Foodie Stamps

[talon]

http://tinyurl.com/y88yhnh

http://www.salon.com/life/pinched/2010/03/15/hipsters_food_stamps_pinched

I think this quote by Sarah Magida (one of te people on food stamps) pretty much sums it all up: " "Here I am, this educated person who went to art school, and there are a lot of people who need them more. But then I realized, I need them, too.""

I think a lot of people in this country have forgotten that food stamps aren't just for the chronically poor or the elderly and handicapped. Food stamps were created to help the temporarily unemployed - the able-bodied who would be back at work as soon as they could be, paying taxes once more. It was a safety net, a cushion for people accustomed to being employed and taking care of themselves and their families who found themselves unemployed or under-employed due to wide-spread economic conditions.

The reason so many college educated, able-bodied young people are finding themselvs on food stamps is because we are in a time of wide-spread economic conditions that leads to them being unemployed or under-employed and often with crushing college loans to repay while they struggle with poor employment prospects.

It just slays me that people would be angry at them for spending their paltry $150 a month on real food when they get just as angry at people using food stamps to buy birthday cake and sodas. No matter what they buy to eat, people are going to complain.

By shopping at the little ethnic markets, you can buy more food for less money, so these people are stretching their food stamp dollars much farther and spending their money as wisely as they can. Personally, I think it's kind of nice of the ones on food stamps to pool their food between them at dinner parties. It stretches the food farther and gives each one a chance to feel useful when so many things conspire to make them feel hopeless.

I have never shopped at Trader Joe's because there isn't one in a reasonable driving distance (less than 6 hours away, and then only of I was doing other stuff in the neighborhood), but there's a Whole Foods about 2 hours away and I've shopped there on occasion. You can get some really good bargains of fresh fruit and vegetables when you buy in season so it would make sense to me to shop there if I was using food stamps and there was one close by.

I've already practically stopped shopping at big box grocery stores because they have gotten expensive and stopped carrying a lot of the items I once bought there - and I include Wal-Mart and Target as expensive grocery stores. I shop at the Asian and Mexican and Thai and Indian ethnic grocery stores because they do carry the foods I'm looking for at affordable prices. If I had food stamps, they would be the first place I'd go.

$150 a month isn't a lot - that works out to about $1.60 a meal. You can't get terribly elaborate with that unless you skip a lot of meals.

What is cheap depends a lot on where you are and when you buy. Lobster is pretty cheap along the East Coast, I hear, but here in cattle country, beef is cheap while lobster is dear. Raspberries are dear in late winter, spring, and early summer but in season late summer and fall and even early winter and so may be cheaper then.

I say we should stop trying to make the young people who already feel bad about having to use food stamps feel even worse over their food choices. A few bad choices and skipped meals as a result and they'll figure it out. And in the meantime, I'd rather see them buying eggplants and arugula than frozen pizzas and soda.