How dare she try to buy foods that have flavor and are healthy.
Eggs
Rice
Beans
Peanut Butter
White Bread
If you’re poor, you should eat this shit every day, if you want flavor, put more salt on it.
I decided to doublecheck the veracity of my above statement.
I went with a typical day’s menu, and by that, what I eat 2-3 times a week during work days.
Breakfast - cheese sandwich and 2 cups of tea
Lunch - 2 sandwiches, 1 banana, 1 carrot, 1/2 cucumber, 2 plums, 1 serving of potato chips (yes, 1 dietary serving - them things ain’t cheap on my budget and I have to parcel them out carefully), 3 cups of tea (actually, consumption of that is spread across two breaks and lunch, but whatever)
Dinner - stir fried chicken and greens over brown rice. No dessert. 1 cup of tea.
The ingredient list breaks down as:
6 slices of bread (100% whole wheat)
3 slices of cheese
4 slices cold cuts (I went with bologna - in reality it could be anything from turkey or roast beef to various sorts of bologna. Basically, whatever is cheapest that week)
a few leaves of lettuce
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 serving potato chips
1 banana
2 plums
1 carrot
1/2 cucumber
4 ounces of chicken
1 cup brown rice
1/2 cup of chard
4 ounces of mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
6 cups of tea
12 teaspoons of sugar (2 per cup of tea. I brew my tea at home, I don’t buy it in a bottle)
That works out to about 2700-2800 calories so I was in the ballpark. Weeks when something like braunswieger is on sale and I have that for lunch I definitely hit 3000+ calories per day. I’ve also been known to eat more than what’s listed if, say, someone brought cupcakes to the break room or maybe I’ll get a candy bar once in awhile.
Keep in mind, despite that I’ve lost 20 pounds in the past year eating like this. I’m a woman in my 50’s. Imagine what trying to live on that food budget would mean for, say, an 18 year old young man who is at all athletic and still growing a bit.
Ms. Paltrow’s proposed diet is one third the calories I need on a daily basis. Sure, even I could stand that for a week if I had to but for a month? Go ahead, Gwyneth, try it for a month.
Anyhow - that’s a sample menu from someone who was actually on SNAP for the past year and is working full time at a job that requires a bit of physical effort. (Do remember SNAP is not the whole of my food budget) Feel free to analyze/pick apart/whatever or compare/contrast it to Gwyneth’s choices.
I get$81.00 per month SNAP + a brown bag… Sometimes the BB is great (canned salmon,green beans peanut butter) sometimes not so much (doughnuts,poptarts) I check the sales,$1.00 per lb chicken is great,last month HEB had $1.00 lb pork roast,both of which make wonderful soups and freeze well for most for next week/month. 5lb potatoes last a month… salad greens-not so much. canned greens run .65 cents a can… Not fancy,and I need to watch carbs and sugar and,yes,fats… Fresh greens are out,'cause they average out to $4.00 for half a cup!
Well, you’re getting enough calories Broomstick, but with all that tea you’re drinking I’m worried you’re going to develop kidney stones. 
What, and no comment about the oxalate-containing chard? 
I’ve been consuming tea at or above that level for the past 40 years. I suspect if I was prone to stones it would have shown up by now. I also drink water as well as tea, but since that has no caloric value I skipped listing it.
Hoo boy, ain’t it the truth!
I can not afford to BUY fresh greens. I get mine from the garden. Of course, what I don’t pay in money I might well be paying in sweat but it works out for me.
That’s another reason I give away my surplus, or barter it - for some of my friends and neighbors the only fresh greens they get are the ones I give them.
Honestly, I don’t think the point is “This Hollywood Diva can eat for $26/wk, why are you complaining?” It’s to point out how much a $26 diet sucks, and how little you actually get, in a way that gets people talking and thinking about it.
This is one time when I’m not at all unhappy to be told that I’m wrong. I’m glad the situation for some working poor is not as grim as I had painted it. I have no first-hand experience with SNAP; I was going off what my social worker wife reports as her clients’ experiences.
Still, it sounds like Gwyneth Paltrow is doing this to highlight the food insecurities of those on government assistance; if so, her challenge is a little unrealistic.
Good for you!
But other than food, the situation for most working poor is pretty damn grim. Shelter, medical care, transportation (so you can get to a better job or even a interview) , and so forth are all real challenges.
Clothing- not so bad, except nice dressy stuff for women for interviews. And socks.
Agreed. This is just making me sad. Not sad for Gwyneth Paltrow and her foolishness, but sad because of everything I’ve seen this past week in regards to food assistance. I understand some folks get squeamish when they think about assistance money going toward “tattoos, hookers, and blow”. I get that, I really do. I may not always agree in every case, but I see your point and understand it.
But then we have actual legislators starting with “No steak and seafood for people who get food stamps!”, and now the Twitterverse is awash with “Avocados and Limes! People on food stamps shouldn’t get such luxuries!” Where does it end? When will these grocery cart crusaders be happy? When poor people are only allowed a bowl of gruel and a slap across the face for being poor?
Ironic that these people are often the same ones who complain about the “nanny state” telling people how they should live.
“Please sir, may I have some more?”
You got a slap across the face? What luxury!
As it happens, I do track how much I spend on food, and over the past year, I averaged under $20 a week. I’ve never bothered to count the Calories, but it’s enough to keep me at a healthy weight and not feeling hungry while biking anywhere from a half-hour to two hours per day. And my food is tasty and varied.
Which is not to say that food stamps are enough. Monetarily, they are, but what’s missing is the education on how to make that money stretch. I was fortunate to have learned from my mom, who can pinch a penny so hard it squeals… but if your parents didn’t know how to make their money last, there are very few opportunities for you to learn, either.
Well, OK, but do you have any sort of medical issues that restrict your food choices?
I do. I wish I didn’t, because they I could purchase any old cheap loaf of bread and peanut butter and legumes without worrying about them putting me in the hospital. There are also issues about long-term nutrition and vitamins, not just calories. There is the matter of location - as noted, the further north you go the more expensive food tends to be.
So while YOU can subsist on $20/week that does not mean the average person can. In fact, I’m rather dubious about your claim. What, exactly, do you eat?
Here’s where I think her choice of food is perfectly reasonable as a comparison: like I said, I already know that Paltrow could have bought a bunch of peanut butter or Ramen noodles or a 25lb sack of rice or twenty-five $1 Banquet meals. I know this, I can do math.
But I don’t buy groceries like that when I go shopping because I don’t want to fight off scurvy as I eat my Ramen noodles all week long or walk around with more salt in me than the Dead Sea from a week’s worth of shitty frozen meals. I think it’s worthwhile to take what I would consider a “good” shopping trip and show what $29 gets you. To sort of convert a week’s worth of condensed soup and cheap white bread into food I would actually want to buy, given the choice. Paltrow’s shopping results does that.
I am not a Paltrow fan by any stretch, but this is one of the few things about her that doesn’t bug me. This is a good Slate post on her SNAP challenge. It covers some of the points already made above: buying healthy food like kale and limes isn’t a bad thing, and yes, it’s not enough food for a week - which is kind of the point of the challenge, that it’s tough to eat healthy for a week on $29.
As for those saying it’s one thing to do it for a week but a whole other thing to do it for months, that’s not what the SNAP challenge is trying to mimic.
The entire post is worth a read.
Is it vegan, organic, free-range, and gluten-free?
But after she juices it, it’s only one serving. 
Yeah, being in Los Angeles I’m not getting the hatred about the limes. I bought 6 organic limes for a dollar at the farmers market this weekend, and 3 good-sized organic avocados for $3.
And in a few months I’ll have more limes than I can deal with off my backyard trees. Not to mention oranges, figs, and grapefruit. If you work in an office in SoCal, you can bet that bags of produce will magically appear in the breakroom for everyone to enjoy, courtesy of your co-workers with backyard trees.
[There is a non-profit organization here that will come and glean backyard fruit trees, and donate the produce to food banks and the like. I kind of get a kick out of knowing that poor people are getting something - my delicious, sweet, abundant white grapefruit - that even rich people can’t buy.]