Since the beginning of October, at least once a day I am asked why I chose to do a food stamp challenge this month.
Because I wanted to put my thoughts together in a single place and in an effort to answer that question as thoroughly as possible, I present the following reasons:
- People are going hungry in our back yards. This isn’t the Sally Struthers kids on the other side of the planet, these are people in our neighborhoods that we see every day and have no idea they don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
- People are wasteful. Statistics show that the amount of food wasted every year by the average person in North America is enough to feed someone for nearly two months. That’s between 200-250 pounds of food waste per person per year in North America and Europe.
- People are “too busy”. Last time I checked we had the same 24 hours in a day that our parents and their parents had, yet even though technology has made our lives “easier” than ever before, we are somehow too busy to eat right. We are too busy to look at sales fliers and too busy to clip coupons.
- People don’t understand food anymore. We can guzzle a 2 Liter of soda but can’t choke down a glass of water. Our kids are taught that macaroni & cheese and French fries are vegetables and many people eat fast food daily. Our diet is killing us and people don’t realize that what we are eating is the cause.
People don’t realize that it is overall cheaper and healthier to cook at home. Blinded by convenience foods and dollar menu convenience, we don’t realize that we are paying a much higher price for our food than we knew, both in terms of our money and our health.- People don’t know how to cook. We have become a society that wants a microwave dinner ready in 5 minutes. We have lost the knowledge that previous generations survived on – cooking and food preservation.
- People don’t know how to grow their own food. I have made it my lifelong goal to help teach people to grow their own food at home. It isn’t difficult, it isn’t expensive and it isn’t going to get any less expensive at the grocery store.
People are closer to needing food stamps than they used to be. The recession has put previously well-to-do people in a position where they have to be more careful with their money than they used to. Foreclosures are displacing hard working families and many of us are no more than a paycheck or two from needing government assistance.- People look down on food stamp recipients. When we see someone take out their EBT card (or their food stamps before that) we roll our eyes, we pay closer attention to the items in their carts. We judge.
- People are hungry and people should not be hungry. (see #1)
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent reasons! Part of my post to day 16 was about health impacts of our food choices, especially on the children who don’t have a choice!
People are “too busy”. Yes we have the same 24 hours, but my Mom stayed home until us kids were in high school and my Dad retired from the Navy and had trouble finding a job. There are many more single-parent and two-parent homes today that are working two or three jobs and may not have the know-how to make a healthy meal in 20 minutes (yes, a microwave makes it easier, but is not necessary). I don’t know why so many people equate healthy with taking all day to prepare a meal, except for lack of education.
Excellent reasons–all of them. I don’t think a lot of people realize how much time they spend in the drive-thru’s waiting for their order. You can do a lot of cooking in that time.
And for the record, hubby and I live on the amount that folks on food stamps get and have NO problem making it. We’re not ON food stamps, but he is retired. We don’t have a lot of money. It’s all in what you do with it. We eat a lot of rice/potatoes/noodles for fillers. Each cut of meat we buy has to provide THREE meals (ie-roast/ beef and noodles/ and soup, or roast chicken/chicken and dumplings/chicken potpie).
Thanks for all this. We have to watch our food budget very carefully and avoid processed food, besides I love to cook. My hubby has been wanting a fast-food burger for months, finally we did the drive-thru which was considered a real ‘treat’ for him. He was sick as a dog afterwards — don’t think he’ll want any fast-food for a long time!
I love all of your reasons and completely agree. I also like to show people how to grow their own food and save their own seeds so that they realize that they do have *some* control over their food supply and what is fed to their families not only in terms of freshness and flavor (although both of those are great reasons)but in terms of harmful chemicals.