Eating on a Limited Budget
The San Francisco Chronicle's food critic Michael Bauer writes on his experience going on a welfare diet for three weeks in the 70s as a school project, trying to eat a balanced meal on 98 cents a day:
Because of the tight budget I had to make every penny count. I could't afford many fresh vegetables or even milk. I found that cottage cheese was a better value in terms of nutrition and cost. To help stretch the dollar I purchased powdered milk and ate lots of Campbell's Cream of Tomato soup, using water rather than milk. I found that in terms of meat proteins, things such as bologna and hot dogs worked their way to the top of the shopping list.
Welfare costs have changed in the last 30 years, of course, but the basic problems facing people trying to feed their families on very tight budgets remain the same. During his three weeks of having limited choices, so different from the way he normally ate, Bauer found that "devising menus became oppressive and depressive. I began to understand why fast foods became so important for people with limited income and why so many fatty foods find their way into shopping carts."
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3 Comments:
Did you guys see that Oregon's govenor is going to live for a week on food stamps?
MoxieJ at 7:32PM on 04/25/07
In "The Man Who Ate Everything", J. Steingarten dedicates a chapter to his attempt to eat a nourishing, tasty meal for as little as possible. Pretty interested (as is the rest of the book).
dmorriso at 9:26PM on 04/25/07
I can understand fast food for a person short on time and energy as well as money, but from a purely financial standpoint, none of Bauer's choices listed above make any sense. Anyone who's ever had to watch his or her budget knows that (in the Food4Less, not the Whole Foods, universe), processed foods, and particularly a name brand processed food like Campbell's Tomato Soup, are the worst. Because of dairy subsidies, for better or worse, the milk Bauer refrained from adding would be the cheapest, not to mention most nutritionally valuable, part. Seems like he's aiming more for bougie shock value than accuracy, to me. There's a reason why starving people the world over eat variations on rice and beans, and why potatoes had such a profound impact on industrializing Europe; such items remain far more healthy and economical options than McD's or hot dogs today. In the classic essay on the subject, M F K Fisher's "How To Cook A Wolf," her answer to abject hunger, as I recall, was a sludge-like meatloaf made of 1/3 cheap veggies (carrots, onions, turnips, etc.), 1/3 cheap starches (beans, oatmeal, etc.), and 1/3 cheap meat (fatty stew beef, etc.)-- a sort of super low-rent pate. Not exactly Mm-mm good, but probably not worse than a cheap slice of bologna.
Anna at 11:30PM on 04/26/07