Every so often I see various food stamp challenges – the idea is to see if you can eat healthily within the dollar guidelines that the food stamp allotment your family would receive.  Sometimes it’s for a week (which imo is a joke) and sometimes as long as a month.  I have yet to see a challenge like this that is encouraging and helpful (that doesn’t mean they aren’t out there, just that I haven’t seen it).  I think the point of a food stamp challenge should be to see how to eat healthily with limited dollars and then show people what you’ve done. 

Instead, the consensus of the 3 or 4 challenges I’ve noticed over the past couple of years has been basically the same: it’s impossible to eat well on such a small amount, food stamp participants are penalized with bad health because they are limited to low quality food, and the government needs to do more to make high quality food available to everyone.  Yada yada yada. 

Well, I don’t agree- at all – and that’s why I’m finally posting on a topic I’ve considered writing about for two years.  I think the US government food stamp amounts tend to be very adequate, even generous, particularly when people know how to budget or shop well.  The problem lies more in the lack of nutritional education and accountability than anything else.  And most people really don’t have much of a clue about how to effectively budget their food dollars well – teaching people how to make their dollars stretch in additional to nutritional education would end the supposed problem.  But that’s as political as I’m going to get about this topic, because this gets overtalked all the time and I think it’s a lot more valuable to focus on how to use food stamp dollars well than why it’s impossible to manage. 

I think that most of those doing these challenges are somewhat guilty of nutritional elitism.  And I think that it’s good that there are those who are looking at the larger political picture and trying to make improvements.  But as wonderful as it would be if  we all had affordable mainstream options for local organic produce, grass fed beef, etc, people aren’t doomed nutritionally if they can’t afford it.  How to manage well within less than the ideal options is something that seems to get glossed over.   Most of us have to face non optimal choices sometimes, and we do the best we can with the resources that we have.  

Over time I’ve shared a number of strategies I’ve used to keep our family well fed on a limited budget ($600 monthly for our family of 11).  Eating healthfully is important to me (we eat according to traditional foods guidelines – aka Weston Price/Nourishing Traditions), and I have the additional challenge of keeping kosher, which limits many of the bargains that a non kosher shopper could take advantage of.  The huge majority of the suggestions I make could be used by food stamp participants as well as everyone else.  So I’ll do a quick overview of some strategies that are applicable –  my apologies for being redundant for those of you who have been reading a while and know all of this already!

First of all is where to shop.  Since the first food stamp challenge I read about a couple of years ago, I’ve made mental notations about which stores I shop at take food stamps.  All the major supermarkets take food stamps, including Trader Joes and Whole Foods.  Hitting the loss leaders and stocking up when things go on sale is the way to go.  An obvious caveat is that like anyone else with a limited monthly food budget, even if something is on sale, a food stamp shopper would have to buy smaller amounts in the first month, gradually building up the amounts they can stock up on as their sale stocked pantry builds. 

I like to buy vegetables at a small ethnic grocery store (they also accept food stamps).  Their prices are better than the big supermarkets, the produce is fresher, and they often have vegetables that are marked down because of blemishes.  I’ve spoken to the manager there and a number of times bought cases of what I’ve wanted at an additional discount.  I rarely go to farmer’s markets, but I’ve heard that some of the larger stands are set up to accept food stamps.  The prices are best if you go at the end, since they often will lower the price so that they don’t have to pack up their veggies and take them home.   When buying any kind of produce, seasonal is usually cheaper than out of season produce.  You can load up on the inexpensive vegetables instead of the high cost ones.

The discount grocery stores and salvage stores I shop at are a mixed bag – the Amish owned stores don’t take food stamps, but the rest I’ve gone to do-  regardless of who owns them, they basically all have the same prices.  These stores are a nice bonus to the budget, but I wouldn’t say someone who doesn’t have access to these is doomed financially (many states don’t have them, including my own) – they allow me to buy some things I would otherwise would avoid for the most part.  Most of what they sell is processed food, which I avoid.

I buy in bulk through regular supermarkets and health food stores – as mentioned, these stores accept FS.   This is how I buy wheat berries and sucanat, for example, since we don’t use white flour or white sugar.  I also get coconut oil in this way.  I don’t recommend shopping at warehouse stores  because I don’t think they’re economical, but it seems that although most of them don’t take food stamps, one or two do.  I couldn’t check this out personally since I don’t shop at these stores. 

Buying directly from the source, as I do for my raw milk and pastured eggs, won’t be an option.  However, there are other options at health food stores that may not be ideal but are still much better than the mainstream – they tend to be pricier than the less healthy option but by shopping frugally it makes room for the items that are more expensive.  I’ve even found organic milk (and even grass fed, though all homogenized) from time to time at the discount stores.  And you know what?  If someone buys regular milk and eggs, then that’s okay, too.  That’s not the main thing destroying the health of this generation. 

Then there are other things that may be cheaper directly from the source but are available in the stores, like the raw cheese I recently discovered.  Someone using food stamps would be better off buying it in the store instead of buying at a cheaper price directly from the source so they don’t have to take money out of their pocket. (By the way, Trader Joes has raw cheese at a great price for non kosher consumers.)   Use these pricey foods as condiments instead of as a main dish, and a little can go a long way. 

Processed foods are always going to be more expensive than buying the ingredients yourself, and  buying the ingredients instead of a more ready to eat version is always going to be where you save the most money.  There are the obvious things like beans and grains which help a food budget go far, and especially when soaked and prepared properly, are very nourishing and good for you.

There are so many more possibilities to mention, but I think I hit the main ones.  So while the food stamp challenges continue, know that eating healthfully is within the reach of the vast majority of us, even when our budgets are very limited!

Avivah