JUNE Food Stamp Challenge......Food Insecurity, Hunger & Society

This post is part of the June Food Stamp Challenge located HERE.

 There are many people in this country who believe hunger exists only in other places in the world.  You see those images on late night television of far off lands where the relief organization needs you to send a small check each month to feed the hungry children.  So you turn off the tv & ignore the pleas or you write a little check to mail off.  You then feel like you have done your part and are safe in your little corner of the world from ever facing hunger.  After all, you live in America, the riches nation on Earth!



But the next time you are in any public place in America....the bank, the mall, the post office, the library, the local park, and especially the grocery store, look around you.  Just because you can't recognize the faces of hunger that surround you, they are there.
Hunger in this country is everywhere and in places you don't think it exists!
How does this relate to me?

There was a time in my life(well, 2 times to be exact)when I was very 'poor'....poor menaing I lacked enough money to support my basic needs.  (Poor and not having money aren't necessarily the same thing....but that's another philosophical discussion for another time.)

The 1st time was between the ages of 15 & 18.  Due to a chaotic and totally dysfunctional home life during those years, I was left to raise myself alone in the family home without my parents.  Only occasionally were one or the other of my parents around.  Mostly they were absite for assorted reasons(business, separation, divorce, hospitalizations, emotional and mental breakdowns)and I was left alone there with the family dog.

Though the house and utilities were paid for I had no food once what had been left in the pantry was depleted.  Being underage with no parent around I was not in a position to get food stamps.  If I had tried to apply at my local welfare office as a minor, the whole situation of a child left alone would have opened up a social work case and I would have been taken into custody and placed in a foster home, which was NOT an arrangement I wanted or deemed necessary.  So I knew better than to ask for help there.

We had no family in the area and my brothers were grown and off living their lives....one was working at sea off the Alaskan coast and the other was living hundreds of miles away and trying to establish himself in business.  Neither was in a position to help nor did they know of my situation.   Between my best friend's mother feeding me occasionally, my father dropping off a $10 check a few times in 2 yrs. and later on, getting myself a part time job at a sub shop for money(as well as taking home food from that job), I was able to keep from starving.  All the while attending a private high school and living in a 5 bedroom/3.5 bathroom home on an acre of land.  If you hadn't known the details of my situation you would have never guessed by looking in from afar that I was living a life of total food insecurity.

This experience has totally colored my world when it comes to food.  I continue to this day to have 'food issues' related to this time in my life.

My 2nd brush with food insecurity was during college.  My father stopped paying for my 'board' at school when I moved off-campus during my Sophomore year.  At this point, being over 18 but attending school in a different state from my state of domicile, I had no clue if I qualified for any kind of governmental food assistance and frankly, I had no clue about asking anyone about it.  Again, I sucked it up and worked 3 different part time jobs while attending school full time in order to feed myself and pay bills.

By my Senior year I was living with my boyfriend in a roach-infested basement apartment and we had $20 cash between us to pay for our groceries per week.  $20 to feed 2 people for a week.  That was back in 1980, but even with food not being as costly as it is today, $20 was a small amount to eat on then.

Having $100 in 1980 is like having $243.45 in today's money when you adjust for inflation.  This means that feeding 2 people in 1980 for $20 would be like feeding those same 2 on $48.69 in today's money.  That comes out to be less than the food stamp allotment of today.  Gee, I was eating on a food stamp budget even then!
It would have been nice to have had those food stamps in 1980 and to have had that $20 cash freed up for spending on other necessities that we had to forego...or use to buy a better quality of food.

Back in 1980, I had one of those metal carts with 2 wheels that I used to carry our groceries home from the local A&P every weekend.  One time, one of the paper grocery bags ripped and a jar of mayo fell onto the sidewalk and broke.  This was a food catastrophe to us!  That mayo was needed for our weekly tuna sandwiches and should have lasted a month or more.  Finding the cash to replace that meant some bill got paid late that month.
As for what we ate on that $20 a week....I recall that we had a lot of boxed mac & cheese, plain jarred sauce and spaghetti, tuna fish, cheap hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches and canned beans.  For a treat I would make lasagna when mozzarella was on sale and I used cottage cheese instead of ricotta because ricotta was too expensive.  If we could afford meat that week we'd have hamburgers made with a ground beef mixture containing TVP because it was cheap or we would buy chicken legs.  The boyfriend had gotten some money for a graduation present from his parents so we used that if we felt we needed a night out at the low-rent college cafe.  Going out there cost about $10 for 2 people with alcoholic beverages and food in 1980.
We couldn't afford to do that very often.... 

One time, boyfriend's ex-roommate saw us in the grocery store and asked to borrow some of our $20 food budget from us.  As I recall, he wanted $8.
Ex-roommate was the son of wealthy NYC judges who lived on Park Avenue.  He had never lived outside of Manhattan until college and he was of the opinion that every place outside of 'the island' was a desolate wasteland, devoid of culture and class and the people who populated the country were not worth knowing.  Yah, I didn't like him very much. lol
He couldn't wait to finish school and get back to NYC.  Yes, he was a pampered, spoiled,  privileged snob who had never wanted for anything.

Daddy was late with his generous monthly check that month so instead of using Daddy's creidt card which he carried, he decided to ask his friends, who had $20 to eat for a week between them, for a loan of 40% of their food budget. (This ex-roommate was notorious for NOT paying back loans promptly-if at all!-as he never felt the sting of not having money in his life.)  It never even crossed his mond that other people lacked for resources.  And when we said no(well, I said no), he was aghast that we turned his request down.
Nothing personal(well sort of)....it was all about self-preservation baby.  

Ok....so what's my point here?
I'm not sure.... 

May it's that no matter your station in life, things happen that can put in a situation where you have a hard time meeting your basic needs.  It can happen in a heartbeat with no warning.
Just because someone appears to have money enough to live, don't assume.  There could be things going on below the surface that you are unaware of.

There are many times in life where ANYONE can experience a food insecurity and be hungry.  

Sometimes it's a child or teen who is living in a situation not of their own making due to the adults in their life.

Sometimes it's a young adult trying to establish themselves in a job and trying to pay their own bills for the first time.

Sometimes it's experiencing an unexpected reversal in life(job loss, illness, addiction, domestic abuse, accident, etc).

Sometimes it's being caught in a cycle of poverty(often many generations long)and seeing no way out.

Sometimes it's being old and/or disabled at any age and unable to support yourself fully any longer.

In today's world, you need a safety net.  In times past, people lived with or near their extended families.  Your family was your safety net in times of need and you could be assured of being taken care of it needed.  Families took care of their own.  And if the family wasn't there, usually the community was and could help.  Neighbors helped each other and communities solved their own problems.

Now for whatever reason you wish to believe, people are disconnected from each other.  Families move great distances from one another.  People living in the same building or in houses on the same street hardly know each other.  Waving to your neighbor as you get in your car to get to work or as you pass by while moving your lawn is NOT knowing your neighbors....

Unfortunately, family and community do not exist for many people and they must rely on government for their safety net.

The best we currently can do for a hunger safety net is the Food Stamp Program.
That it is necessary doesn't say much about the society we live in today.


Sluggy