My typical meal of rice, vegetables and powdered gravy. |
A great way to save money on food is to limit eating meat.
According to an article I found in Mother Earth News, a typical vegetarian
diet costs 20% less than eating the normal meat centered diet. The
article also mentioned that an individual spends about $300/month on food with
half of that total being eaten at restaurants.
I have been reading a lot of articles about food price and
nutrition. There are many blogs about doing the SNAP challenge where a person
tries to live off of food stamps for a month. The challenge comes out to about
$4/day for food per person.
Recently in NC a lawmaker wanted to make it illegal to buy “junk
food” on food stamps. I put junk food in quotations because the label is a personal perspective. Does the individual, who receives food stamps, need more calories or more nutrition? Empty
calories are cheaper than healthier options. For example, $1 worth of soda
will give more calories than $1 worth of spinach and from a calorie perspective soda is the better choice, but when based on a well-rounded diet soda is the worse
choice of the two. I think the lawmaker’s
idea will be met by large food companies who will not allow their pre-packaged
foods to be made unavailable to people on food stamps. When I worked in a
grocery store deli the food from the hot bar was not allowed to be purchased
with food stamps, even if it was more nutritious than a package of cookies or
box of cake mix.
I used to work with a guy
who received food stamps and got $230/month which comes to about $7.67/day
for food. He worked part-time in a restaurant but didn’t make a living wage. He
had a garden plot of about 10x10’ and he knew how to can his own food, so he
grew much of his own food or ate at the restaurant. With his $230/month, he
would purchase high quality steaks and other whole meats. There are ways to eat
healthy and be on food stamps especially if the person has a garden.
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