A blog on minimalism that I visit just participated in the Snap Challenge to celebrate September as being Hunger Action Month. I'm not linking to her because she seems like a nice older lady who is caught up in this nonsense that people are starving in this country.
WHAT IS THE SNAP CHALLENGE?The SNAP Challenge encourages participants to experience what life is like for millions of low-income Americans. Here in Connecticut, the average monthly SNAP benefit is $135 per person – amounting to just $4.50 per day! By living on the average SNAP benefit, Challenge participants find themselves forced to make food shopping choices on a limited budget, and learn how difficult it is to avoid hunger, afford nutritious foods, and stay healthy without adequate resources. We suggest taking the Challenge for a week, but some participants last only a few days, while others have chosen to participate for the duration of Hunger Action Month. sourceLet us practice reading comprehension first.
The first word of the acronym "snap" is supplemental. It means that the money is to supplement your earnings in order to be a short term help in time of need. It was never intended to be your entire food budget.
Challenge participants find themselves forced to make food shopping choices on a limited budget, and learn how difficult it is to avoid hunger, afford nutritious foods, and stay healthy without adequate resources.Difficult to avoid hunger? What the hell are they talking about?
Limited budget? I could eat like a queen on $31.14 per week.
Afford nutritious foods? Check out the following lists and point out the non-nutritious foods.
This woman was just feeding her and her husband on $62.28 for the entire week. Yes, so?
I had the bad luck to read this after just returning from the grocery store. On this particular trip I purchased (the asterisks denote sale items)
- a large bag of fresh broccoli*
- two heads of fresh cauliflower*
- a large green pepper*
- a head of green leaf lettuce
- two russet baker potatoes
- two sweet onions
- a very expensive bag of baby rainbow potatoes ($3.98 - ouch)
- two loaves of bread*
- two bottles of BBQ sauce
- two large boxes of Triscuit crackers*
- six cans of cat food
All of that came to $32.00. For a fair comparison, lets take off the non-essentials (Triscuits and baby potatoes) which leaves the bill at $23.06.
That leaves $39.22 of the budgeted amount of $62.28 to spend.
For $39.22 I could purchase 5# of hamburger, a small on-sale pork roast, a chunk of on-sale cheese, a dozen eggs, a bag of rice, a bag of oatmeal, a bag of pinto beans, pasta, some celery, and a few apples and I'd still have money left over.
I could easily feed a family with two or more children on the above items, let alone just two adults.
And furthermore, if you qualify for Snap, you're automatically eligible for your local food bank to supplement your food even more, while the kids are slurping down free breakfast, lunch, and often dinner at school.
Most Snap recipients are also enjoying free medical through the Medicaid program and low cost housing through Section 8 so that's two more items off their budget.
The lady blogger explained in her post that sometimes her fresh produce goes bad before they eat it so she only purchased frozen while on the challenge. The question is, why is your fresh produce going bad? It's a rarity when I throw away even a scrap of lettuce.
The above items require a modicum of preparation. You know - cooking. It also involves some planning. It means eating your dinner left-overs as part of next days breakfast or dinner. It means instead of eating a frozen pizza for dinner you make a meatloaf.
So explain to me why everyone is boo-hooing over the starving poor people?
I urge you to walk through any store or shopping mall and point out all the waif like starving people. You can't. In fact, the majority of people in the U.S., including children, are overweight.
If people wish to use their Snap benefits to buy frozen pizza, soda pop, corn dogs, chicken nuggets, ice cream, and other crap, don't expect anyone to have any sympathy for you.
Without fail, when I shop and see someone using a Idaho Snap card, you can almost guarantee that their overweight body is festooned with expensive tattoos, they're using cash to buy their beer, and whatever else Snap doesn't pay for.
I have no problem helping people who are truly in need, but most of the people using Snap are just scamming the system. And you're paying for it.
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