Hunger Action Week Day 1 Round-up!
[Cook Local's $2.44/serving Egg Scramble]
Hunger Action Week has officially begun and people have begun their hunger challenge. Everyone is having mixed views at the beginning of the week. We have A TON of awesome folks taking the challenge and blogging about their experiences. Here’s a quick round-up of them!
- Cook Local is taking a the challenge in a unique way, asking, “can we feed ourselves on $12/day while shopping at the farmers markets? Isn’t food there a lot more expensive than at the grocery store?” She started the day off with a really quick and healthy egg scramble (pictured above). Check out the post to read the rest of the post and to see a caloric breakdown of the scramble!
- Eric Rivera’s Cooking Blog shared his “Naked omelette with thyme, salt, pepper, toast, and banana. Nothing inside…..not even bacon.” Of course, he gained perspective later on in the post.
- Gluten-Free Girl shared her shopping list as well as some really compelling conversations around hunger she had with fans and friends on Facebook. Getting people talking about hunger is what Hunger Action Week is all about!
- Mirch Masala, one of the many returning Hunger Challenge bloggers, gave advice as to how to take the challenge (and arguably, how to stretch your grocery dollars in general): “Always go for the store brands, especially for canned foods. There is easily a difference of 20-30 cents per can between the store brand and other brands, the store brand being cheaper.”
- Savory Sweet Life, another returning blogger, shared her shopping list for a family of 5 and had a great insight about approaching the challenge: “I remember last year feeling anxiety about being able to buy as much as I could with the budget we were given…. In general, money has a way of creating fear and anxiety when you have (perceived or actual) limited amount of it.”
- Kitchensink Unplugged talked about the trouble of having to shop on a budget: “I had to really pay attention and focus. I was constantly having to stop myself from throwing things thoughtlessly into my cart…. I shopped sales, made compromises, got some organic products, grains, veggies, lean proteins, and in the end, I was over budget by $10.87.”
- The Hazel Bloom was a bit more optimistic, “We’re doing pretty good our first day! One reason? We’re eating vegetarian today. Beans, for instance, are a terrific budget-friendly way to get satisfying protein in your diet without spending much.”
- Foodista started her day with an organic oatmeal from the bulk bin at the grocery store, saying, “it’s cheap and filling, and I actually love the taste.” I’m sure it beat my Quaker Instant Oatmeal that I had :P
- Family Friendly Food shared her previous experience and the time needed to sit down and plan out a menu on such a tight budget: “To be able to eat within the challenge’s rules, I spent a lot of time on formulating a plan which, surprisingly, worked. However, it consumed many hours of my time. I can only imagine how exhausting this would have been if I had to do this every week for months or years. Not to mention the stress and fear that my family might be hungry with no food in sight. Especially the children.”
- Dianasaur Dishes shared another great way to keep on budget — leftovers: “In my house that’s something there’s never enough of. Eric doesn’t like eating leftovers, but if I turn them into another dish, he doesn’t know they’re leftovers, and I can save tons of money in our food budget by re-purposing leftover food.”
Along with all of htese awesome bloggers, we got tons of different commenters sharing their thoughts and meals (read them here and here). Of note, Seattle Works CEO Alison Carl White commented about her first day taking the challenge.
I hope everyone is having a great start to Hunger Action Week! It’s great to see the community come together to raise hunger awareness. You can still get involved by signing up to get our emails. Sign up on the right side of your screen!
I’d love to talk to people doing the United Way’s limited food budget project for a news story. Anyone want to share their experiences?
nbartley@seattletimes.com
I guess I respect what you’re trying to do but the budgets you give, the $7, 12, 18 per day etc are enourmous amounts of money. I don’t know people that spend that much and since this challenge was shared with me it has astounded all I’ve shared it with. For people not receiving public benefits, who actually have to budget for food the numbers are more like $100-150 for two, $200 for 3 and $300-400 for four, most of the times including diapers. Even families with food allergies find your numbers high. I have celiac disease and with special foods/flours we stay much lower than this. The food benefits are inflated and enable people to purchase junk, over processed/priced foods, and luxury items like steaks and sea foods. This “challenge” is slightly ridiculous. From the blogs I discovered this on they are doing the challenge with organics and specialty items which isn’t the purpose of food stamps.
Hi Angela,
I actually stumbled upon your blog earlier and was going to comment on it. But since you commented here, I might as well respond here.
I think that while $7/day is not the worst thing ever (I think Basic Food is a great program and it really helps families and individuals), it is by no means easy to survive with.
People who are extremely low-income (and thus qualifying for the maximum food benefits) usually have a number of other hardships to face. Working two jobs, not having food preparation skills, disability, not having any form of private transportation, living in “food deserts”, etc. are all factors that most of us don’t have to deal with.
If you work two jobs, it becomes a lot harder to sit down, create a budget, and make everything from scratch. If you don’t have food preparation skills, you won’t be able to make a wide variety of nutritious meals (which makes things like Solid Ground’s Frontline program so awesome). If you have to take a bus to the supermarket, you won’t be able to carry bulk items.
I think the people taking the challenge know that they’ll never know what going hungry feels like. The challenge is made so that people can think about the affect hunger has in their daily lives. It’s a different way to help raise hunger awareness.
I could go on, but I probably should save some of this for a post :P
In the end, I disagree that food benefits are inflated. $7/day for me — and I would guess most people — isn’t the easiest and really constrains your options.
I really appreciate the comment and I’d love to talk more to about this. Because really, Hunger Action Week and the Hunger Challenge was designed precisely for this reason: to get people thinking about, talking about, and taking action around hunger.
- Yuri Kim, United Way of King County
Like I said and I hope came across, I respect the difference of opinon and challenging people do work with less than they normally do.
I do appreciate the input. Like I said, this is what Hunger Action Week is about. Good discussion on the issue of hunger.
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