Please, sir, may I have some more?: or As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!

Could you live on $28 a week for food? Well, you would have to if you were on food stamps. Now, some people on food stamps actually have jobs (they just don't pay enough to lift them above the poverty level) so they presumably have a little money to supplement the amount they spend on groceries. But apparently a person is theoretically supposed to be able to buy a week's worth of groceries for $28. I couldn't do it.

I remember when I first moved to Los Angeles for college around 1988. For some reason I remember my grocery bills; I went to the store every week and I always spent about $40. I think that included cold cereal, milk, bread, peanut butter, jelly, cheese, pasta, pasta sauce, orange juice, soda, and potato chips. I didn't eat any fruit or vegetables. I had cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, and pasta for dinner. Every day for two years. Oh, yeah, and a multi-vitamin. I don't know how I survived.

The point is, even with that horrible diet, I still would have gone way over my budget if I were on food stamps. And that was almost 20 years ago; those same groceries would cost a lot more today!

You may have read recently about Eric Gioia, a councilman from Queens, NY, who took the food stamp challenge and tried living on $28 worth of food. He made it through the week but he felt like shit, he was always hungry, and he actually gained 2 pounds because he was mainly eating bread and pasta.

Anyway, this post isn't really about the worthiness of the food stamp program because I don't actually know that much about it. I just found the idea of trying to live on $28 a week for food to be frightening. Do you think you could do it? Do you have experience living on this kind of budget?