The Problem With Food Stamp Challenges

As the outcome of a debate he had with a Twitter follower, Newark Mayor Cory Booker says he will spend December 4 through 11 trying to live on food stamps. Should he follow through, Mayor Booker will be part of a rapidly growing group. In the last six months, mayors in Las Vegas, Philadelphia and Phoenix have also spent a week living on food stamps, as have the governors of Oregon and Colorado. And politicians are not the only ones participating in such experiments. A few months ago, celebrity chef Mario Batali successfully completed a food stamp challenge with his family, and there is a program at the University of Bridgeport that in a few weeks will invite students on the campus to do the same.

There are even groups around the country that help organize community participation in similar efforts. One such group, The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, hosts a blog where people post their experiences. Some happily share the news about how their week-long experience with food stamps led to long-desired weight loss. However, most everyone from celebrities to politicians to regular people agree about how impossibly hard it is to eat healthfully, or even consistently escape hunger, on so little food.

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