Eat on $30 Challenge - Poverty and Hunger in East Tennessee

This coming week, I'm going to be participating in the Eat on $30 Challenge, organized by the fabulous Tami of Running with Tweezers.  There are a number of reasons why I'm doing this challenge but the main reason is to bring a little attention to the issue of hunger in the United States and especially in East Tennessee and the Appalachian region.

70,000 people in the city of Knoxville and Knox County will go to bed hungry tonight.  That's 20% of the population in Knox County - a truly staggering statistic.  At the closest elementary school to our house, 78% of the students are eligible for the reduced or free lunch program.  We have a local food pantry several blocks away and every month the number of people making use of that pantry increases.

I downloaded the statistics for monthly food stamp participation in Tennessee.  In October 2008, 46,317 individuals and 21,949 households received food stamps.  In September of 2009, 56,766 individuals and 27594 households received food stamps.  In every single major metropolitan area in Tennessee, demand for food stamps has risen.  But this isn't just a problem found mainly in our urban centers.  I went through the statistics for every single county in Tennessee and every single one showed an increase in the number of people and households using food stamps.  In October of 2008, 443,115 households got some form of food stamps.  Only eleven months later, that number has risen to 542,930 which is a 22.5% increase.  In our state, the average monthly food stamp benefit works out to be $1.07 per person, per meal.  

Urban poverty tends to have a face in our society but rural poverty is less known. I have spent a decent amount of time in the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina and have seen poverty that made it seem like time had frozen since the Great Depression.  Appalachia is an area that has seen great progress since the 1960s but poverty is still is endemic to many areas.  The per capita income in Martin County Kentucky is $10,650 and 37% of its residents live below the poverty line.  In the Central Appalachian region, per capita income is only 71% of the national per capita income.  My Grainger County husband's family has a long, proud history of farming but it's become a lot harder to make a living farming, especially with the demise of the domestic tobacco market.  Most of them work two jobs just to get by.

In our society, we spend a lot of time categorizing people into groups and pitting them against one another, liberal versus conservatives, city dwellers versus country folks, etc.  We pit religions against one another and feed into the simmering resentment between people of different races and backgrounds.  But poverty is an issue that touches all of us, either directly or indirectly.  I own my own business and I'm grateful that my husband and I can work for ourselves, but in this economy we're all vulnerable and anyone of us could find ourselves in a situation where we had to rely on food stamps or food pantries.  I see people dressed in very nice clothes getting groceries from our nearby food bank and it reminds me that nothing in this life is ever certain.

So what are the other reasons why I'm doing this challenge? I think anything that bring awareness to the issue of poverty and hunger is a good thing.  At the same time, there are some personal reasons why I'm doing this.  Even though I see the lines of people trudging to our local food bank,it's easy for me to get caught up in my own worries about our budget and concerns about the economy and how it affects us.  There's a lot to worry about.  But I also have a lot to be grateful about.  I also struggle with the balance between being a food lover and blogger and keeping in mind that not everyone has the luxury of being able to cook what they want.  I deal with the guilt that my food dollar doesn't stretch far enough to buy all the local and/or organic foods that I'd like to buy but I also try to remind myself that it's a luxury to be able to feel guilty about that and at least we have the means to buy food. 

This week, I'm going to attempt to do the Eat on $30 challenge using a decent amount of local and organic products.  However, after crunching numbers, I can already tell that we'll have to compromise a bit.  We never buy anything but local, grass-fed beef but we will buy chicken or pork that's on manager's special at our local Krogers if it's cheap enough.  I don't like doing it and we haven't recently but we do have a few cuts of meat in our freezer I might use.  The stock we'll be cooking with is from a turkey that we got on sale after Christmas last year, supplemented with turkey feet supplied by River Ridge Farms. We do buy our milk from a local dairy and our eggs are free-range eggs that aren't certified organic but the farmers that produce them raise them according to organic methods.  The cheese I'll be using is not organic and is our local store brand.  I also will be using some organic fruits and vegetables.  We have a large garden but that's a resource that a lot of people don't have.  I'll factor in the price for those things by using the price for them at our local grocery store.  If I need to buy them from the store, I'll use resources like the Dirty Dozen list so that I know which produce I buy has to be organic and which I can economize on.  I'm not counting the various fresh herbs we grow in my budget.  The parsley that grows in my yard has reseeded itself year after year so it has long paid for its room and board in my garden.  I also grow several perennial herbs that I've had for years or have gotten from other gardeners in my neighborhood.  For things that we preserve, I'll use the current price of a comparative product from our local food co-op.  I also won't be factoring in plain kosher sea salt into my budget.  There are a few items where I might be unsure about the final cost.  In that case, I'll always go with the highest reasonable estimate I can figure out.

It also might be more realistic if I took $30 and went to the grocery store and bought food with it - no tapping into my large freezer or stockpiles in my pantry.  That's going to have to be a challenge for another day.  I've got numerous perishable items in my fridge that need to be used.  I learned last year that the average household wastes 14% of their food purchases and one thing we've tried to do this year it to reduce the amount of food that goes to waste in our house. My budget also can't handle buying things like whole wheat flour when we already have almost a full bag that needs to be used in our pantry.  I'll also be using fruits and vegetables from my garden but I'll be factoring in the price that it costs to buy them from our nearest grocery store.

I've got a crazy week ahead but I'm going to try to at least post my daily menu the next day.  I'll try to post a couple of recipes but if I'm not able to do that this coming week, I'll make sure to post them in the weeks after.

This challenge isn't a patronizing attempt to try on what it's like to live on food stamps for the week.  It also isn't an attempt to mimic the millions of people in our country for whom hunger is a daily companion.  It's about reining myself in - giving a little bit of substance to my beliefs. It's about balancing my love for food and it's myriad possibilities with the understanding that so many people don't have that luxury of choice.  Mainly, it's a way to reaffirm the knowledge of how lucky I really am.

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

Comments

[Maria]

Good luck! I did a $100 a month food challenge this summer. it was so fun. We spent way under $100 and ate really well. We just had to be creative! :)

[Paula - bell'alimento]

Kristina,
What an awesome introductory post! I'm excited to be participating along with you this week. Can't wait to see what you cook up. Mwah!

[TNLocavore]

Thanks Maria! I'm trying to do this with a decent amount of local food so I keep crunching numbers to try to make it happen.

[TNLocavore]

Paula - I toast you with my boxed wine! :-*

[Jeff]

This is a great challenege. I cannot wait to read all of these blogs detailing whet you eat.

I think that one thing that is promising is that more farmers' markets are taking food stamps. I think that when living on a limited budget its easy to just grab inexpensive processed foods that are void of nutritional value and laden with fat and sodium.

[Diana]

What a great and informative post!

[Carrie Neal Walden]

Loved your "first" post! So glad to know about you and your site - and your pics are totally amazing!! Good luck this week!!

[TNLocavore]

Jeff - I'm going to be addressing the lack of healthy food options for so many people. That's a big issue in some areas of our city.

I love that farmers' markets are doing this. I know that Market Square Farmers' Mkt started doing that this year and I was so proud of them for doing so!

Thanks Diane! Hoping to get some time later to read through everyone else's posts!

[TNLocavore]

Thanks Carrie! I really appreciate the comment on our pics. We're major beginners but we're slowly but surely getting better!

[Dana]

I'm inspired. I wish I could send you some of the gorgeous veggies that we have gotten from our CSA and know I won't be using. I am trying to pawn them off on neighbors rather than let them go to waste. Good luck with this challenge and thanks for writing so well about it.

[TNLocavore]

Thanks Dana! I'd love to use them but we're trying to account for all vegetables. We have some stuff from our garden that we could use but since most people don't have gardens, we're charging ourselves for the use of those veggies.