This week, for the second time, I am undertaking the “SNAP challenge” of spending on food only the average daily benefit for those receiving food stamps (AKA the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Nationally, that benefit is $4.50 per person per day, and in New York State it is $4.92 per person per day. When budget cuts take effect on November 1, next week, those figures will fall to $3.70 and $4.10. Among the houses of worship on the Upper West Side, we’re living on $5 per day for food. (Last time, I held the line at $4.50.)
The point of this exercise is two-fold. First, in messages like this, we SNAPpers hope to prompt people to think about the cuts in federal aid to the poor. The government may need to reduce its deficit, but I hope we can think of other ways that don’t wound the most vulnerable. Second, I hope that an exercise like this – obviously limited in time and scope, nothing like actual poverty – does a little to shock us out of comfort, and increase our empathy for neighbors whose lives are much tougher than our own.
Both my SNAP challenges have been remarkably eye-opening. And quite unpleasant. I feel perpetually lethargic, undernourished, cranky. It is hard to imagine how a person could feel the energy to compete for a new job, or do well in school, if they could eat only on such a short budget for extended periods. Perhaps people’s bodies can adjust to these levels of nourishment. For me, even just a few days into the experiment, I am simply underperforming, mentally and physically.
The first time I did SNAP, a few years ago, what I recall the most is what an impressive abundance of food was on the street in New York – but was inaccessible to me. I would watch people walk down the street eating ice cream or sitting in cafés and think, “wouldn’t that be nice.” It was only a week, and I knew that in a few days, I could rejoin the line at Ben & Jerry’s, if I wished. But what sunk into my consciousness at that time was the feeling of exclusion. All around me was a feast, and, for one week, I was not invited. What must it be like to experience food insecurity – not in some small agrarian village in the developing world, where all your friends and neighbors struggle alongside you – but in the richest city in the history of the world?
On this round through SNAP I am most impressed – as I count my pennies, wondering whether I can “afford” another baked potato, on my artificially short budget – by how much I usually spend on food. If I’m getting by this week on $5 per day, restricting myself to home-made bread, grits, beans and such, gadzooks!, what do I spend on a typical day on food without ever thinking about it? Without even noticing it. And I rarely eat outside the house, rarely visiting restaurants or buying prepared food. But typically I must spend easily twice the SNAP budget, and often more.
According to the most recent USDA data on household food budgets, from July 2013, an adult man not on a terrifically tight leash might spend between $9.75 and $11.95 per day on food. So for five days of my SNAP challenge, let’s say I have saved $30 per day in my food budget. Long before Oxfam, Jewish tradition taught that people must distribute Tzedaka/alms on a fast day (see the Talmud, Sanhedrin 35a, and the Jewish law code Shulhan Arukh YD 256.2), particularly to enable those whose poverty forces them to fast to enjoy a feast instead. This week has not exactly been a fast week for me, but it has been a kind of ethically motivated abstention from food. So I will try to fulfill this tradition in a comparable way, and redirect all that I saved this week (and then some) to hunger relief, at the West Side Campaign Against Hunger.
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