Students participate in Food Stamp Challenge

Every day, one out of nine Americans uses food stamps.

Last year alone, 644,281 Indiana residents utilized the food stamp program.

This week, as part of National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week, two students decided to take part in Indiana Public Interest Research Group’s Food Stamp Challenge, which began Nov. 15 and will run until Saturday.

The two participants are IU senior Corrin Harvey and sophomore Alicia Cooley. Their challenge is to live on only $33 of food for one week. 

They are keeping a blog at inpirgfsc.blogspot.com/2009/11/food-stamp-challege.html that records their daily experiences.

“We are doing it just as some people in the community did it last year,” INPIRG Campus Organizer Stephanie Gogul said. “We wanted to see how students would be able to manage with only $33 for a week’s worth of food.”

She said INPIRG hopes the challenge will raise awareness of the realities of using food stamps as well as the issues of hunger and homelessness in Bloomington.

Gogul said this challenge is important because hunger and homelessness are issues that affect Bloomington residents every day, and that it is an issue for the entire community to deal with.

“Food stamps don’t cure anything,” Gogul said. “It is still definitely a struggle for people to live a healthy and nutritional lifestyle.”

Harvey lives off campus and said that so far the challenge has not been too bad.

“Thirty-three dollars is really simple if you are just feeding yourself, but if you are a single mother raising a family of three it can really be a challenge,” she said.

Harvey said food stamps make healthy eating habits an issue for the Bloomington community.

For Bloomington residents on food stamps, it is a daily challenge to have enough money to balance not only their food expenditures, but also plan a nutritious diet on the kind of food they can afford. She said that by being part of the challenge, she has realized what an inconvenience food stamps can be.

“I have to pack a lunch every day,” Harvey said. “I have not been eating out – I think that is the key.”

Often, she said she is tempted to go out and get some food with friends, but she can’t afford it. Instead, she said she must shop at cheaper stores like ALDI.

Cooley said surviving on food stamps while living in the dorms has been more of a challenge for her. She said she has been shopping at the Wright C-store for all of her groceries because of convenience. She does not have a kitchen or a car and food is expensive, so it’s difficult to survive on so little.

“I have been eating bread and bologna, and that’s not really healthy for me,” Cooley said. “You can’t really afford fresh fruits or vegetables.”

She typically spends $15 a day on meals, so cutting back to $33 for a full week has been hard. Cooley said she always feels hungry and that each day it gets progressively harder.

She said when she was younger some of her relatives were on food stamps and seemed really unhealthy, but she never knew why.

“Now, I feel like I understand,” Cooley said. “You have to eat quick foods that aren’t very good for you – otherwise it is too expensive.”