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SNAP Food Challenge Sept 2011

9/24/2011 2:00:00 AM by Sara Amberg, Manager of Agency Capacity Building

Blog Nine: When God closes a door, sometimes he hands you a shovel
If this were a horrible reality show, we would be kicked off the island, banished from the island, not given the red rose. We have failed the SNAP Challenge for the month.

My husband was called to jury duty this week. Until today, he spent all day downtown, reading a book in the courthouse and losing 18 hours of pay. My husband is self-employed; he doesn’t get time-off for an illness, family emergency, vacation, and certainly not jury duty. The stress of losing income weighed on top of an already heavy month, and this morning, when there were no eggs, no bread and no milk, he threw his hands in the air and said: “We’re going out to breakfast.”

Neither my husband nor I ordered anything at Duffy’s; the kids had pancakes, bacon and juice.  But that was the last of our “food budget.”

Many families who find help at an emergency food pantry do so when their SNAP benefits run out. This is typically at the end of the month.

We could probably make it another week. We still have two packages of meat and a few chicken breasts, one container of juice, some cans of fruit and vegetables and miscellaneous odds and ends in the pantry. There were maybe two or three lunches and scraped-together dinners left in us.

I have had a lot of “ifs” for myself during this challenge. If I had shopped at different stores, would I have gotten better deals? If I hadn’t stopped planning meals the second week, would I have been more prepared to pay for the staples we needed so often? If I had bought less meat and frozen meals would we have had backup for when the money got tight? If I had spent more time thinking about or strategizing my shopping, my coupons, my choices, would we have made it to the end of the month? If it had been a normal month, when nothing broke, no one got sick, and the cat didn’t die? Then . . .

Those are easy questions to contemplate with money in a bank account, a working car, a steady job, reliable health care and a loving support system. But under extreme stress, facing unforeseen circumstances, having little time, and relying on no education, these questions seem ridiculous, unrealistic and almost – painful.

I once mentioned that food insecurity is tied to a lack of resources. The main missing components are obvious: adequate access to proper nutrition and the financial capability to provide that access. But other resources needed to address food insecurity include a whole grocery bag of assets from emotional encouragement to basic life skills. My family is blessed with all these valuables, and yet we couldn’t meet this challenge.

The Census Bureau recently released statistics that indicate 15.1 percent of our neighbors were living in poverty in 2010, the largest estimate since records began in 1959. What the statistics also indicated is that SNAP was the only factor that helped struggling families. Because of SNAP, 3.9 million people, including 1.7 million children, were lifted above the poverty level.  But rising above the poverty threshold, or $1,863 monthly gross income for a family of four, is not in my opinion, a “lift” but rather a life-vest.

Our record-high rates of hunger, poverty, uninsured individuals and failing health statistics cannot simply be coincidences. Right now we have “safety-nets” that include the words “supplemental” and “emergency.”   It seems we need something stronger than nets to offer struggling families.  Plans with more “secure” words like “growth” and “permanent” would seem t be in order.  And the last thing we need is to cut off life-support all together.

Since we have still 9 days left in the month, I will wake up tomorrow and continue to save our pennies. I am going to try to figure out what the gap is. What more would we have needed to make it through the month – and not by the skin of our teeth?

For my next blog, I interview my husband. Stay tuned for his “version” of the challenge.

Blog Eight: No Easy Way Out

 

This will be a short blog because it has been a long week, and the Challenge is beating me.

I caved. I picked up the kids on Tuesday after school and bought them “special drinks,” also known as slushies and a bag of Fritos. I splurged for a 32 ounce Diet Coke for myself.

I caved for a host of reasons, all of them emotional: bad news about my health, missed both exercise classes, too many long work nights, forgot to pay a bill and the list goes on and on. I was stressed out so I spent $6 at QuikTrip.

But that’s not the only money squandered because I was tired or sad or worried.

I have started to make bad decisions: a few 2 liters of soda, cake mix, apple parfaits and my special Gluten-Free crackers. So I leave my husband with my poor choices and very little grocery money for the next two weeks.

We have $62 left and I am handing all the shopping over to him. I am officially out of the store.

I don’t think we will make it to the end of the month, and my husband is doubtful as well. But, even if we fail, we will continue to tell you how much we are spending until the end of the month – perhaps, identifying the gap so often discussed: the missing money in the food budget of a food insecure family.

My husband was right all along. I’m not good at grocery shopping. But I’m not sure it is because of my lack of ability or planning. It’s more about my impulses and my lack of time.

The worst part of the past few days is that I knew that at any moment I could go to the supermarket and fill up two or three carts of food, pay for it, and not sweat over it.

But I keep trying to stay with the challenge, because I know that there is someone else who has also had a bad week, who is stressed and who is stuck right where I am.

Except, he or she probably makes less than $1,800 a month; may not have health care; may have an electricity bill from the hottest summer on record lying on the kitchen table with a cut-off notice; or may not be eating tonight, because the kids eat first. For that Oklahoman – there is no easy exit plan.

I have seen two people using their SNAP cards this week: one elderly woman and one small boy. The woman was at the grocery store in the line in front of me. The clerk told her she had only $35.42 left. She ended up leaving most of her basket behind, and of course, she had to scrounge through her purse looking for enough change to pay for one of the household items that SNAP doesn’t cover: toilet paper.

The boy was actually at a convenience store, trying to buy a cup of ice and a bottle of RC cola. The clerk ran the card over and over, but there was no money on it. He went out of the store and back to a van. And I saw a woman digging under the seat for the change he needed. I didn’t think about that soda or who was in the car.  I only thought of that 10-year-old boy and the embarrassment written all over his face.

People like to finger point at people on SNAP, and list all the reasons they are responsible for how they got where they are. But today, when I counted our food receipts; when I looked at my horrible wastes of money; when I thought of these two individuals whose need and stress were real, and whose desires were real – I remembered my philosophy teacher from high school.

He instigated a discussion in class about homelessness. Should we give a homeless man money or just hand him food? What if he spends the money on alcohol? What if he trades the food for drugs?

My teacher said, “Blame and judgment are the easiest ways out of dealing with the present, of handling a difficult situation right then and there. It is a method of avoidance. The question is not about the homeless man at all, but about you. Do you want to be in his shoes?”

Thank you, Mr. Shecter.

We can’t ignore a wound because of the story of the injury. We treat it. We treat it right away and we treat it until it is healed.

For the remainder of my blogs, I will let you know how my husband is doing. But I want to look at SNAP holistically, too. Nothing is really short or sweet, is it?

To join Sara and her family for one day, one week or one month, email her at samberg@cfbeo.org

Stay tuned for the next blog:

 

 

 

Blog Seven: Hungry and Breaking the Rules

The 2010 Food Insecurity Report was released on Thursday, and the results for Oklahoma were disheartening. The number of overall food insecure people, those who report a reduced quality or variety of diet due to limited resources, rose yet again.

But more startling is t hat our state is now tied with Arkansas as the hungriest state in the nation - the highest in very low food insecurity. More of our neighbors are not only struggling to provide food for their families, they are also physically suffering.

Because I was hungry during the day and traveling as well, I broke one of the Challenge’s rules:  don’t except free food.

I found myself scavenging buffets at the end of special events; drop-offs in the staff break room; and trays of cheese and fruit outside a meeting room. And, I was eating anything and everything. I have eaten items containing Gluten almost every day. I have eaten pastries. I have eaten potato chips.

I was making bad choices, and then on top of that, when I came home for dinner, I ate three times what I would normally eat.

I have had people ask me: “If so many children are hungry, then why do we have an obesity issue.” It does appear to be a paradox: a state that is both one of the hungriest and one of the most obese. Now, I think of it this way:

     1)       Think of all the old-fashioned weight-loss diets out there: you deprive your body of food only to eventually break down and eat enough food for three days in one sitting; or you loose 50 pounds, only to gain back 60 pounds a few months later. Depriving your body of food alters your metabolism; you are telling your body to store up fat to protect itself from starvation. Those who are food insecure, who are skipping meals when money is tight and then overeating when food becomes available, are vulnerable to this same kind of weight gain. Add a lack of proper health care, high levels of stress, a neighborhood without a decent grocery store and you’ve compounded the problem.

     2)       As it was with me this week, when I restricted my food intake, I developed an unhealthy preoccupation for food. I thought about it all the time. Looked for it constantly. And then, I would gorge myself.

As I write this blog, I am thinking again about that connection again between resources, health and food insecurity. And again, my mother-bear instincts flare up. If we had limited resources and low access to healthy, affordable foods; if I had to stretch my budget as far as I could; if my day to day was a “feast or famine” situation, then how would I react.

I return to that word “insecurity” again, but it is almost to hard to think of that kind of challenge.

To join Sara and her family for one day, one week or one month, email her at samberg@cfbeo.org

Stay tuned for the next blog:   

 

 

Blog Two: The Rules versus the Reality. What's Missing?

                

1.      Do not spend more than your allotted amount for anything you consume, including beverages.

After totaling our monthly grocery bills, we determined that we spend three times the budget we will tackle in September, and that amount includes only supermarket items.

It’s not that we don’t shop for deals, cut a few coupons, or pick the better price on the shelf. But, we don’t JUST shop based on price; we also buy items based on nutrition for our two little ones: lots of milk, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, whole grains, and less sugar. And the prices for those items have skyrocketed this year.

Under the 2008 Farm Bill, the food stamp program changed its name to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The new name speaks for its self: the program is not intended to be the sole source of food, but rather to “supplement” a food budget so low-income families can incorporate healthier, more nutritious options ­- like that bag of Porter peaches, the green leaf lettuce, and the whole-wheat bread that my family has the resources to purchase. 

When the Recession went from a rain storm to a hurricane, SNAP participation went from 27 million nationwide to now 46 million recipients, according to the USDA. Roughly 15 percent of the population is on SNAP. And about 40 percent of those households have one working member. 

The face of those receiving SNAP has changed. And in many cases, it is not a supplement anymore; it is the only safety net for food that families have available to them.

So, my family’s food budget is not just about the grocery cart. It’s also about the pizza delivery, the Chinese take-out, and the 44 ounce fountain drink. It’s about the money, which if we were scraping by, would be spent on items other than food, like utilities or gas.

2.      Do not use anything already in your pantry, except for spices and condiments. 

When a household applies for food stamps, the application process can take up to one month. If my husband was to loose his job and we were to go through our embarrassingly meager savings while maxing out all our credit; we would still have to wait up to 45 days  for food assistance once we tucked all our pride into our back pockets and headed to the Department of Human Services.

Food insecurity doesn’t just arrive one day. So, we can’t begin our SNAP challenge with a pantry and a refrigerator stocked with butter or 2lbs of flour, much less with those eight cans of vegetables, three bags of rice, and a fruit bowl overflowing with plums and apples.

My husband and I decided early last month to start “eating” out the refrigerator. As of August 30, the fridge and freezer look pretty bare, enough to clean it without moving anything. We’ve been to the grocery store for toilet paper, soap, and a few miscellaneous items, but few shelf-stable items. And yet, we still have a lot to eat in the house, enough to get us through another ice storm.

So, on Sept. 1, we will remove most of the canned goods and items. I will box it all up and give it all away. All except that ridiculous can of asparagus.

3.      Avoid accepting food from relatives or at social gatherings.

It just so happens that Labor Day, the weekend of indulgent barbecue, precedes Hunger Action Month. And the reasons behind this rule of the SNAP challenge seem odd. Why can’t you eat at a friend’s party or have Sunday dinner with your relatives? Wouldn’t someone on SNAP do the same?

While we are counting are blessings when it comes to food, we often forget about the other ones that keep us “secure.” My family has two sets of grandparents, including one in town. We have sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends and a church community – all with the means to support us if and when we need it.

But not everyone has this luxury, the one that keeps us one rung up on the ladder of food security – personal assets. When I look back at the last ten years, and then take family out of the question, I realize what would have happened: serious food hardship.

Of course, asking for help from anyone is difficult. Pride is a powerful emotion, and one that is hard to swallow.

So, we take this challenge alone. As many families, seniors, and children do every day.

To join Sara and her family for one day, one week or one month, email her at samberg@cfbeo.org

Stay tuned for the next blog:

 

 

Blog One: Deciding to Take the SNAP Challenge

 

I don’t worry about food. I question it.

Do I need to stop and get mushrooms for the chicken tetrazzini?  Are those leftovers still good? Should I really splurge on those overpriced cherries? Can I get one can or two?

I am food secure.

However, food insecurity, which is defined by the USDA as the “limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods” due to inadequate resources, afflicts millions of other families every day. It leads to missed meals, to hunger, to long-lasting consequences.

That word, “secure,” troubled me when I first started working at the Community Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma.  I have two small children, four and six, and their safety is an every-second thought – not just of a fastened car seat or hand-holding in a parking lot – but of that hug and kiss that tucks them into bed each night. So, the idea that 1 out of 4 children in Oklahoma are not “secure” when it comes to food frightens that Mom in me.

For over 200,000 children in my state, the question is often not what’s for dinner – but what day is dinner.  Having that kind of fear for my family, even for one night, is unimaginable to me. So, I decided to accept the SNAP Challenge for September’s Hunger Action Month.

At first, of course, my motivations were near-sighted. I love a challenge. Could I survive on $4 worth of food a day, $21 a week, or $84 a month? I’ve gone a whole year without sugar. I’ve fixed a tire on the side of a highway in high heels. I’ve traveled through war-torn Kosovo. I can do this.

But ultimately, this was not my decision, but one that would affect my whole family.

To accept the Challenge, we would have a food budget of about $336, close to the average “household’s” monthly supplemental food assistance.

I slowly slipped the SNAP Challenge rules into casual conversation with my husband: no eating out; SNAP approved items only; foregoing our already stocked pantry and refrigerator; and avoiding meals with relatives or at social events.

I don’t know,” my husband said. “I want what I want when I want it.” He was joking, but as Will Rogers said, “I have always noticed that people will never laugh at
anything that is not based on truth.”

Several days later, my husband said he would accept the challenge on one condition: “You get half the money for the first two weeks, and I get the rest for the last two weeks.  We need to stick to a budget.”

I was livid. He thinks I don’t buy food wisely. But I was even more outraged, because the challenge was suddenly about budgeting. It isn’t about money, I naively argued. It has to be about —

Sustenance. Support. Assets. Empathy. Humility. Blessings.

I’ve since read blogs about other people’s SNAP Challenge experiences: how they struggled to plan meals, use and reuse food, stretch every dollar. Many came to realize the luxury of a $7 Latte, and eventually grew more self-aware of the role of food in their own lives, which is a grasp at some kind of understanding of food insecurity.

I see those blog reflections to follow, plus two spoiled-rotten kids thrown into the mix.

Of course, my husband and I are still debating about the SNAP Challenge, but not about whether we are going to tackle it. We start Sept. 1.

Now it is about the rules. The rules define the “challenge.” They are simple instructions to a final goal: make it or fail miserably. Examining the challenge itself has become part of our experience too.

How can this one-single month of inconvenience compare to the complexity of a hardship that we know nothing about?  We will still be food secure come October.

To join Sara and her family for one day, one week or one month, email her at samberg@cfbeo.org .

Stay tuned for the next blog: The Rules versus the Reality: What’s missing?

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