My friend Irene, a hardworking single mother who also cuts my hair, is an absolute inspiration to me and I’m sure many others fortunate enough to cross her path.
Moms like Irene silence all the naysayers like Dr. Oz who claim that it isn’t possible to eat healthy on a very tight budget or that those who eat organic are elitist.
You see, Irene is on food stamps.
Irene’s situation is not at all rare anymore. Â The number of Americans on food stamps, or the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) as it is now called, has increased by 260% since 2000. Â In a more sobering statistic, the actual number of people relying on food stamps to eat has increased from 17.1 million in 2000 to over 44 million in 2011.
Despite Irene’s challenging budget which includes food stamps, she manages to buy nearly everything local and/or organic to prepare the healthy, homemade meals she prepares.
How?
By refusing to settle for anything less than the best for herself and her son and by using creativity and street smarts to carefully plan and implement her food stamps budget strategy.
When you demand the best and refuse to settle, as Irene does, the world frequently seems to open up to you with opportunities and people necessary to fulfill your goal suddenly coming across your path.
Irene also gets competent alternative medical care by shrewdly trading hairdresser services for routine chiropractic care which has prevented her family from requiring any conventional medical treatment or antibiotics or other drugs for quite some time.
How does Irene do it? Â How does she manage to source only the most nutrient-dense foods for her family including more expensive, gourmet items like grass-fed raw milk and butter while on food stamps?
The brilliance of Irene’s food stamps budget plan is in its incredible simplicity.
- Irene has learned which farmer’s markets around town accept food stamps and so she buys much of her produce at these venues. Â She also buys fresh, locally made, artisanal bread at the farmer’s market. Â Yes, it’s true! Â You can use food stamps at many farmer’s markets if you just ask around!
- Irene buys her grass-fed meats and bones to make stock at Whole Foods. Â Did you know Whole Foods takes food stamps? Â Another option would be for Irene to split a cow sourced at a local grass-based farm with one or two friends. Â This may present itself as an option for Irene in the future, but for now, Whole Foods is the best stand-in source for her meats given her limited time and storage space.
- Irene has figured out which health food stores carry what organic brands at the best prices. Â She uses her food stamps to buy foods like freshly ground almond butter, raw honey, cheese, and other staple items this way.
- Irene uses the food funds she is able to contribute herself for raw dairy which is not covered by food stamps (although I do know of one other friend in town who is able to buy raw goat milk with food stamps because she is allergic to cow milk).
- If Irene finds that she must buy something at the supermarket, she makes sure that it is a low spray item like asparagus or a GMO-free item based on an analysis of the ingredients label.
Hat’s off to Irene for showing us all how to eat healthy during hard economic times. Â Her refusal to accept anything less than the best, nutrient dense fare for herself and her family is the line in the sand that opens the door to solutions.
Well done Irene!
Are you on a food stamps budget too? Â What are your tricks for eating healthy, local, and/or organic despite this challenge? Â Please share to inspire those who may be facing a similar situation.
His wife narrated Genetic Roulette. Thats what confuses me .
whatt!!!
I gotta go check that out!
Deinitely some tag wagging the dog going on here….
It was the same with Vitamin D. He was all for getting it via moderate UV exposure one week and the the next week he recanted. He means well and then is reminded about who pays his cheque.
instead of subsidizing junk (soy, corn), the gov’t should be subsidizing healthy foods to make it affordable for everyone.
Yes!!!!
Completely agree! People should not be allowed to junk. I’m surprised the First Lady isn’t touting that.
The first lady isn’t particularly interested in anything that is good for us. Get us all on the government plantation. I’d prefer she and the rest of them stay out of my business.
That said, you CANNOT regulate what people buy. We have a wonderful thing called Freedom of will and, for the moment, we can eat whatever we want, be it grassfed beef or crap.
Let’s look at what government subsidation gave us…the Feds subsidize the dairy industry and it’s VERY hard and expensive to find raw milk and illegal in a lot of states. Government sticking their noses into every aspect of what we do is what had led to such high prices for organics, etc, and insisting that science is the way to go.
So please don’t suggest that the government regulate what we are eating and not ‘allow’ us to eat junk. Pardon my language, but that is just insanely stupid.
Meaghan Massella Walker, Karen and rj, THIS is why we don’t need the government in our food more.
” It works like this: In order to keep dairy farmers in businesses, the government agrees to buy milk and other products if the price gets too low. The current agriculture bill has a formula that means the government steps in if the price of milk were to drop by roughly half from its current national average of about $3.65 a gallon.
Problem is, the current bill expired last summer, and Congress had been unable to agree on a new one. Several protections for farmers have already expired, and several more are set to do so over the next few months. One of them is the dairy subsidy, which expires January 1.
But instead of leaving farmers entirely out in the cold, the law states that if a new bill isn’t passed or the current one extended, the formula for calculating the price the government pays for dairy products reverts back to a 1949 statute. Under that formula, the government would be forced to buy milk at twice today’s price — driving up the cost for everyone.
“If you like anything made with milk, you’re going to be impacted by the fact that there’s no farm bill,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told CNN’s Candy Crowley in an interview on State of the Union airing Sunday, Dec. 30.
“Consumers are going to be a bit shocked when instead of seeing $3.60 a gallon for milk, they see $7 a gallon for milk. And that’s going to ripple throughout all of the commodities if this thing goes on for an extended period of time,” Vilsack said.
My family of four are on food stamps also while the hubs is in school. We buy raw grassfed milk and visit the farmers market every week to buy local produce. I have learned how to make sourdough and ferment the produce I get from the farmers market and from our own garden.
Dr. OZ and his “advertisers” are basing this on that recent study that concluded that their is no real difference between conventional and organic produce nutritionally. But as most of us know the study didn’t analyze/investigate other environmental factors such as pesticide use and their effects on the human body or the environment. This is the real point that you should be making with this post. We eat organic because we know it is the better choice for our bodies in the long-term and the environment! Not because it is a status symbol like the Prius is in San Francisco (there’s an interesting Freakonomics episode on that subject).
And the day has come where being on food stamps is lauded.
Hey Megan, I do know what you mean by that…I understand that many are struggling right now..I would add one thing..DO NOT TRUST THE GOVERNMENT..as they always have an agenda. If you need food stamps, use them and also churches can help, but get off asap, so you don’t have to be tied to government’s long apron strings. (Hear me clearly, NOTHING against anyone who is in need and uses them.. I am happy for my taxes to actually do something good! ) God bless and we might all look around and see who is within our reach to help!
We are planning to move to the country to start raising our own food because there is no way I can buy specially meats and organic fruits and veggie on our food budget. We do eat better than we used to because of the knowledge that I’ve gained from reading the Heathly Home Econimist.
My friends on food stamps have double the food budget that my family has. My friends are like Irene they work hard to feed their families health foods. However it really chaps my hide to see someone pay for a chart full of junk food with a food stamp card.
Kudos to Irene. May she keep this up and give her children a future they deserve: good health and good lives.
brilliant!
I bet you $1000 his family eats organics.