Katie Hoeber is a student at San Francisco State University working on her Masters in Public Health Nursing.
As a project for her Community Nursing class, Katie is spending a week living off four dollars a day — the equivalent value of an average day’s worth of food stamps.
Unlike the hipsters living on food stamps featured in last year’s Salon.com article “Hipsters on Food Stamps” — who used their food stamps to buy organic rabbit, raw honey, fresh squeezed juices and gourmet ice cream at their local Whole Foods — Katie has limited her fare to include only things she can buy within walking distance of her West Oakland home — which basically means the
local dollar store.
She explains on her blog: “Many people (on food stamps) do not drive a fancy little Prius as I do and don’t have the resources to clip coupons and drive all over town for sales. So for 1 week, I am living off of $4.00 a day for all food and drink and only purchasing my
groceries in West Oakland, at stores that are walking distance for a person with disabilities.”
Like many folks on food stamps, Katie does has a physical disability, one that forces her to walk with a cane. Unlike the vast majority of people on food stamps, however, Katie’s foray into $4-a-day eating is by choice, not necessity.
Follow Katie’s blog, which she calls “a way for me to record the experience and share the realities of hunger in America with others,” as she lives a week on $4 a day.
3 responses
Four dollars a day seems rather easy. For a brief period, I was living off of $10 every two weeks. I had a candy bar for breakfast, a burrito or chicken patty for lunch and another burrito or chicken patty for supper. When I got paid on every other Friday, I would treat myself to chicken fried steak w/ white gravy and french fries at the Black Eyed Pea across from the department store where I worked (which was directly next to my apartment complex.) The grocery store was about 4 blocks down the road, which was nice, since I didn’t have a vehicle. (My roommate did, however.)
After six weeks, I had gotten my financial situation to the point where I could eat healthier again. I’d lost 50 pounds in those six weeks (both from lack of food and from having switched from a desk job to a job requiring a fair amount of physical labor) and ended up in the hospital with kidney stones. The bill for that hospital visit somehow came out to $5000 despite them doing absolutely nothing for me, not even giving me so much as an ibuprofen for the pain. Ten years later, they’re still bitching about me failing to pay the bill.
$4/day is less than the amount allowed by the Food Stamp program…the allowance for 1 person is actually $200/mo, or about $6.50/day..which is a significant difference. But whether a person has $4/day or $6.50/day, if one knows how to shop and cook, one can eat well on that amount of money…in fact, can eat much BETTER because they won’t be buying expensive and unhealthy processed or prepared foods. thanks for helping to enlighten folks about this concept.
Interesting comment above regarding how easy it seems to live on so little. Kidney stones are known to be caused by dietary factors (lots of animal protein, sugars,carbs,etc.) If eating $4/day for a couple months leaves you with a $5k hospital bill, then doesn’t that actually work out to paying about $85/day for such a diet?
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