The Governor of Oregon made the news recently when he pledged to live on $20 dollars a week for food last month. Now to continue the awareness campaign, local Queens Councilman Eric Gioia has sought to live on the New York state allotment of $28 dollars a week. Doing that in New York City where blueberries can be over $5 for a small package, makes it a rough go around.
From The New York Daily News:
Budgeting $1.30 a meal, Gioia plans to load up his cart with peanut butter, beans and "the cheapest bread I can find" at the local supermarket, Food Dynasty, he said.
"Often the cheapest food isn't the healthiest," he warned.
A Daily News intern who purchased $28.73 worth of groceries for a week at Food Dynasty yesterday bought a lot of canned goods, pasta and breakfast bars on sale. More than a million New Yorkers currently collect food stamps, which average $113 a month for an individual and $200 for a family.
In the nation's first "food stamp challenge," anti-poverty advocates, politicians and clergy feed themselves for a week on the federal amount given to needy people for food. They are calling on Congress to pump about $20 billion more into the federal food stamp program over five years.
It would be nice to see members of Congress take the challenge as well. The Capitol Grille for lunch can be over $100 with the blink of an eye, a far cry from the reality that impoverished Americans know. Not only does Congress need to add $20 billion to the program to keep up with rising food costs, there should be incentives as well for organic products to be made easily affordable. The facts are that in the United States, saving money at the grocery store translates into lower quality and heavily processed foods.
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