18 Replies to “Well, Sure…”

  1. Eating @ Whole Foods while on a budget? Is that some sort of a joke? Apparently meaning you’re on food stamps doesn’t mean you should suffer any sort of perceived hardship. Not being to afford organic must be terrible. After all, eating good food not grown in pig shit must just taste different.

  2. When Obama’s socialist dream crashes they will look back at 4.50 a day as the good ol’ times.

  3. $4.50 – that would buy half a bushel of wheat – 30 pounds. $9.00 per month would keep you bloated – the other $110 per month would provide an assortment of meat and veggies. Most of the world lives on a lot less money for everything.

  4. apparently obesity is a “dis-ease”.
    @ 58 i’m 20 lbs more than @ 18. and according to BMI, “obese”.
    total B.S.

  5. I remember working out with a co-worker how I could live off of $25/week. True, it involved beans and rice (both dry, beans are incredibly inexpensive), fewer sweats (no ice cream), but in the end, I had a menu planned that was cheap and inexpensive. Sure, I had to do my own cooking, but that’s a feature in my book.
    When I heard that the SNAP challenge was $31.50, I knew I’d have no problem. Might even get a few treats factored in.
    And I agree, Whole Foods is a store for the affluent. Their prices are too high for people on public assistance. Which, I suspect, is one reason why a lot of SWPLs shop there.

  8. And a third – oatmeal. It kept the Scots alive for hundreds of years – right, Kate?

  10. Can you remain morbidly obese on $4.50 a day? Amazingly, yes! Just consume fat and starch, cheap sugary drinks and sit down all the time. Oh, and eat right before you sleep. Big Momma can keep that girlish sea mammal figure no problem.
    Of course scurvy could get to be a problem… But then the county hospitals are full of scurvy cases now.

  11. It is quite possible to live on $4.50 or $5 a day if you plan your meals carefully. You can even shop at regular stores. It’s not the life of a king but a life without dignity is the one where you don’t eat at all. What I see is not only a lack of budgeting and planning skills but of imagination as well. How on earth do people think their grandparents survived the Second World War where rationing was enforced? Did it ever occur to them to grow their own food if possible?
    Oh yeah… Obamaphone guys.
    Never mind.

  13. For $10, I could buy 10 kilograms of wheat in Canada (and I imagine prices are even cheaper in the U.S.). That would provide 40,000 kilocalories. At 2500 kilocalories (or Calories or food calories or whatever you want to call them) a day for body maintenance as an average male, that would be sufficient for 16 days on 2.22 days of food stamps. Some yeast, responsible purchase of jam/butter/etc., a toaster and a breadmaker are about all the rest you need calorie-wise, while mineral intake, etc. is easily covered with the remainder of the money.
    But hey, easier to go down to Whole Foods and spend on overpriced goods and then say $4.50 isn’t enough.

  14. ” . . . a friend of mine from Mumbai who has been trying unsuccessfully to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally, I asked him, “Why are you so eager to come to America?” His reply: “Because I really want to move to a country where the poor people are fat.”
    Dinesh D’Souza, “What’s Great About America” (2006).

  15. As I mentioned elsewhere, I was just visiting a place where you can eat very well indeed for $4.50 US a day. In Romania a bottle of milk only costs a dollar, a can of beer less than that, a bottle of decent wine three or four dollars, and a pretzel the size of your head 50 cents at most. Which, in other words, is all they ought to cost.
    And yet, in Romania, you never see a fat person (or at any rate I could have counted the ones I saw on the fingers of one hand). My wife was shocked at how skinny the women of Bucharest seemed to be, which, of course, they only are compared to the cows of which you’ll see whole herds in any street in Canada.
    Simple reason for that—if 40 years of communism and ten of government-imposed starvation wouldn’t teach them the difference between a need and a want and to be careful where their money goes, nothing was ever going to. Out there only tourists and the very wealthy eat out if they have a choice, unless they’re invited to a wedding or a baptism. The women look how Canadian women used to look—leaner, fitter, and dressed and groomed like ladies for a small fraction of what Canadian women squander to doll themselves up like streetwalkers (second hand clothes, much of it imported from Germany, are a booming business in Romania).
    Jezebel, meanwhile, swans around in dirty sweatpants and tends towards the size of an hippopotamus because she’s never had to worry about where her next meal is coming from or care what her fellow man thinks of her, because he has to pay for her and her pups no matter what. Then she has the cheek (and trust me, she has plenty of cheek, for enormous cheeks they are) to say she’s hasn’t the money for decent food.

  16. You know, I’m pretty sure that my wife feeds our family of five, they’re all under five years old mind you, for not much more than that. Mind you she also bakes her own bread, makes jam and other canning/freezing.
    The problem isn’t the amount they’re getting its how they use that money. As certain unnamed people say, poor people are poor more often because of the decisions they make than because of their resources. Of course, if your mother doesn’t teach you how to cook and shop, how are you going to know how to cook and shop? Bad decision making ruins generations.

  17. Syncrodox, I, too, sigh. I have seen children heavier than myself. How does it get to be this way?
    Ryan and Adam, what is lacking is the basic skills in the kitchen, the will to use them AND imagination. How many things can you make with ONE ingredient? Don’t ask the SNAP crowd.
    Dick, lifestyle is also a big factor in eating and exercise habits. Some European foods are rich and some are not yet they are filling. There are also fewer preservatives and artificial ingredients. Also, there is probably more movement involved (walking to work or somewhere else).

  18. [i]What I see is not only a lack of budgeting and planning skills but of imagination as well.[/i]
    If they could plan ahead more than few hours, they’d be employable. And then they’d lose their “benefits.” Can’t have that…

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