Congress on Food Stamps

Easier enrollment alone might help get food stamps to more people who need them. Documentation requirements that sound reasonable to someone with a middle class income can be harder for someone with less. Overall, the changes sound like an improvement.

Sorry this is off topic, but I'm trying to get a question answered, and don't have a lot of people to discuss it with.

I've been interested for some time in the effect of ascorbate on drug detoxification (via glutathione production) and prevention of tolerance. Maybe you could help me sort something out?

I know that ascorbate is capable of increasing detoxification and clearance of various drugs. However there's been at least (one study__ suggesting that it may allow certain drugs to be used without danger of dependence or addiction. Is this true, or was the study poorly designed, with the lack of dependance due entirely to more rapid drug clearance?

Thanks!

Ryan

(email: wiserd_at_sign_yahoo _dt_com )

You can get 1 lb of beans or lentils for $.5, 1 lb of vegetables for $1 and 1 lb of rice or pasta or 1 kg of potatoes for $.5. Throw in some spices and $3/day should be more than plenty to maintain a nutritional, varied and tasty diet.

Mr. Ryan's difficulties are better explained by the well-known fact that politicians are much better at spending than saving than by the rather absurd hypothesis that $3/day isn't enough to buy good food.

3x7=$21 dollars a week. Good luck trying to eat on that. I've never seen vegetables for $1 a pound - even the cheap produce markets with the second rate produce charge a few bucks a pound these days. It's the cost of gasoline for transport of food that has pushed the price of food so far up.
The sad thing is the effect it has on kids. The kids at the school in Hunters Point, San Francisco where my partner teaches regularly go without food for an entire day. The free school lunch is often so nasty that they would rather fast. Needless to say, they don't behave well or learn well.

Since I don't live in the US myself, I have to rely on sources other than my own experience for prices. According to the USDA, there were several different types of vegetables available for less than $1/lb in 1999, and I'm going to assume that not all of these prices have skyrocketed. Furthermore, as I understand it, food prices over there are in general quite a bit lower than here in Sweden (where gasoline prices are at $6.8/gallon), so if I have no problem constructing a meal for less than $1, neither should the people on food stamps.

For less than $20 I'll make a lentil stew that'll last me two weeks. As I've done this very thing, I am quite certain that one can compose delicious and nutritious meals for considerably less than what food stamps amount to, if one will just buy lentils and vegetables instead of peanut butter and bread.

You're citing 1999 prices for produce? Are you from a different planet rather than a different countr? If you really doubt that it's nearly impossible to eat reasonably well on $3 a day in the US, I suggest you come over and give it a try.

I do have one negative comment regarding food stamps. I saw a person buy a small food item with a large denomination food stamp, get cash in change and then buy cigarettes with the change. I think food stamps should be distributed through renewable charge cards to discourage such unwise, nonfood purchases. The incident I witnessed was a few years ago. Maybe things have changed since then.

And are you eating this lentil stew for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? I find it hard to believe that you could eat three healthy meals a day, plus healthy snacks for $21 per week.

I am a vegetarian and I could make you eat happily at my place on a budget of three dollars a day to cover both of us for a week. Invite a friend.

However, this diet would not include any meat or dairy products, and very little fruit (and no juice). I would serve tofu. You'd better like pinto beans. I'd draw heavily from my established stock of herbs and spices, and serve you my homemade pickles. I have a reliable refrigerator and stove, a pressure cooker, a Vita-Mix blender, the aforementioned pickle crock, and a machine to make soymilk. How many poor people on food stamps have new kitchen appliances and gadgets and the time and space to make old-fashioned homemade recipes?

Also think about how poor people are treated by the government. It was common knowledge among my friends when I was younger and destitute that if you had a baby and less than a full gallon of milk in the refrigerator when the social worker called on you, they would institute proceedings to take your child away. A gallon of milk, last I checked (I no longer drink it), was more than three dollars all by itself.

well, i can tell you that living on $3 per day is not a great way to have much variety in your diet. i live on $3 per day and have done so for four years now. $3 per day only covers one large cup of coffee and one meal of vegetarian spaghetti, or a can of spaghetti-o's, a can of refried beans (either pinto or black beans) and that's about it. i certainly cannot afford fresh fruits and vegetables, nor milk, nor cheese or ice cream, etc. on that amount.

I can live on $1.50/day if I really cut out everything extraneous, but it's definitely boring, and I worry about long-term deficiencies, and there is no fresh produce of any sort. As it is, I use frozen peas and an occasional onion.

The staple is rice and beans. Dried beans are much cheaper than canned, less than $0.50/lb dry, although it takes a certain amount of planning to soak them before cooking. Since I have a stable place to stay, I can get a 20 lb bag of rice for $8.50. Cooking a pot of rice is 350W of a rice cooker for 20-30 minutes, so a few cents for 0.17 kWh of power. You can cook the beans in the rice cooker, too. A pot of rice lasts for about a day (two meals), and a pound of beans makes 2-3 pots of rice.

Corn tortillas are $3.00/100, and can be steamed in a plastic bag in a microwave (available for free in many convenience stores). Salt, whole pepper, and garlic powder are $0.50/container at the dollar store and last months, which gives some flavor.

One significant luxury is that I generally add a chopped onion to a pound of beans when cooking. At about $0.25-$0.35, that's a major increase in price without much nutritional purpose, but I like the taste.

Similarly, I eat ramen noodles for lunch, and I like the wider variety of Maruchan brand ($0.12-$0.13 each) over the cheaper Wal-mart house brand ($0.10).

And about once a week, I cook up a pot pie ($0.50 plus the electricity for the oven) with rice, frozen peas, and soy sauce.

From these little luxuries I convince myself I could be worse off.

I do take a multivitamin (Wal-mart "Equate" house brand are $3.50/100) to help keep deficiencies under control, but I worry about protein. I wish I could buy brown rice for even close to the price of white rice, but no luck so far. In most retail stores, it's sold by the pound for gourmet prices, and even in the wholesale club stores that have bulk bags, it's twice the price.

I also have some supplements in the form of leftovers from friends. (Just scored half a pizza today!) But I've eaten on less than $40/month for moths at a time.

Fortunately, I have access to a fridge for storing leftovers and bug-proof tins for ingredients.

Obviously, I drink nothing but water. I used to get juice concentrate from the dollar store for variety, but it doesn't go with anything I eat, and it doesn't have much nutritional value, so I've basically stopped. I like milk, but an 8 oz glass at $3.50/gal is $0.22, and I generally find myself drinking more than a glass a day, so it completely blows my budget. And I've learned to live without coffee.

About once a month, for variety, I used to cook up some spaghetti. The pasta itself is cheap, canned sauce is $0.99 for a decent-sized can, and I can add some more onions and things and simmer it down for more flavor. But this was when I had a source of leftover red wine. Now that that's dried up, I haven't cooked any spaghetti this year, although I still have some pasta and a can of sauce "on the shelf".

For folks like Mark and Sea Creature thinking that $20/week is impossible, it's definitely not. I used to get change from $20 on by bi-weekly shopping trips. And it wasn't even nutritionally bad in the short term, although I've never done a real analysis.

HOWEVER, you need access to some sort of kitchen, and that can be tricky. Lose that, and your budget instantly skyrockets.

Also, the one thing it's not is varied. In my case, it's rice and bean tortillas for breakfast and dinner, and ramen for lunch and snacks. Every day, without fail. You get to choose ramen flavor.

speedwell: interesting. Where does one get tofu (or "tvp") cheap? I mostly see it in health food stores for health food prices. As I said, my staples have to be < $1/lb dry (and I try for $0.50/lb dry), and luxuries are limited to $1/lb wet. I haven't seen tofu for less than $1.29/lb wet.

For folks like Mark and Sea Creature thinking that $20/week is impossible, it's definitely not. I used to get change from $20 on by bi-weekly shopping trips. And it wasn't even nutritionally bad in the short term, although I've never done a real analysis.

HOWEVER, you need access to some sort of kitchen, and that can be tricky. Lose that, and your budget instantly skyrockets.

Also, the one thing it's not is varied. In my case, it's rice and bean tortillas for breakfast and dinner, and ramen for lunch and snacks. Every day, without fail. You get to choose ramen flavor.

speedwell: interesting. Where does one get tofu (or "tvp") cheap? I mostly see it in health food stores for health food prices. As I said, my staples have to be < 1/lb dry (and I try for $0.50/lb dry), and luxuries are limited to $1/lb wet. I haven't seen tofu for less than $1.29/lb wet.

POV, I make my tofu, using soybeans I got in bulk for well under a dollar a pound. Three-quarters of a cup of beans plus a dash of nigari (pennies) makes at least enough fresh tofu to make a meal for four people.

Thing is, I had to invest significant expense in equipment; I had to buy the beans in bulk; I have to have my own adequate kitchen. I can afford to throw away the occasional unsuccessful batch. And I can afford the Internet connection and cookbooks to tell me what to do with the stuff that I wasn't raised eating. These are not things that are easy for someone without some extra cash to do.

Failure to close bold tag, sorry.

My god, that would be amazing. I always run out of food stamps because I have the audacity to buy fruits and vegetables.

well, i only have a microwave oven for cooking, can't afford the price of gas for the stove, and i don't have any of the other kitchen gadgets, so those options don't exist for me.

Adults can tolerate a much poorer diet than can growing children or pregnant women. A diet of rice and beans might be ok for a while, but deficiencies will likely creep up on you. For example essential fatty acids

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid

Soybean oil does have omega-3 fatty acids (6.5%), as does safflower (3.4%), wheat germ (3.6%) and linseed (aka flax seed) (47.4%) but most every other plant oil has little. Omega-3 and -6 fatty acids are major structural lipids in the nervous system and brain. If your brain is already formed, you don't need that much in your diet. If it isn't, you need a lot more.

It is known that omega-3 fatty acids are essential, but a deficiency of them isn't a well characterized syndrome.

I know that my diet has a large impact on how well I can think and do things. I do eat fairly modestly, but I couldn't retain my current effectiveness on $3/day.

Osteoporosis runs in my family. As a small, thin, dark-haired female, I am also in the statistically most likely group to suffer from it later. A diet without dairy==virtual certainty of severe osteoporosis in my old age, with all the attendant problems that brings: fractures, immobility, higher care costs, earlier consignment to a nursing home. How many costs does society incur because of short-term cost-cutting over awareness of long-term consequences? Nah, don't bother answering that; the list would be too long.