I think this - flavor rather than substance - made her seem out of touch.
I think people are generally far too worried about what Gwyneth Paltrow is up to but, beyond that, I don’t have a problem with this. She’s showing that her diet doesn’t work on $29 – I already know she could have bought a giant tub of peanut butter and a case of Ramen noodles. It’s more interesting to me to see how her diet pares down to meet the budget.
Frankly, I think it’s more telling that we treat limes, scallions and kale as luxury items.
I was going by Canadian prices for limes, cilantro, avacados, etc. Those are not things I would be buying on a limited budget up here. More like your Minnesota prices.
The hell is she going to eat, lettuce tacos?
.25 limes? We’re moving!
I did this. But I also included what was easily accessible from other sources, such as churches, etc.
I got bags of rice, beans, cheese, day old bread, bags of potatoes, fruit etc. Also free lunches. (I only ate one of each, and explained what I was doing, but I was part of a Local Gov’t project . After I tried one free lunch, i just bought and made my own if i wanted it. The Church would press the day old bread on my tho, as much went unclaimed. But I gave a donation so…)
The free lunches were either: PB&J or Baloney sandwich or bean burrito, juice box or milk or coffee. Mostly vegetarian.
The diet was healthy, with plenty of calories, but boring.
If you can cook it, and store it, and are fine with a rather boring diet, you wont starve in America.
Canadians trying to do this challenge are fucked, since food prices are easily double what an American will pay. Sadly, few Americans realize how cheap their food actually is.
Paltrow is showing a very typical diet for low income, Latin America. The blend of avocado, lime, cilantro, onion, and tomato seem really wildly expensive for people in the northern Americas and Europe, but are practically free as you go further south.
I was in Malaysia a few weeks ago where people live off far less than $29 per day, but eat a very different set of ingredients, to them potatoes and wheat were expensive luxuries. If I posted their typical diet it would cost a fortune in the US. Last week I was in Puerto Rico where a guy at the traffic light would sell a bag of limes and a bunch of cilantro for $1.
I used to work for a charity that would do this challenge every year to try and bring awareness. The office staff would complain about how much is sucks eating oatmeal every morning for breakfast. I showed them that we a tsp of yeast, and 2 cups of flour, oatmeal becomes oatmeal bread, combined with peanut butter is a great breakfast. Joke was that at the time our charity was feeding 500 people a day for less than $1.75 (and that included packaging).
Everyone needs to calm down about the avocados. **emacknight **is right - if you’re in CA they are abundant and cheap. But even if you’re not living out there they are a great way for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike to get tons of calories and fat. It’s a super versatile food like eggs and packed with nutrients. You can eat it for breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert! What else was she supposed to buy to get a good dose of vegetarian fat? A tiny bottle of canola oil?
If anything, she should have bought more avocados and fewer limes. And not an ear of corn (???)
Related question: Can a person live off avocados alone indefinitely? They seem to have it all: Protein, fiber, fat, vitamins, etc.
I just hate peas is why. 
All of which is a good illustration of why issuing a set “grocery list” for an entire continent is pointless and food assistance programs should be tailored to what is available locally.
Until you live on such a low budget you don’t really appreciate how important flavor/spices/herbs/condiments can be. If you’re going to be eating the same everything day (or even multiple times per day) then varying the flavor can become important.
In my area brown rice is usually about 3 times the cost of white. It also takes longer to cook (I’m not considering “minute rice” varieties but rock-bottom cost raw rice).
Well, yes and no - limes ARE a luxury item to me because they don’t grow in my climate, but I get scallions (actually, a wide range of onion types) all summer from my garden and by mid-summer I have so many greens I’m giving them away. (I also freeze a bunch of them, I haven’t had to buy greens for several years now other than lettuce in the winter). But that’s me. And it’s an enormous boost to my budget when my garden is producing.
It’s also significant that I trade my garden surplus to a neighbor down the road in exchange for eggs from her chickens (she’s on SNAP, too, but has three kids in addition to her husband and her teenage son is a black hole for food - my contributions help feed both her chickens and her family so it’s good all around). In real life, poor people do tend to develop networks like that to share/stretch resources but not everyone has that and you certainly don’t get it instantly when you fall on hard times.
At work I actually do see people purchasing nearly nothing by frozen meals like that, basically, whatever is on sale at the time. Not really a healthy diet.
Eggs are probably twice as expensive in California as they are in the rest of the country. A dozen eggs is probably in the neighborhood of $2.98
That’s the salient point. People on SNAP aren’t getting $29.00 every week; they’re getting $120.00 every month (or whatever; apparently, it’s tiered). And if you qualify for SNAP, you probably don’t have a car, so going to the grocery store is a hassle and a big deal. So you do it when your benefit comes in, and buy a month’s food all at once. Which means things that you can store (not freeze, since you can’t take your frozen foods on the bus). Which means peanut butter and ramen noodles and other stuff packed full of preservatives, salt, and fat.
As for Gwyneth, I think she’s sincere but naive.
The avocado farmers would like us to think so.
I eat my peas with honey,
I’ve done it all my life.
The do taste kind of funny,
but it keeps them on the knife.
no, but credit for it being real food.
Seriously. I just don’t get the hate. But people just want to hate on Paltrow regardless of what she does. She’s attempting to bring awareness of the issue and advocating for an increase in the amount of food stamps - to be mad at her and say things like “it’s easy to survive on $29 for one week, but what about week after week” misses the entire point.
Just a few points here for accuracy’s sake:
That’s $120/month per person, with the disabled getting a slightly higher amount. Many people on SNAP are not getting the maximum benefit (we aren’t) but the assumption is they have sufficient income to make up the difference.
Um… not a good assumption. I’ve had not one but TWO vehicles in the household when we’ve qualified for SNAP. I will also hasten to add both are completely paid off, not worth much, and for part of that time the truck was also an occasional source of income.
As a very general rule of thumb you’re allowed 1 vehicle per adult in the household. There’s stuff about the value of the vehicles, whether or not it is used for your job, and some other stuff, but you are allowed to have a car and SNAP at the same time. Of course, some people don’t have a car. Even if you do have a car buying gas for it can be a problem, as can licensing/taxes/insurance/other requirements. You might wind up needing to severely limit trips to conserve on gas money.
Again, I’d like to correct a few assumptions.
First of all, it’s pretty darn hard to carry an entire month’s worth of food at one go if you don’t have a car. Possible solutions include shopping once a week, a delivery service (if the cost is manageable and/or you can negotiate something), going to the store with a friend who has a car, calling a cab, pooling resources with other poor people to hire a cab to drive you and your groceries home, and probably some others I haven’t thought of or seen yet.
You CAN take your frozen foods on a bus. I’ve often used a small cooler to do so (obviously, this limits how much you can take) and insulated re-usable shopping bags are available from many grocers these days. Of course, it will probably be a buck or two to get one, but most folks can scare up that much for something that will get repeated use.
You can also purchase fresh and then freeze it yourself at home.
But yeah, there is certainly a portion of the bill devoted to stuff that is shelf-stable.
^ This.
From looking at the foods she selected…she deserves to starve.
Limes, cilantro, avacado, an ear of corn, and Kale, let’s not forget that trendy green … and two types of onions.
This person has never known hunger. What a complete twit.
That list is more like 50 dollars here (LA).