Friday, November 9, 2012

Not Kidding Ourselves

Will Soll

We had our first meeting about the Food Stamp Challenge in early October; about 15 people were there.  As you'd expect, a lot of different concerns and ideas were expressed. We kept coming back to the limitations of the challenge. It's only a week. We won't have the stigma of using actual stamps to buy our food. We won't feel the myriad economic pressures and personal anxieties that go hand in hand with poverty.    

It's clear that the Food Stamp Challenge will be a real challenge for me. I've been thinking about my budget for the coming week, debating whether onions are worth the nutritional bang for the buck, wondering if bouillon cubes will be a luxury I can afford. Yet I also suspect that the hardest thing about food stamps isn't the food budget. It's having to be on food stamps in the first place.

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