Pastor’s family takes on the ‘Food Stamp Challenge’

 

He wanted to know firsthand: what is it like to constantly worry about food — to struggle to feed your family?

To find that out, for the 40 days of Lent, Herman, his wife Susan and their two children ate the way a family would if they were earning just $23,000 a year and subsisting on food stamps. A Presbyterian pastor, Herman lives in Sacramento — a fertile agricultural swath of California abounding in produce (almonds, tomatoes, garlic, artichokes, citrus and more) that gets shipped all over the country, gracing other people’s tables.

 

He also knows, from his work in ministry, that many in his community go hungry — as he puts it, “there is no ZIP code that is free from hunger.” The congregation he serves as associate pastor, Carmichael Presbyterian, operates a food pantry which, five days a week, provides four days’ worth of food to up to 25 families. Herman often wonders: how do all those families get by the other days of the month?

 

So one night early this year, he rolled out to his wife the idea of taking on the “Food Stamp Challenge” as a Lenten discipline — both as a way of nudging his family to think differently about food, and also of raising into prominence for his congregation the problems of hunger in their community.

 

The Food Stamp Challenge is a commitment, encouraged by some religious groups and community activists, of intentionally eating on a food stamp budget for a designated period of time — usually a week or a month at a time — to give some sense of what that experience is like for those who have to do it all the time. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Des Moines, for example, challenged Catholics to follow a food stamp budget for a week during Lent, in solidarity with the 373,856 Iowans who use food stamps each month as their main source of food. Sometimes entire congregations take the challenge. Some donate the difference between the food stamp budget and what they would otherwise have spent to the local food pantry.

 

When Ivan suggested the idea to his wife, Susan’s response was: “That’s great. And let’s blog about it.”

 

So they did.

 

They cleared out their pantry, basically starting from scratch. And throughout Lent the Herman family — Ivan, Susan and their children, ages 7 and 3 — lived on a food budget of $396 per month. That was the amount they calculated they’d be eligible for in food stamps if one adult in the family worked full-time, laboring 40 hours a week for 50 weeks of the year and earning $11.50 per hour. (In this imaginary scenario, the other parent was assumed to be caring for the children and for an elderly parent who lives nearby). In 2012, the federal poverty level for a family of four was $23,050.

 

For the Herman family, this budget meant:

» Spending about $1.10 per person per meal.

» Eating, most of the time, no meat. No fish.

» Cooking from scratch, which tends to be more economical.

» Emptying the refrigerator before daring to go back to the grocery store. If they didn’t go to the store, they couldn’t spend more money.

» Agonizing at the end of the month about whether what little was left would stretch far enough. “Dad, we’re almost out of food right here,” their 3-year-old son said during the dog days of February, yanking open the pantry door in search of a snack. “Will we have enough?”

 

What did they learn through the process?

 

Ivan Herman now knows that on Monday, his local grocery store marks down the prices on cheese. “Before, I wouldn’t have thought that a dollar and a half or two dollars made a difference.” He does now.

 

He’s discovered, as his mom had warned, that people on food stamps can’t afford much fresh fruit.

 

He’s thought about things that never would have dented his mind before. When school let out for spring break, his daughter stayed home — and her not eating five (imaginary) free lunches at school meant squeezing five extra meals into the budget. When the school asked students to bring a dish to share at a school potluck, part of a culinary celebration of the students’ diversity of heritage, the Hermans scrambled to think of a recipe that was both distinctively ethnic and which they could afford to cook. When the grandparents came to visit — ordinarily a most welcome visit — that meant two additional mouths to feed.

 

And here’s what Herman wrote about the day he snatched a banana — a perfectly good banana! — from the top of a trash can:

 

“Knowing that fruit is really one of the most expensive parts of our food budget, I took the chance. Nobody was watching. It wasn’t free, exactly, but nobody wanted it. No, I didn’t steal it. It was in the trash bin. Sitting right on top a bed of dry paper (come on people, recycle!), gleaming yellow with light brown freckles. It looked a bit soft on the bottom end, but the peel was unbroken and clean. I reached down and quickly snagged it, hoping nobody would notice. If someone did see, they would think I was retrieving something I dropped accidentally. I quickly made my way out to the parking lot and chucked it into the front seat of the car to save until my meetings were over.

 

“I felt like a hunter-gatherer or a survivalist who isn’t fool enough to pass by an opportunity for nutritious calories that drop in my lap. … I mean, it’s not the same as digging through rubbish bins and scarfing down other people’s half-eaten chicken sandwiches or cold Pad Thai takeaway.

 

“Or is it?”

 

Now that Lent is over, Herman is still thinking about these learnings:

 

» About all the food Americans waste (about 40 percent, the National Resources Defense Council estimates);

» About how excess produce from gardens and orchards could find its way into the network of emergency food support;

» About a new documentary about hunger in the United States, “A Place at the Table,” that cites the statistic that 85 percent of U.S. households receiving food stamps include at least one working adult.

» About how senior citizens who qualify for food stamps will sometimes go, in desperation, to a food pantry — but won’t apply for government benefits.

 

He’s looking for ways to educate the congregation about the problems of hunger in Sacramento and across the world — and to consider options for advocacy.

 

People from the congregation have approached him and confided, often in a hushed voice, that “I was on food stamps once too.” He understands the sense of failure that comes from not being able to provide for such a basic need.

 

Susan wrote of the anger that percolated in her — a self-proclaimed “foodie since the late 1990s” — regarding class inequities in the ability to access and afford fresh, local and organically produced food. She wrote of the local and slow-food movements:

 

“We’re class biased. We aspire to eat the best food, but how many of us also truly aspire — and take action — for everyone to have access to the best food? Why do we allow such a gap to exist?”

 

Ivan wrote of gratitude. During a rough period a few years ago — husband laid off, premature baby, medical bills — a friend had been on food stamps, relying on that as well as the generosity of family and friends from the congregation. One day, that friend walked up to Susan in the church parking lot and handed over a paper bag of food, saying: “Take it.”

 

Inside was both some food and a handwritten note. The food would help stretch the meager money, the friend wrote. It might also help in more ways than one, she went on:

“ … in my life I have found it to be easy to be on the giving end of help. It is a hard thing to ask for help from a friend, family member or stranger. But when your family is in need you have to push aside pride and be willing to take a helping hand.

 

“So this is our gift to you, some food for thought.”