This blog post covers the final meal of my experiment. In order to obtain a brief taste of life on food stamps, I limited my daily food budget to only $3.25. A full explanation can be found in a previous post titled The Experiment.
Maintaining a $3.25 daily food budget is no easy task. With two meals down, I had only consumed 470 calories. In contrast, my previous meal yielded a excessive amount of sodium that would generally constitute an average person’s daily intake. It seems as though living on food stamps is not only difficult, it is also quite salty.
With dinner swiftly approaching, I began to develop a terrible headache. This trend continued as a feeling of general weakness swept over my body. This was probably due to the small number of calories I had consumed, but I suspect another factor was contributing to my condition.
With only $3.25 to spend, I couldn’t afford coffee or any other source of caffeine. Some people prefer alcohol or other behavior-altering substances; I tend to gravitate toward Folgers. Without my drug of choice, my head began to pound relentlessly.
I assumed my final meal would ease this headache headache. Of course, I was wrong (this is becoming an incredibly prominent theme).
Frozen burritos were on the menu, and, yet again, the microwave was my instrument of choice. After heating two of the small burritos, I sat down for my final meal of the day.
The burritos’ taste is quite reflective of their 33 cent price tag. While they didn’t dethrone the Kroger chicken noodle soup as the most inedible meal of the day, the burritos left a sufficiently objectionable taste lingering across my pallate. The innards of these foul creatures contains what can only be described as a substance painfully reminiscent of cat food.
Hunger trumped offensive flavor in this case. I ate every last bit of the two bargain-priced beef and bean burritos.
The burritos left me with a hunger-stifling queasiness that remained throughout the remainder of the day. In a sense, this was a positive consequence of choosing unhealthy, bargain-priced Mexican cuisine. At the mere thought of food, my mouth became watery and my stomach threatened to send back the burrito’s beef and bean entrails. I didn’t even think about food for almost an entire 24 hours following my encounter with the devious Las Campanas twins.
The burritos yielded an impressive 720 calories, bringing my grand total to 1,190. This is represents just over one third of the calories recommended to me by the Dallas Dietetic Association Calorie Calculator.
The bowl of chicken noodle soup I had eaten for lunch had already fulfilled my daily sodium requirement with 2.25 grams in a single meal. The burritos supplemented this excessive number to this with an additional 1.1 grams of sodium. Luckily, my breakfast of plain oatmeal was devoid of the substance.
There was plenty of untouched food left over from my experiment. Nearly an entire container of oatmeal, a can of soup and one frozen burrito remained. I could have easily consumed additional calories, but with my budget-priced food came copious amounts of sodium. If I had consumed an additional can of soup, it would have brought my daily sodium intake to an incredibly unhealthy 5.6 grams (5,600 milligrams).
Can a person survive with a daily food budget of only $3.25? Sure, but as my findings indicate, many cheap food items offer poor nutritional content. I cannot imagine what havoc would accompany months or years of this low-calorie high-sodium diet.
I am not so pretentious as to propose a solution to this problem. Feigning the diet of an individual on food stamps for a single day has not left me with a comprehensive understanding of the struggles such a person faces. I had only a brief glimpse into the harsh reality of life on food stamps; a humbling experience I will not soon forget.
