meals from scratch based around reasonably priced staples. It does require you to get off your ass, turn off the tv, and spend some time in the kitchen, but... that's what adults should be doing anyway, not just for keeping costs down but for health, developing skills, and not being a lazy sack of s*** in general.

[jollygreen23]

I work in social services.  My people usually have around $90 per month in the Midwest on SNAP.   When I shop with them it takes about 45 minutes to buy an entire month of food.  So easy a social worker could do it.  When they shop for themselves their out of money by the second week and at the food pantry.   Apparently frozen pizza, soda and ding dongs are expensive.     $3 per day per person is a good amount in our area. They also have $65 phone plans and panic if their cable is cut.    Program could be improved by limiting to whole foods.only.

I like the idea of having whole foods be a requirement. But I did see a documentary where a family was eating fast food every day. They complained that eating healthy food was too expensive, and to prove it, they went to the produce section of a grocery store. 2-3 pears wasn't enough to fill your stomach, so they left the store empty-handed.  (Rice and beans weren't even on their radar.)

Maybe a sample grocery list would help? I genuinely wish I could help people like this, take them shopping, show them how to prepare food, how to budget. But part of me believes they don't want the help. It can be hard to help yourself.

[Emilyngh]

Maybe a sample grocery list would help? I genuinely wish I could help people like this, take them shopping, show them how to prepare food, how to budget. But part of me believes they don't want the help. It can be hard to help yourself.

I don't know if it's exactly that "they don't want the help."   It's just more complicated than I think it can seem from the outside.   Besides the issues of knowledge and time to cook, there's also a scarcity mindset changing how things are viewed. 

It's much easier to stomach (see what I did there) eating beans and rice when one is doing so to watch their investments grow, knowing that they'll be taking nice vacations, living in a nice home, that they *could* go out for a nice dinner if they chose etc, than eating beans and rice knowing that you really will probably never be able to afford anything else, that you don't have anything else fun or entertaining ahead really other than maybe tv, that you'r super tired from work, and that eating beans and rice doesn't seem like it would even help improve things.   Frozen pizza and soda tastes good, and it takes a large amount of will power to overcome eating this until it becomes a habit.   And it's much easier to muster this will power coming from a position of strength than from a position where your general life is harder in so many ways and you don't even have enough positive experiences that resulted from sacrifice to have emotionally reinforced that it'd be worth it.   Basically, if it feels like your life is hard and you have no evidence that it will ever be anything other than hard no matter what you do, why would you do anything in the moment other than what's the easiest/most pleasurable?   

Anyway, that's even an over-simplification, but I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-Lives/dp/125005611X

It's easy for those of us with more to judge how those with less are doing it wrong, but science shows that most of us would probably do no better if actually in their shoes.

[Zikoris]

I work in social services.  My people usually have around $90 per month in the Midwest on SNAP.   When I shop with them it takes about 45 minutes to buy an entire month of food.  So easy a social worker could do it.  When they shop for themselves their out of money by the second week and at the food pantry.   Apparently frozen pizza, soda and ding dongs are expensive.     $3 per day per person is a good amount in our area. They also have $65 phone plans and panic if their cable is cut.    Program could be improved by limiting to whole foods.only.

I like the idea of having whole foods be a requirement. But I did see a documentary where a family was eating fast food every day. They complained that eating healthy food was too expensive, and to prove it, they went to the produce section of a grocery store. 2-3 pears wasn't enough to fill your stomach, so they left the store empty-handed.  (Rice and beans weren't even on their radar.)

Maybe a sample grocery list would help? I genuinely wish I could help people like this, take them shopping, show them how to prepare food, how to budget. But part of me believes they don't want the help. It can be hard to help yourself.

What would it cost for a family (say, 4 people) to eat fast food multiple times a day? Including the cost of gas, since you can't exactly buy a week's worth in one go like a grocery store. Maybe one person and a dollar menu could break even, but it seems so unlikely a family would come out ahead by eating out constantly.

[Jakejake]

The person who said this: "imagine doing this for a very long time not just for a very short amount of time. and living off of it with a very large family ..and heck that $124 per person is a utter lie..." has some different experiences than me. I've been tracking groceries since April 14 and we've averaged $1.57 a day per person for that time. This includes consumable nonfood items too, like toilet paper, OTC meds, shampoo, etc. It's gotten easier, not harder, as I've gotten better at stockpiling good deals when they come up.

In your challenge, you couldn't use food you already had, or spices. Where you had to pay 79¢ for salt, for example, I have salt from when it was on sale for 29 cents, and I might use 5 cents worth in a month. Salsa, you paid 1.99, I stocked up back when it was free with coupons. I can pretty much go through your entire receipts like that. Only thing is I'm not buying organic meat or dairy if there's a cheaper option - but we eat a ton more fresh produce, which might balance that out a bit.

* we probably eat out once a month, maybe less - which is not figured into this, but that would bring our per person average up another 75 cents a day roughly, to 2.32. It's amazing to me that going out to eat for one meal a month can cost as much as 45 other meals that I cook myself.

[Bob W]

The person who said this: "imagine doing this for a very long time not just for a very short amount of time. and living off of it with a very large family ..and heck that $124 per person is a utter lie..." has some different experiences than me. I've been tracking groceries since April 14 and we've averaged $1.57 a day per person for that time. This includes consumable nonfood items too, like toilet paper, OTC meds, shampoo, etc. It's gotten easier, not harder, as I've gotten better at stockpiling good deals when they come up.

In your challenge, you couldn't use food you already had, or spices. Where you had to pay 79¢ for salt, for example, I have salt from when it was on sale for 29 cents, and I might use 5 cents worth in a month. Salsa, you paid 1.99, I stocked up back when it was free with coupons. I can pretty much go through your entire receipts like that. Only thing is I'm not buying organic meat or dairy if there's a cheaper option - but we eat a ton more fresh produce, which might balance that out a bit.

* we probably eat out once a month, maybe less - which is not figured into this, but that would bring our per person average up another 75 cents a day roughly, to 2.32. It's amazing to me that going out to eat for one meal a month can cost as much as 45 other meals that I cook myself.

wow that is amazing.  Could you share your. Basic goto menu?

[HAPPYINAZ]

Great article and good challenge!  Thanks for posting it.

[monstermonster]

I was on SNAP for many many years, and I actually received quite a bit more than $125 - around $178 for a single person (they're somewhat generous in my state/I was very low income). SNAP was the first time in my life I learned to SPEND money on food. I could never use up the whole amount in a month, and I shopped at a somewhat pricey local co-op and at the farmer's market (they take SNAP benefits here).  It probably helps that I am vegan so I didn't have any expensive meat or cheese to buy.

That being said, now that I don't have SNAP, I spend $125/month on average on food - and I buy nearly all my food at Whole Foods except my weekly CSA (yes, I could save more going to a  further cheaper grocery but it's only a block away, makes my life easy.) 

And PLEASE PLEASE stop all the poverty-shaming on this forum with "they don't want the help" or suggestions that SNAP benefits be even more restricted - sure, getting whole foods only would be great BUT please remember that many people that live in poverty don't have access to healthy foods in their neighborhood. Living in poverty highly correlates to living in a food desert in much of the country- the only place that many people have to go to spend their foodstamps is the corner store.* Many folks experiencing poverty have to travel once a month 20-30 miles to a Walmart to get healthy foods and use their SNAP and WIC benefits, and produce just doesn't last that long. A Requirement is not the answer. Increasing access is the answer.

*And if you want to support healthy corner store initiatives, many states have bills in the legislature that provide tax benefits for targeted corner stores to provide whole foods. Check out your state's campaign.

[2ndTimer]

Anyway, that's even an over-simplification, but I recommend this book: http://www.amazon.com/Scarcity-Science-Having-Defines-Lives/dp/125005611X
Thanks for the reference, emily.  I went straight to the library and put myself on the list for it.

If anyone is interested $250/month is more than I normally spend feeding the two of us.  I use all the tricks other people have mentioned like shopping at discount stores (We have two Grocery Outlets in our town) buying in bulk when something is cheap, and lots and lots of cooking.

Currently making one of the Hub's favorite diet dishes because he just noticed his weight is creeping up.  I am going to describe it because it illustrates so many of the principles of eating cheap and also why it can be hard for people with a limited income.

Pork Flavored cabbage.

1 head purple cabbage chopped (it was cheaper than green cabbage last week)
1 C pork broth, all fat removed)
1/4 C lean shredded pork cooked in above broth.
boil till cabbage is limp.
Eat as much as you want because it is almost entirely cabbage and flavor.

BUT:  The reason I can do it today is that three months ago I bought 20lb. of pork roast on sale, marinated it in spices in a plastic bag for 24 hours and then roasted it for a very long time.  After it cooled.  I removed all the fat to use in making bread and froze the meat and broth in many small containers.

So to cook this very cheap and healthy meal there was an expensive back story.  I have at my disposal

A vast assortment of spices
A box of large food grade plastic bags
A roasting pan
An oven
A freezer
A lot of old yogurt cartons to freeze in
Enough money to buy in bulk when I see a good deal
A car to bring a large purchase home.
A good knife and cutting board to chop the cabbage
A big dutch oven to cook the cabbage and pork in
As an added bonus I also had a mother who taught me to use all the above stuff.

Conclusion.  It's easy to be poor if you aren't.



 

[Jakejake]

wow that is amazing.  Could you share your. Basic goto menu?

It's totally dependent on the season and deals. We had a month or two when it was corn tortillas with beans, cheese, avocado. Then we had a baked chicken leg phase. Right now pumpkins are overtaking our house and I've done baked pumpkin with brown sugar as a side dish, stuffed pumpkin as a main dish, pumpkin french toast on homemade bread (ground the grain in my craigslist vitamix), and I got some hamburger buns clearanced to 24 cents yesterday so I'm going to try the bean and pumpkin veggie burgers I saw in the pumpkin thread here. Big salads with bacon are a favorite.

I've been dealing with a couple cases of tomatoes and I got a deal on gallons of sliced green olives this summer, so I've been eating a lot of diced tomatoes, green olives and feta cheese.

I just updated my journal with a copy/paste of all my grocery purchases for September. It's embarrassing that I am popping into stores every damn day, but this speaks to the privilege that others just referenced. I can stop into stores daily because I work regular hours, I have a variety of chain stores and fruit markets on my bike ride home that aren't out of the way at all, I'm healthy enough to bike so I'm not paying to get to a store (and thus having to do a big trip at once to make it worthwhile), my kid is grown so I'm not having to race back from work to get her from latch key.

[cmerr2]

We were just talking about the Yahoo! News version of this article over on Mustachianism Around the Web:

http://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/mustachianism-around-the-web/snap-challenge-'it-was-easy'/

So cool to see it was an actual MMM forum poster!

Any favorite takeaway tips for general healthy frugal eating?

Thanks so much for posting it. The feedback from this community has been amazing - you all are great.

Probably the biggest eye opener for me was how inexpensive a real farmer's market really is. I was pretty surprised that friends and colleagues I spoke with believed farmer's markets were expensive. Turns out they go to the really hipsterey farmer's markets in very upscale parts of town. There's a big difference between a farmer, and a hipster with a garden selling their vegetables. The prices totally blew my mind - potatoes, onions, tomatoes 75 cents/lb, garlic $1.25/lb, fresh berries $1.50/lb - the list goes on. It's a double whammy that you're getting super cheap things, and supporting farmers directly. Seriously, use the USDA link I provided and look for a local farmer's market.

And PLEASE PLEASE stop all the poverty-shaming on this forum with "they don't want the help" or suggestions that SNAP benefits be even more restricted - sure, getting whole foods only would be great BUT please remember that many people that live in poverty don't have access to healthy foods in their neighborhood. Living in poverty highly correlates to living in a food desert in much of the country- the only place that many people have to go to spend their foodstamps is the corner store.* Many folks experiencing poverty have to travel once a month 20-30 miles to a Walmart to get healthy foods and use their SNAP and WIC benefits, and produce just doesn't last that long. A Requirement is not the answer. Increasing access is the answer.

*And if you want to support healthy corner store initiatives, many states have bills in the legislature that provide tax benefits for targeted corner stores to provide whole foods. Check out your state's campaign.

Not my intention at all to shame anybody. The overall point of the article was that - we're doing a pretty good job making sure people can eat in this country. The statistic for 50m people who are "food insecure" just can't be correct - there's no way that many people are consistently making good food decisions and still going hungry. It's an education issue. SNAP should absolutely not be restricted, it's good where it is. It doesn't need to be increased either. Any budget that would increase SNAP, should instead be going to food education, mental health, or a homelessness initiative.

On my own Facebook, a very good friend and extremely well respected journalist suggested that I try it again without using a stove or refrigerator. At that point, the challenge is unreasonably difficult (probably still not impossible for a mustachian, but we don't hold others to the standard we hold ourselves). It's also not a SNAP issue any more, that's a proper housing issue. Giving that person $300 a month even - still wouldn't help them.

It's a complicated set of problems that needs constant scrutiny to be sure it's being solved in the right way.

The "food desert" is a very interesting point to me. I wonder what it might take to move to one of those areas and attempt to do the challenge again, and how much harder it might be? Another interesting point a good friend brought up is for diabetics, or any genuine food restriction. He looked at my meals and saw so many carbs, my diet would quite literally kill him. I've also considered doing it again with him, just to see if it's possible.

The person who said this: "imagine doing this for a very long time not just for a very short amount of time. and living off of it with a very large family ..and heck that $124 per person is a utter lie..." has some different experiences than me.

See what I meant about entertaining comments? If you're not going to believe the thesis of the article, then you've taken away all power for me to prove my point. Good job commenter guy - you win. There's literally nothing I can do to prove otherwise.

Great article!

I can't believe the biggest complaint people have in the comments is that you didn't do it longer. A month sounds like a pretty good stretch of time. Much better than the 1-week Challenge, where you could technically skip entire meals/days of eating if you had to.

We've been living well below the SNAP benefits line for 9+ weeks, now. Granted, we're not following all the rules, like turning down free food, etc. We're doing it to grow our 'stach (You know, by choice...) so it's a little different.

The takeaway I got from the article is that the amount of money you have to spend is only one factor in the cost of living. (As Mustachians, this is more obvious to us.) Being able to shop and cook from whole, cheap foods is incredibly useful, and could help solve many of the problems we have in America (overspending, nutritional deficit, health care, obesity, poverty). WHY DON'T WE TEACH COOKING IN OUR SCHOOLS?!

Now you've got me thinking. Instead of increasing SNAP benefits, would it be more beneficial to offer free shopping/cooking lessons? If I went to the SNAP benefits line and held up a sign that said "Learn to Cook and Eat for $2 a Day," would people take me up on it?

The 1-week challenge is actually extremely deceptive. A lot of the rules of the challenge that I took issue with was because of the obvious political agenda of "look how hard this is, let's increase these benefits." If you're only buying for a week and following those rules - it just decimates your ability to take advantage of any sort of economies of scale that make the challenge possible. Compounded with the other rules of not using previous food or accepting free food; it makes the challenge almost impossible.

As far as teaching cooking - YES YES YES YES YES YES 1000 times YES! I go so far as to argue that cooking is AS important as literacy. An individual who can cook will have the opportunity to use those skills 3x a day, every day, for the rest of their lives. That's more useful than algebra, history, or science. I'm not saying take any of those things away, but there are plenty of useless things taught in school that can easily be replaced with cooking to a very minimal societal disadvantage.


Thanks for all of the comments everybody! I may write some more articles on BI, and you can be sure they'll be somehow mustachian. I'm not actually a writer, so they'll be very occasional, but it's encouraging to know there are people out there who read and understand.

[Jakejake]

One thing I would change about snap benefits is to open them up to basic hygiene items - toothpaste, tampons, toilet paper, etc.  I had a friend for a while who worked in a small store, and sometimes he would buy snap benefits from customers, which is totally illegal, but I don't personally see the ethical problem with it.

From doing the challenge, you can see that people can use their dollars wisely and end up not having to spend the full amount on food. But this doesn't help them at all with the other basic needs. If they are willing to sacrifice beef and eat beans, and trade the extra in their budget to get other necessities, I don't see why that's a bad thing.

[Gerard]

I have to assume the article's hater commenters haven't actually been poor, because they're working from some bizarre notion of what "poor neighbourhoods" and "poor people" are like.

Inner city areas with no transit? Not been my experience. Plus, I see more and more people in poor neighbourhoods getting around on bikes.
No time to soak beans? Beans soak themselves! You don't actually have to insert the water into each bean by hand.
Food desert? Yes, that sucks. So you get on the bus and schlep ten sacks of cheap stuff home from the big ethnic store. That's what I did, while working minimum wage for 54 hours a week, and still sort of do, and that's what all my new-immigrant neighbours in Toronto do now.
And I say all this as a soft socialist, who'd like to see transit improve and real farmer's markets everywhere and cooking classes reintroduced into the school system. Perhaps the left/right distinction is not very helpful here... it's more a matter of people who know how to make a small food budget work (often recent immigrants) as opposed to those who don't.

[monstermonster]

Inner city areas with no transit? Not been my experience. Plus, I see more and more people in poor neighbourhoods getting around on bikes.
Food desert? Yes, that sucks. So you get on the bus and schlep ten sacks of cheap stuff home from the big ethnic store. That's what I did, while working minimum wage for 54 hours a week, and still sort of do, and that's what all my new-immigrant neighbours in Toronto do now.
And I say all this as a soft socialist, who'd like to see transit improve and real farmer's markets everywhere and cooking classes reintroduced into the school system. Perhaps the left/right distinction is not very helpful here... it's more a matter of people who know how to make a small food budget work (often recent immigrants) as opposed to those who don't.

I'm in general in agreement with your comments (lol at the bean comment!) but I think you might not have experience in a lot of the neighborhoods I'm talking about (and where I work on transportation issues with low-income populations with my job).

Many many US cities do not have transit options that get them to a grocery store- and most of the poverty in America is actually in rural areas, not inner-city areas.  The biggest food insecure areas are rural areas in the United States - particularly in the west where it is on reservations.
 Toronto, NYC, LA, Seattle are great examples of cities with good transit to low-income neighborhoods. Covington, KY, Cincinnati, OH, Columbia, SC, Dallas, TX- not so much. To assume you can just "hop on a bus" is flawed logic. Many people in this situation borrow a car/bum a ride/take a gypsy bus to stock up on groceries. And while some nonprofits work directly with getting bikes into the hands of low-income people (like mine!), the biggest barrier to bicycling is access to a bicycle and safe storage (Understanding Barriers to Bicycling report, 2009), and access to a bicycle can be challenging when you're a low-income family with kids- let alone the childcare you need while you go to the grocery store and load up your bike.


...

[monstermonster]

One thing I would change about snap benefits is to open them up to basic hygiene items - toothpaste, tampons, toilet paper, etc.  I had a friend for a while who worked in a small store, and sometimes he would buy snap benefits from customers, which is totally illegal, but I don't personally see the ethical problem with it.

THIS. So in agreement. The #1 reason for emergency hospitalization for children under the age of 10 on Medicaid is emergency dental. Cavies are the #1 diseases of low income children, particularly before they enter kindergarten. It's much worse in states with low fluoridation rates. Dental education coupled with toothpaste on SNAP really really means a lot.

[BBub]

This is a great article.

One thing it did not address,  however, is time.  For the working poor with kids, physical and emotional energy and time are really scarce resources. It takes an investment of time to shop, cook and clean up - and these are learned skills.  Classes that teach people how to maximize their efficiency in food prep would be really useful.

The time issue is incredibly easy to overcome considering the average american spends 34 hours watching tv.  Any adult who isn't severely handicapped can very easily learn to cook and clean.  These skills are among the most basic and primitive required for survival.  At some point the government is just subsidizing bad decisions - is it $125/mo, or $75, or $250?

I totally agree that throwing more money at the problem is not the wisest solution.  Completing an educational course as a pre-requisite to receiving SNAP would be worth considering.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285

[Gerard]

I think you might not have experience in a lot of the neighborhoods I'm talking about (and where I work on transportation issues with low-income populations with my job).

Many many US cities do not have transit options that get them to a grocery store- and most of the poverty in America is actually in rural areas, not inner-city areas.  The biggest food insecure areas are rural areas in the United States - particularly in the west where it is on reservations.

Thanks for that. I like that I can come on here and learn (for free!) from experts. My experience is almost entirely in large cities, where most people are within a ten minute walk of a bus stop. I'll happily dial back my point to "the majority of North Americans have decent access to either good food outlets or passable public transit or alternatives."

But I feel a strong attachment to my belief that most people posting "you suck because I can't cook beans" responses on the original website are less knowledgeable than you. :-)

In the interest of learning more, is there a formal definition for how far you have to go for your neighbourhood to count as underserved by transit? It seems like Canada's worst transit systems are the ones that try to have a stop within 300 metres of everybody (e.g., Ottawa), which results in suburbs full of empty buses and less frequent service in densely-populated areas.

[monstermonster]

In the interest of learning more, is there a formal definition for how far you have to go for your neighbourhood to count as underserved by transit? It seems like Canada's worst transit systems are the ones that try to have a stop within 300 metres of everybody (e.g., Ottawa), which results in suburbs full of empty buses and less frequent service in densely-populated areas.

This is actually a really interesting question that's more a long standing debate than a "strict" definition. There were some federal standards in the US under the last transportation bill (or was it two ago) for a program that was specifically to get low-income people transportation options to employment, but it was too workforce-y to be applicable here. I will say I've lived in multiple midwestern US cities that have absolutely NO transit at all except special services for the disabled (that's why I started biking as someone who's never owned a car). That's not uncommon in the midwest, west, and southern US. The southern US is where the highest rates of poverty and childhood obesity are, so it's where is most relevant to discussions about SNAP.

The best person I know to explain the transit tradeoff you describe is Jarrett Walker, but unfortunately I can't find a post of his that isn't very long-winded and technical. The challenge is the definition of good transit - frequent and dense *OR* serving everyone but infrequent. You've hit on the crux of the issue -  you cannot simultaneously prioritize ridership and the expansion of that transportation system to serve all areas.
In the world of buses: You could spend $1 million a year to make a highly used bus that serves the inner city come every 5 minutes, and you’d get lots of new ridership. Or you could spend $1 million a year to provide weekend and late-night bus service every 30 minutes to the low-income further-out suburbs and ex-urbs, and you’d be serving a relatively small number of people who would benefit greatly from the service. There's no perfect solution, just just have to make a choice.

Because affordable housing is increasingly further and further out of the city center (think about the phrase "drive until you qualify") what ends up happening is those folks are stuck with commuter-only bus lines. This means there's 1 or 2 buses in the morning before 9AM, and the buses back out of the city core are 1 or 2 buses after 5PM.

That means for a grocery trip out in these areas (not even minding if you work a non-traditional hours job, which are commonly low-wage jobs, where you can't get both ways to work on transit), a 1 hour shopping trip is an 8-hour commitment. You trip chain it with appointments in the city, whatever else you can, but if you have kids, you either need childcare or you need to spend 8 hours in the city with your kids, grocery shopping and going to appointments or whatever else you can do.

[Loonie Tunes]

Thank you for sharing your experience.

I think your point about the mindset and available resources is right on. However, this very point makes the exercise inconclusive. Sure, it shows that it's possible to live on the allocated amount. However, it's akin to an experienced athlete trying to prove a point that anyone could run 5 miles in 30 minutes by doing it herself, while running barefoot to emulate the conditions of a poor person who cannot afford running shoes.

I am not sure if cooking classes alone will help. Cooking is a skill - it is acquired through repeated practice. That practice requires time, effort and belief that it's worthwhile. And sometimes it will result in culinary fiascos - which are easy to take when you are learning to cook with a variety of choices for backup, should your food get charred beyond redemption, and hard if your skill, desire and self-efficacy are low.

[Loonie Tunes]

Gerard, I'm just wondering - which part of Toronto are you referring to? Eating well and cheaply is entirely possible in the downtown core; much trickier in areas such as Rexdale and some parts of Scarborough.

[Bob W]

Anyone here find it amusing.that the USA did just fine for 200 years with no SNAP program?   We were skinny,  people walked miles per day,  no one had cars and virtually everywhere fit the definition of food desert.   Just how did that work?  Obesity is the number one killer of poor folks.  Ironic as shit. 

[DCKatie09]

Anyone here find it amusing.that the USA did just fine for 200 years with no SNAP program?   We were skinny,  people walked miles per day,  no one had cars and virtually everywhere fit the definition of food desert.   Just how did that work?  Obesity is the number one killer of poor folks.  Ironic as shit.

Yeah, we were doing awesome back then, when our number one illness killers were tuberculosis and influenza, infant mortality rates were about 30x what they are now, and life expectancy was around 50 years. The good old days!!

[jengod]

Just in case anyone reading this thread is really on SNAP or may be on SNAP at some point in the future, I want to remind folks that SNAP benefits are WORTH TWICE AS MUCH at farmer's markets.

Here is an NPR story on the program:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/11/10/361803607/how-double-bucks-for-food-stamps-conquered-capitol-hill

You can also use SNAP to buy seeds and food plants.
http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligible-food-items

A wonderful cook I know says she has lived in apartments and always harassed her landlords to let her plant food plants in the ornamental garden beds at the front of the building or wherever. I thought that it was great that she wasn't the least bothered by not owning planting a proper planting ground.

[Jack]

Inner city areas with no transit? Not been my experience. Plus, I see more and more people in poor neighbourhoods getting around on bikes.
Food desert? Yes, that sucks. So you get on the bus and schlep ten sacks of cheap stuff home from the big ethnic store. That's what I did, while working minimum wage for 54 hours a week, and still sort of do, and that's what all my new-immigrant neighbours in Toronto do now.
And I say all this as a soft socialist, who'd like to see transit improve and real farmer's markets everywhere and cooking classes reintroduced into the school system. Perhaps the left/right distinction is not very helpful here... it's more a matter of people who know how to make a small food budget work (often recent immigrants) as opposed to those who don't.

I'm in general in agreement with your comments (lol at the bean comment!) but I think you might not have experience in a lot of the neighborhoods I'm talking about (and where I work on transportation issues with low-income populations with my job).

Many many US cities do not have transit options that get them to a grocery store- and most of the poverty in America is actually in rural areas, not inner-city areas.  The biggest food insecure areas are rural areas in the United States - particularly in the west where it is on reservations.
 Toronto, NYC, LA, Seattle are great examples of cities with good transit to low-income neighborhoods. Covington, KY, Cincinnati, OH, Columbia, SC, Dallas, TX- not so much. To assume you can just "hop on a bus" is flawed logic. Many people in this situation borrow a car/bum a ride/take a gypsy bus to stock up on groceries. And while some nonprofits work directly with getting bikes into the hands of low-income people (like mine!), the biggest barrier to bicycling is access to a bicycle and safe storage (Understanding Barriers to Bicycling report, 2009), and access to a bicycle can be challenging when you're a low-income family with kids- let alone the childcare you need while you go to the grocery store and load up your bike.

In my experience in Atlanta, the poor new-immigrants living along the Buford Highway corridor are much better off than the poor black people living in Southwest Atlanta. The former build "big ethnic stores" and "gypsy bus" systems for themselves; the latter don't. I do see a few black people using bikes, but not nearly as much as I should. (I can't blame the immigrants for not riding bikes; doing so on Buford Highway would be suicidal.)

Of course, I'm not sure I agree with the definition of "food desert" to begin with. My Southeast Atlanta neighborhood is allegedly one, despite the fact that I have supermarkets within 2 miles in three of the four cardinal directions (and could go to the nearest bus stop and take the bus in either direction to get to two of them), plus a Family Dollar convenience store (along with several lower-quality ones) in walking distance, plus a once-a-week farmer's market in the middle of the neighborhood. Granted, it'd be great if some kind of mini-supermarket opened in the commercial district near the farmer's market (where one used to exist until the '70s or so), but I'm not convinced it would make the difference between having access to food or not for anyone.

[Bob W]

Anyone here find it amusing.that the USA did just fine for 200 years with no SNAP program?   We were skinny,  people walked miles per day,  no one had cars and virtually everywhere fit the definition of food desert.   Just how did that work?  Obesity is the number one killer of poor folks.  Ironic as shit.

Yeah, we were doing awesome back then, when our number one illness killers were tuberculosis and influenza, infant mortality rates were about 30x what they are now, and life expectancy was around 50 years. The good old days!!

Funny I don't remember any of that from the 50s and early 60s?    Face it,  the war on poverty has destroyed families and personal initiative to a degree never envisioned.  Life expectancy for a welfare food stamp person is barely above 50 still.

[Matt_D]

Anyone here find it amusing.that the USA did just fine for 200 years with no SNAP program?   We were skinny,  people walked miles per day,  no one had cars and virtually everywhere fit the definition of food desert.   Just how did that work?  Obesity is the number one killer of poor folks.  Ironic as shit.

Yeah, we were doing awesome back then, when our number one illness killers were tuberculosis and influenza, infant mortality rates were about 30x what they are now, and life expectancy was around 50 years. The good old days!!

Funny I don't remember any of that from the 50s and early 60s?    Face it,  the war on poverty has destroyed families and personal initiative to a degree never envisioned.  Life expectancy for a welfare food stamp person is barely above 50 still.

200 years ago we were a mostly-agricultural nation... we've moved pretty far away from that.

In terms of what you remember from mid-20th-century... well, maybe your memory puts a rosy shine on things (happens to most people), or maybe you as an individual weren't exposed to the full picture of what was going on (most of us aren't). Statistics comparing then-and-now are a much better point of comparison.

[Matt_D]

This is a great article.

One thing it did not address,  however, is time.  For the working poor with kids, physical and emotional energy and time are really scarce resources. It takes an investment of time to shop, cook and clean up - and these are learned skills.  Classes that teach people how to maximize their efficiency in food prep would be really useful.

I think this is pretty important - I don't have firsthand experience thankfully, but a lot of what I see on low-income families with jobs is that either they are working more than 1 job per person, or the 1 job they have is not easily accessible, so they often spend 2-4 hours per day just getting to and from work. In either of those situations, time becomes the most scarce resource.

Additionally, it's worth noting what 2ndtimer said - a lot of the time the cheapest long-term approach is to buy in bulk, which you can't do if you don't have much money in a given month. Once you've got a system rolling it's not bad, but if you're building up your freezer/pantry it's a bit trickier starting out. Not to mention that buying in bulk is harder when you don't have a large vehicle...

Overall I think it's really worth considering what the author found, but also realizing that it's tough to put forth that physical and mental energy when you don't see the prospect for change ahead, and you don't see people around you getting ahead either. To me that's the really tricky bit - making it so there IS hope for more than just a fortunate few (who also happen to work hard, but aren't the only ones who work hard).

[jacksonvasey]

I read a book I really liked some time last year, called 'The American Way of Eating' by Tracie McMillan.  She spent like 6 months or a year on a pretty restricted food spend (can't remember what it was, no longer have the book), and also worked some interesting jobs: picking produce in CA, produce stocker at Wal Mart in Detroit, and line cook at Applebees in NYC.  She does talk about the 'food deserts' in Detroit, too.

I thought it was very well written, and great subject matter.  Interesting reading for everyone who's responded here, I think.

[Kimchi Bleu]

This has been a fascinating thread and I've learned a lot.  Thank you fellow MMM posters for sharing your experiences.  I had no clue about the lack of transportation issues or lack of child care issues that contribute to the hardships that those in poverty face.

When I was first married, I lived 45 minutes from the grocery store and the nearest fast food joint.  DH and I said we finally made it big time when we lived 10 minutes from each.  I used to buy enough food for a month since going to the store was such a trip.  I can not even imagine doing it without a car and with screaming kids in tow.

I know that I cook most meals from scratch - no box/bag cooking.  Most days it takes me an hour to prepare dinner and another 30 minutes to clean up.  That is a huge chunk of time.  Couple that with having to ride public transportation which may last for hours it is no wonder it may be easier to open a bag or box of food!

It seems that everyone can benefit from learning budgeting and cooking skills.  I wish that high schools today had required home economics classes to teach these life skills to the kids. 

[Gerard]

Gerard, I'm just wondering - which part of Toronto are you referring to? Eating well and cheaply is entirely possible in the downtown core; much trickier in areas such as Rexdale and some parts of Scarborough.

Hey Loonie, my condo is near the Victoria Park subway station (Scarborough/Toronto border). My neighbourhood is full of  low-cost good groceries: 2 mid-range supermarkets (Loblaw's, Metro), 2 discount supermarkets (Freshco, No Frills), 2 mid-sized Asian markets (Maharba, Danforth Fruit), and 2 Korean super-cheap greengrocers.

But I get maybe 80% of my groceries from the amazing giant "ethnic" supermarkets near Eglinton (Great Food, Adonis, and especially Al Premium), which are open long hours and served by very frequent buses. We all crowd onto the #34 or #68 or #24 with our nine bags of groceries, and everybody does Passenger Tetris to make it work.

I can see that the farther reaches of Scarborough could suck for both stores and transit (clearly, Rouge is designed for middle-class car-dependent people, but bizarrely has become the only neighbourhood where people can still afford a huge house). I don't know Rexdale at all. But I would guess that maybe 80% of Scarborough residents are within a single manageable TTC ride of a huge variety of food that costs far less than it would downtown.

[Gerard]

Because affordable housing is increasingly further and further out of the city center (think about the phrase "drive until you qualify") what ends up happening is those folks are stuck with commuter-only bus lines. This means there's 1 or 2 buses in the morning before 9AM, and the buses back out of the city core are 1 or 2 buses after 5PM.

Man, that sucks. The Canadian experience, at least in cities over 100K people, is very different. Either you rent because you don't qualify anywhere you can't drive, or the far suburbs end up developing good immigrant-targeted supermarkets accessible by manageable transit or elaborate like-in-the-old-country carpooling.

There are exceptions. My mom (for various complicated reasons) lives in Georgetown, ON, which might be the largest city in Canada with no local transit. She asked her city councillor why the city didn't invest in a basic public transportation system and he said, "It attracts the wrong kind of people."

[Matt_D]

The time issue is incredibly easy to overcome considering the average american spends 34 hours watching tv.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285

Note: this is a 2012 link (though I presume it's similar to more recent stuff).

However, I have to say that I'm starting to REALLY question all these TV stats. The numbers just seem too high to me to be "average" by person - are we conflating person and household? Or are the people who just have the set on 24/7 as background noise throwing everything off? I feel like I would have to work really hard to fit in TV time just to make it UP to average, never mind above average...

If anyone's interested in discussing, maybe we should start another thread...

[catccc]

http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility
So based on this site, the max benefit for a family of 4 is $649.  (The amount is reduced by 30% of your monthly NET income.  So if I earned $1K/month, 30% of $1K is $300, and my family's benefit would be $649-300, or $349.)

If I earned nothing and got $649 a month for groceries?!  Yes, that would be easy.  Like everyone says, there are other socio-economic issues at play here.  Sometimes, not always.  I know two people on SNAP and they have all the resources I do to eat in a healthy manner.  My 2013 average grocery bill (including non food items like TP) was $465.  In 2014 it was $429, reduction due primarily to the fact that DH bartered a CSA share for a few hours of work a week.

[Matt_D]

http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/eligibility
So based on this site, the max benefit for a family of 4 is $649.  (The amount is reduced by 30% of your monthly NET income.  So if I earned $1K/month, 30% of $1K is $300, and my family's benefit would be $649-300, or $349.)

If I earned nothing and got $649 a month for groceries?!  Yes, that would be easy.  Like everyone says, there are other socio-economic issues at play here.  Sometimes, not always.  I know two people on SNAP and they have all the resources I do to eat in a healthy manner.  My 2013 average grocery bill (including non food items like TP) was $465.  In 2014 it was $429, reduction due primarily to the fact that DH bartered a CSA share for a few hours of work a week.

Yeah that percentage reduction doesn't make much sense to me, seems like a pretty hard slide that would disincentivize the move from unemployed to minimally-employed (not like it's the only thing, there are a ton of disincentives, particularly if you have children who need childcare).

[Zikoris]

The time issue is incredibly easy to overcome considering the average american spends 34 hours watching tv.
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/americans-spend-34-hours-week-watching-tv-nielsen-numbers-article-1.1162285

Note: this is a 2012 link (though I presume it's similar to more recent stuff).

However, I have to say that I'm starting to REALLY question all these TV stats. The numbers just seem too high to me to be "average" by person - are we conflating person and household? Or are the people who just have the set on 24/7 as background noise throwing everything off? I feel like I would have to work really hard to fit in TV time just to make it UP to average, never mind above average...

If anyone's interested in discussing, maybe we should start another thread...

It's always seemed really high to me as well being a non-watcher, but somehow most of my coworkers seem to have a ton of shows they follow regularly, in addition to watching random stuff. There's also a suspicious lack of any apparent hobbies or interests. I think an awful lot of people head home after work, have dinner, and watch TV all evening.

[Gerard]

To hijack the thread further into TV-watching territory, lots of people spend their days at home, because of age or unemployment or disability or children or other stuff, and some of them presumably fill a lot of hours with TV, or have it on for noise/comfort. So there are definitely people out there hitting 10-15 hours a day.

[Gin1984]

To hijack the thread further into TV-watching territory, lots of people spend their days at home, because of age or unemployment or disability or children or other stuff, and some of them presumably fill a lot of hours with TV, or have it on for noise/comfort. So there are definitely people out there hitting 10-15 hours a day.

My mom has two TVs, one in her bedroom and one in her living room.  She only has one on at a time, but she falls asleep to it and plays it for noise during the day.  She also leaves it on for the dog if she does not take her "precious" out.  So people like her could be pulling it up.

[Loonie Tunes]

Thanks Gerard,

Oh yes, I know Victoria Park - my very dear friends used to live right next to the station, so I know the stores you've mentioned! Yes, there are wonderful choices. I used to live in the Portuguese village (dundas/dufferin area) - there were small-scale grocers, a Portuguese meat store and a Price Chopper within 5 minute walking distance. I also know the Annex and Chinatown/Kensington market pretty well - they are wonderful in terms of having small produce shops and ethnic markets.

However, the neighbourhoods that are eating-friendly feature one or both of the following traits:
1) they are near the subway line
2) the community was developed prior to 1949

There is a wonderful research project by the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences called the Diabetes Atlas of Toronto
http://www.ices.on.ca/Publications/Atlases-and-Reports/2007/Neighbourhood-environments-and-resources.aspx

and basically what they've found is that your postal code affects your likelihood of developing Type 2 Diabetes. There was a small study that showed exactly the same pattern for stroke in Toronto. The effects of the neighbourhood persisted after controlling for age, income and education.

[jengod]

I read a book I really liked some time last year, called 'The American Way of Eating' by Tracie McMillan.  She spent like 6 months or a year on a pretty restricted food spend (can't remember what it was, no longer have the book), and also worked some interesting jobs: picking produce in CA, produce stocker at Wal Mart in Detroit, and line cook at Applebees in NYC.  She does talk about the 'food deserts' in Detroit, too.

I thought it was very well written, and great subject matter.  Interesting reading for everyone who's responded here, I think.

Hey, she wrote a very memorable National Geographic article about food and hunger in America a couple of years ago:

The New Face of Hunger

The part that I always remember is from this photo caption: "To supplement what they get from the food pantry, the cash-strapped Reams family forages in the woods near their Osage home for puffball mushrooms and grapes. Kyera Reams cans homegrown vegetables when they are in season and plentiful, so that her family can eat healthfully all year. 'I'm resourceful with my food,' she says. 'I think about what people did in the Great Depression.' "

I live in Los Angeles, which despite being located in a desert and having a totally whack invasive-species ecosystem, has foraging opportunities in so many places. I can only imagine what free-food wonders would grow wild in a place that actually had, you know, water.

[Gerard]

However, the neighbourhoods that are eating-friendly feature one or both of the following traits:
1) they are near the subway line
2) the community was developed prior to 1949

For sure... walking/transit friendly places. And more and more you see that reflected in house prices, as buyers grow to value those features.

That's what makes some of the other places I mentioned interesting. On paper, some of those neighbourhoods should be crap. But with transit and the megastores, you can actually eat really really well (those stores sell mostly ingredients, not industrial food). But you do have to work harder to do it.

[zoltani]

Anyone here find it amusing.that the USA did just fine for 200 years with no SNAP program?   We were skinny,  people walked miles per day,  no one had cars and virtually everywhere fit the definition of food desert.   Just how did that work?  Obesity is the number one killer of poor folks.  Ironic as shit.

Yeah, we were doing awesome back then, when our number one illness killers were tuberculosis and influenza, infant mortality rates were about 30x what they are now, and life expectancy was around 50 years. The good old days!!

Funny I don't remember any of that from the 50s and early 60s?    Face it,  the war on poverty has destroyed families and personal initiative to a degree never envisioned.  Life expectancy for a welfare food stamp person is barely above 50 still.

Funny, if you really are 56 then you weren't even alive in the 50s. Easy to remember the good ole days from before our birth, eh?

[NeverLost]

I try really hard to keep my food budget reasonable while also cooking healthy and delicious foods for my family and generally I succeed.  But I have:

1.  A fully functioning kitchen with all the gadgets and spices I need
2.  A supportive husband who also pitches in
3.  The luxury to grab something quick on those days when shit is hitting the fan
4.  The luxury of getting off at 3 so I can pick up the kids, do homework and sports and have time to make dinner/clean
5.  Internet to look up creative recipes using ingredients I have on hand in a pinch
6.  A grocery store 5 minutes away

Life is stressful for all of us and I am certain that if I needed to, I could drop my family down into the SNAP range (we are just above it).  However being in that range and actually living with the stress of being very low income (while on benefits) is very different. My hat is off to single moms/dad that are able to make it with SNAP and provide their families healthy, nutritious meals.  When you add in difficulties like living in food deserts or dietary issues, that's really, really tough.

[jacksonvasey]

Hey, she wrote a very memorable National Geographic article about food and hunger in America a couple of years ago:

The New Face of Hunger

The part that I always remember is from this photo caption: "To supplement what they get from the food pantry, the cash-strapped Reams family forages in the woods near their Osage home for puffball mushrooms and grapes. Kyera Reams cans homegrown vegetables when they are in season and plentiful, so that her family can eat healthfully all year. 'I'm resourceful with my food,' she says. 'I think about what people did in the Great Depression.' "

I live in Los Angeles, which despite being located in a desert and having a totally whack invasive-species ecosystem, has foraging opportunities in so many places. I can only imagine what free-food wonders would grow wild in a place that actually had, you know, water.

Thanks for the link, I'll give that a read.