Not This Year . . . or Why Not?

“I wish I could try that. Too bad it won’t work for us this year,” I thought.

I had just read in our temple bulletin about the rabbi’s plans to take the Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge. For one week in February, he planned to eat only the food he could purchase with $29.07, the weekly allowance on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), also known as food stamps.

Since I already spend so much time planning our family’s meals, and because supporting hunger-related causes is important to us, taking the food stamp challenge intrigued me. But with two young kids and a busy schedule, I hesitated to take it on. 

I filed away the idea for next year, but left the bulletin on the kitchen table.

A few hours later, my husband entered the dining room as my daughter and I were having a snack. “Hey, I read something interesting in the temple bulletin,” he began.

“Do you mean the food stamp challenge?” I asked. “What do you think of it?”

“I think we should do it,” he said.

“Really?” I asked. “I figured you wouldn’t be interested.”

Well, he surprised me. I had thought he’d be too practical and would prefer to send only a monetary donation instead. But he saw the value in taking the challenge, making the experience of hunger more vivid to us.

It would also be a great teaching tool for the kids, even better than dropping coins into a tzedakah box or choosing canned foods for the occasional food drive.

We explained it to our daughter. She liked the idea.

Maybe we should do it, we thought.

Eric and I talked about it more and more over the next few days. Could we make it work? Could we feed our family for 1 week, or 21 meals for 4 people = 84 meals, on $29.07 x 4 = $116.28? And more importantly, could we do it and still maintain our commitment to eating mostly real, unprocessed foods?

I had previously read other people’s accounts of the food stamp challenge, such as this one. And a few years ago, early in our family’s quest to reduce our intake of artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives, I had come across the 100 Days of Real Food on a Budget series—in which a family ate real food for $125/week, not just for seven days, but for a hundred.

So I knew it was possible to take the food stamp challenge without endangering the health of our family. It would not be easy, I knew. 

But as we thought about it, just recognizing that we had the choice of whether or not to take the challenge—while many people don’t have that choice at all—made it harder to say no.