Food Stamp Diet: If you think you can eat well on $5-7/day, could you do so without a car?

[CreekDog]

How much money towards gas or public transportation would it take to prepare to eat on just $5-7/day?

How much is the most you would spend on any one trip or any one or two days at the store to eat on $5-7/day? (for example, you eat on $5/day, but you have a big shopping trip where you need to lay out $75 all at one time or over the course of a day or two as you accumulate needed ingredients.

Also, can you do it starting with little or nothing, no extra money in your accounts and no extra food in your house?

Is the assumption that one can live on $5-$7/day for food based on the assumption that a person in poverty can fork out $50/$100/$150 every so often?

Is there an assumption that a person in poverty has the stores in their neighborhood so that they have no need for a car to shop "correctly"?

Is there an assumption that a person in poverty has a car, insurance, and resources for gas to take them to a store that enables them to shop so that they can live on $5-$7/day?

And I haven't even brought up people who live in single rooms without kitchens/sinks/etc. but let's at least start with transportation and enough money to outlay enough to buy in quantities that allow one to get good deals.

To paraphrase an old saying, does it take money to be able to make good financial decisions?

:shrug:

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. You're right. It's interesting how everything gets ignored, as if humans magically could get meals

out of the sky and pay for them on the spot.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Cronus Protagonist]

3. Bulk ramen noodles - shop on your bike

Easy. College students do it all the time. Not balanced, not nutritious, not good, but do-able.

[CreekDog]

5. i don't know any college student that only ate ramen noodles

if you say you know such a thing, that is either dishonest or ignorant.

[Cronus Protagonist]

13. Let's see your reasoning here...

Since YOU don't know anyone who does that, I must be either dishonest or ignorant.

I truly hope you didn't go to college as I'm sure there are millions of people who would do so much more with their education than you have.

[CreekDog]

18. you're the one who said college students live exclusively on ramen "all the time"

and i went to college, at plenty of ramen, had roommates who ate ramen regularly --but not one, even among people i knew who spent very little on food, that ate ramen all the time.

and that's what you posted.

if you meant something else you should have posted something else. it's not my fault you didn't mean what you said and it's not my fault that your post sounded as stupid as it did.

you want better responses to your posts? post better.

[Cronus Protagonist]

23. Oh dear.

I said college students ride to the store on their bikes all the time... (which means "often" in US conversational English). I did not say that all college students always eat Ramen noodles all the time. I bet you had a hard time with the SATs... you are clearly far too smart for common colloquial communication.

And even you concede that you know college students eat Ramen often. I know a few students who will tell you their staple diet is Ramen. If they were to live on food stamps, they know how to spin it out with Ramen, which they can easily purchase using their bicycles.

[sammytko]

27. One of my Air Force team members did this all the time when we went TDY

He would eat tuna or peanut butter and jelly. He saved ALL his money. When we were in Missouri, he'd go fishing and eat that during the week.

He invested his money and when he got out, he was close to millionaire status. This was in the 90s. He said he wanted to travel to China and help poor people. He didn't do it for himself.

[Gormy Cuss]

31. Two things: at any time he could have changed his eating habits because he had the means,

and he wasn't eating a nutritious diet if that's all he ate. I hope he was taking multivitamins.

[handmade34]

10. not always so easy

bikes are not easy to come by for some people...

[Cronus Protagonist]

16. I walk to the store and hand-carry everything I eat home with me

I can easily carry bulk ramen noodles home from the store.... I guess it depends where you live. If you go to USC, for example, there are at least ten or more fast food restaurants within a three block radius, and each of them sells burger/chicken/taco/salad meals for under $5 each.

Again, not particularly nutritious, but no one would starve on that food... they might get fat, though, but walking or biking to taco smell might offset that a bit.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. 'Not balanced, not nutritious, not good' - so, not 'well'

All in all, it's a bit of a red herring. The thread title says 'eat well'.

[Cronus Protagonist]

17. True, as I noted, the food is not eating "well"

Since we're talking about food stamps, or EBT as we call that here in CA, the red herring is in the OP, not in my post. Food stamps are not for eating well, they're for staving off starvation.

[CreekDog]

19. Don't blame me for posts/words you regret --I asked if you could eat well and you said "Easy"

if you didn't mean that, then you should have said, "no, i couldn't eat well, i could only eat".

don't after the fact say your answer would have been correct if i reworded my question.

who are you? :wtf:

[Cronus Protagonist]

24. *PLONK*

:hi:

[awoke_in_2003]

25. "they're for staving off starvation"..

wow, that is just about as awesome as telling the Cherokee to "Endeavor to Perservere" (Outlaw Josie Wales). With all the wealth in this country, we can just help people stave of starvation. This country is pathetic.

[Mojorabbit]

21. I could do nutritious and filling

with cilantro,onion, whatever veggies cheapest that week, black beans, and rice ex but it might be a monotonous diet. I can also make four or five dinners out of one chicken. I grew up in a house with 5 kids and parents that scrimped. I learned how to stretch meals. It would be harder if one was not used to cooking from scratch.

[Gormy Cuss]

30. You mean, college students who can run to the Bank of Mom & Dad when all else fails?

I never, ever, met a college student who lived on just a ramen noodle level diet. I met lots who claimed to do so, but the reality was they always had some other source for food.

[JVS]

37. That shit catches up with you if you try to do it years on end.

[handmade34]

4. excellent

very relevant questions that many people never think of... I can live on $5-7/day (don't now and don't want to have to) but that is just because I have the luxury of knowledge and experience... but it is nearly impossible to do it without access to the right store and place to prepare food and many other factors...

[CreekDog]

9. i could probably pull it off if i carefully plan and then load up my car

after driving to the perfect stores to get the things i need at the right prices.

[intheflow]

20. Maybe do-able if you live in a heavily concentrated area

like Boston, NY or DC. But here in Colorado, where everythig is spread out over 50 miles, I spend a fortune on gas getting to the "right stores" with the "right prices." I work trips to the discount grocery stores around other errands I have to do in the general direction, usually only hitting them once a month or so. If I had nothing, was starting my life over from scratch, I would be hard-pressed to stock my kitchen so I could eat cheaply right away with $150/mo. of food stamps given the cost of gas to the discount* stores.

*By "discount store" I don't mean WalMart or Sam's Club. I'm talking about discount grocery stores that sell dented cans and squashed boxes and soon-to-expire foods the regular supermarkets have taken off their shelves.

[lunatica]

6. And if that car's brakes go, then what?

You have a choice on whether to eat or fix the car.

[PoliticAverse]

7. < $5/day is my food budget and I don't have a car.

I have a bicycle (the supermarket is 7 miles away). And I'm mostly vegetarian.
It's difficult to start from little or nothing as it helps for you to wait for sales and stock up.

And I've done it at times without a kitchen (using only a ~ $20 rice/multi cooker).

[RebelOne]

8. I couldn't do it without transportation.

I live in an area where there is no public transportation. Without a car, a taxi is the only alternative. So I doubt that a poor person without transportation could afford a taxi to go to the grocery store.

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. I'm on social security, and oddly that IS my food budget...$5.00...and I don't have a car

so the bulk markets are out.

Considering that you can spend $5.00 on a cup of coffee these days...

[Edweird]

12. I suspect that most people with 'all the answers' wouldn't last long.

[surrealAmerican]

15. It's a good point.

I'm one of the few people who do all their shopping on foot, but not many people have that option, and it is time-consuming.

[wickerwoman]

22. And it's a health/fitness question as well.

I don't have a car and have to climb a *huge* hill to get back from the grocery store with 40 or 50 pounds of groceries on my back. Even after doing it for a year, there's weeks where I feel really, really ill and have to keep stopping. I used to break it up into two trips a week when I had time, but that's not practical with a full work schedule.

No way a disabled person, or someone over sixty would be able to do that. It's not practical for families with small kids either.

And I pay a premium for a tiny, centrally located apartment that lets me walk to work and to the stores.

[izquierdista]

26. I have a back yard full of food

I just harvested squash, sweet potatoes and peanuts, enough to last me for quite a while. I have plenty of pickled okra, radish, turnips and beets that I put up that will last for months. I have collards, mustard greens, chard, turnips, onions, arugula and lettuce growing in abundance and can continue to harvest them until spring planting season rolls around. On the downside, the chickens have quit laying for the winter, so I'm going to have to buy eggs until February or so. Would $5-7/day buy things like meat and bread and milk so I could "eat well"? Sure.

I'll admit I live in a rural area where it's possible to have a productive garden. Yet, I know there are people dealing with poverty that aren't able to do so. Sometimes it takes a little farming (or gardening) know-how to make good financial decisions.

[bigmonkey]

28. People who have no experience with poverty misunderstand the negative synergies involved.

It might be possible to arrange your life, if you have the resources, to minimize the cost of one aspect of your activities, but the real poor person has no such opportunities. Car may break down, health problems related to poverty, fees related to inability to pay on time, inability to buy in bulk because you don't have that pile of capital, transportation costs, lack of anything but inefficient methods to achieve other tasks taking up much of your time, the list goes on and on. Much different than thinking, as a puzzle, of novel, standalone, cost reduction schemes.

[CreekDog]

35. that was what I was getting at

i saw so many threads where people said they could eat on $X per day. in some respects that's true, but it's begging the question of:

what other means do they have that would enable them to eat on $X per day and are they the means that someone living in poverty would have?

because if not, then the assertion --"other people can do it" turns out to be unreliable if not completely false.

[LeftyMom]

29. The people with all the answers should try it with food allergies or medical diet needs.

Strangely enough poor folks don't tend to be the healthiest bunch. Funny how that works. :eyes:

[CreekDog]

36. Notice all the carbs being suggested in reference to a population that often suffers more diabetes?

And my question was could one eat WELL.

Jeez. :banghead:

[LeftyMom]

38. Wouldn't most people on food stamps qualify for medical aid?

Seems to me that paying a bit more for decent food so they don't eat the cheapest shit that keeps them alive and get cancer or diabetes would be a smart investment. Aside from just being the right thing to do, not that that's a convincing argument for many people.

Fresh fruits and vegetables should not be an unaffordable luxury.

[Lucky Luciano]

32. I can't eat well on $5-7 per day.

Though, if I had to, I would go vegetarian. Lots of rice and black beans. Also, I just noticed that the silken tofu (DEEE-Licious!) boxes that my wife buys (in the Japanese stores) are only a buck - in Manhattan no less! A good miso soup with the silken tofu and a raw egg thrown into the hot broth can make for a good healthy meal on the cheap.

[Arkansas Granny]

33. You bring up a lot of good points, but I don't know what the solution would be.

There is no program that can satisfy every need of every person who receives benefits. I don't know how you would allow for the availability of grocery stores in a neighborhood or how accessible they would be to the food stamp recipient dependent on their transportation situation. It is difficult, but not impossible, to feed a family on food stamps, but it does require more effort and planning than many people can manage.

[CreekDog]

34. Solution? I don't think there is a solution except to have a proper safety net preventing poverty

When people live in poverty, so many things just go to hell on them and they live a substandard existence, at least by the standards of a wealthy nation.

Yes, they could eat better if they had more food stamps and could buy better quality food and took advantage of those options.

But better just to do away with the worst of poverty. In the process, it will help our schools. (oh yes, that's related!)

[Luminous Animal]

39. Living on a sustainance diet starves children's brains...

I was there once. The few years that I went extremely, my grades were shit. All I could think about was food. I humiliated myself and regularly begged food off of my fellow students leftovers (this after eating my own subsidized free lunch) because breakfast & dinner food at home was not enough to feed this girl who grew 7 inches in a year and a half. My poor brother pretty much missed learning how to read with his peers.

I missed a lot in school and it was confusing for me to go from an A student to a C and D student. It was only in retrospect and with knowledge about the effects of poverty that I understood what I had been going through. Fortunately for me (and my siblings) we moved in with my grandmother & grandfather who fed us very well and we got back on track.

I once read that in Somalia, with the persistent starvation of children, the median IQ level of a couple of generations has dropped significantly

[eridani]

40. Having a car isn't the only thing that enables me to be able to do that

Not that I do at the moment, but I have and I could again. Besides having a car, I have a freezer. I'm retired and I have the time for a lot of scratch cooking. I have a lifetime's worth of useful food preparation equipment, and enough financial reserves (and storage space) to buy in large quantities. Take away even a couple of those things, and living on that amount would be impossible.