This is what she bought:
The haul included limes, cilantro, corn, whole grain brown rice and eggs.
limes? Cilantro?
The problem is, I don't know anyone in that situation who buys healthy food like that. I have several friends on food stamps & they buy what is cheap, what tastes good, and what their kids will eat - basically junk food laced with corn syrup. But it's filling & it gets them by, although a lot of them have ended up overweight & with blood sugar issues. Part of the problem is access to quality food (economically) & part of the problem is education - a celebrity who has to be skinny for TV is obviously going to make healthier choices, as evidenced by the well-photographed food items selected in the picture above.
I think it was the documentary "Food Inc." that followed a Mexican family around for a day to see what they ate - 2 parents, 2 kids, $10 nightly budget for dinner. They showed how they could basically spend $10 on a bag of apples, or $10 on the dollar menu at McDonalds & feed everybody in their family. Not the healthiest choice night after night, but it didn't require any prepwork after an exhausting work day & the kids would actually eat it without fussing.
There was another good documentary called "A Place at the Table" about food insecurity that introduced me to the concept of "food deserts", where fresh produce & healthy items like in the picture above simply weren't readily accessible to people living on food stamps, with no car, who were too far away from the supermarket to make shopping for fresh food feasible.
People don't realize how bad it is in some parts of the country, especially if you have it good & things around you are decent - it warps your perspective & makes you think that everyone else has it okay too. I lived in Michigan for awhile in a not-great neighborhood & people had it pretty rough in that area...if they had to survive on $29 a week, then it'd be the dollar menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner because that would fill their bellies with zero effort.
But, I can appreciate this project bringing the issue to light. I'm not sure what the ultimate goal is - the article says it's to "raise awareness", but does that mean lobbying the government to increase the weekly amount or what? How much SHOULD it be, then? Does it involve giving people in difficult financial situations the training they need on how to make easy, tasty, and healthy food on a budget? Is it okay to even do that & remove people's ability to choose what they want to eat, despite their situation?
Plus, there's more to the situation than just food. I had a friend who had to heat her apartment with her oven because her section housing didn't have working heat for awhile during the harsh winter (at least electricity was included for free). And with no car and an 8-hour job, her workday was more like 12 hours a day with the long combination walking/bus commute. So while the cause is noble, it seems a tad bit silly to post a high-definition picture of healthy ingredients that require cooking for people who probably already have poor eating habits with limited resources on a tight schedule with low energy, with no clear objective in mind for actually changing anything permanently.
